To the Lighthouse

عن الكتاب

To the Lighthouse is one of Woolf’s most assured pieces of work. In it, psychological effects are achieved through the use of imagery, symbol, and metaphor. The novel starts with Mrs Ramsay’s promise to her son that he can visit the lighthouse, a visit that is deferred throughout the book and only finally achieved after Mrs Ramsay’s death. Mrs Ramsay thinks that “something … is immune from changes, and shines out … in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby”, but the book, with its insistence on loss, resentment, regret, and grief, seems as much concerned by the changes that time does make, as with attempts at transcendent truth – represented by the artist Lily Briscoe’s struggles to reproduce the shape-in-chaos that is the essence of Mrs Ramsay.