Woolf’s work has a reputation for being complex and very modern.  To the Lighthouse is less focused on the dialogue or actions of characters and instead illustrates their observations of the people and things around them. The reader is often caught up in the characters’ own streams of consciousness. 

One example of this is in the following passage.  In this quote, Lily, a painter, is comparing her own life as a “spinster” to the lives of the central characters, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, whose relationship is one of the central themes of the novel.

So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball. That is what Mrs. Ramsay tried to tell me wearing a green shawl, and they were standing close together watching Prue and Jasper throwing catches. And suddenly the meaning which, for no reason at all, as perhaps they are stepping out of the Tube or ringing a doorbell, descends on people, making them symbolical, making them representative, came upon them, and made them in the dusk standing, looking, the symbols of marriage, husband and wife. Then, after an instant, the symbolical outline which transcended the real figures sank down again, and they became, as they met them, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay watching the children throwing catches.

What may seem striking to so many readers is Woolf's ability to illustrate the fact that a simple image can represent a total ideology, tradition or relationship.  And we get to experience this idea through the eyes of an artist who is trying to capture these exact moments in time.

To the Lighthouse placed No. 15 on the Modern Library's list of the 100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century.

If this novel has impacted you in any way, please share your thoughts.  And feel free to comment with your own excerpts/quotes from favourite novels - think of this as the beginning of a Fan Book Club!