To the Lighthouse

Why does Lily Briscoe's single brushstroke feel like the end of a lifelong struggle?

Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is one of the great novels of the twentieth century, and one of the most elusive. In this concise and searching study, Nicholas M. Romano follows the Ramsay family's long-delayed voyage to the lighthouse and uncovers the hidden drama beneath its calm surface: the eternal contest between light and dark, love and resentment, the self and the other.

Moving through "The Window," "Time Passes" and "The Lighthouse," Romano reads Woolf's stream-of-consciousness narrative with help from philosophy and psychoanalysis, drawing on thinkers from Freud, Lacan and Melanie Klein to R. D. Laing and Merleau-Ponty, alongside D. H. Lawrence, Jane Austen and William Blake. He shows how a conflicted family's journey becomes a portrait of intimacy as both refuge and battlefield, and how Lily's hard-won vision offers a distinctly feminine answer to the question of what gives life meaning.

Written for students of English literature and for the "common" reader Woolf herself admired, Lily's Vision is a thoughtful companion for anyone who wants to read To the Lighthouse more deeply.