To the Lighthouse is one of the widely acclaimed novels of British female writer Virginia Woolf. It describes the two gatherings of Mr. Ramsey's family and a group of his intellectual friends at Beachfront Villas and their excursions to the lighthouse. It shows the writer's unique view of man's physiological thoughts. The novel, written with stream-of-consciousness literary techniques, does not have a complete plot and fascinating scenarios. It is the feelings, impressions, minds, psychological activities of the figures and some of the characters who are active in the novel reflected in the reader's minds. Lily is one of the leading figures in the novel.

The novel is divided into three parts: the window, the passage of time and the lighthouse. Going to the lighthouse is the central clue throughout the book. It recounts the slice of the Ramsey family’s life before and after the first World War. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey's youngest son, James, wanted to go to the lighthouse but failed to do so because of the bad weather. After the outbreak of the war, the Ramsey family experienced vicissitudes. Ten years later, Mr. Ramsey took his children to the lighthouse by boat, arrived at the long-awaited lighthouse, and fulfilled his long-years wish. In the end, Lily Briscoe, sitting on the shore, was drawing the picture of the Ramsey family in a flash of epiphany. A stroke fell from the center, drawing a vision that haunts the mind for many years. Some people think that the novel has less unity because it has no major thread to bind it as a whole [1].

The first chapter mainly analyzes the characteristics of Lily. It is mainly about her striving to free life and her perseverance to her dream. The first part briefly describes Lily’s attitude to the New Woman. The second part briefly describes Lily's resistance of patriarchal society. The third part describes how she became a successful artistic painter.

A Pursuer of New woman

In the patriarchal society, men believed that it was the woman's nature and duty to undertake household chores and satisfy all the demands of their husbands as well as bring up the children. But in the novel, Lily totally disagrees with this idea. Although she has nothing to do with beauty, elegance and charm, she is unique in the author’s mind and in the eyes of the reader. She is brave to follow his heart. For example, she refused to get married and she is obsessed with painting [2].

She is the representative of the new woman. First of all, “Lily didn’t want to get married and stay at home, “with her little Chinese eyes and her picked-up face” (line 16, p25). It seemed that Lilly would never get married. In fact, Lily was confused about love and marriage. She didn’t want to be like most women to be appendages to family and marriage. In Lily's heart, marriage and freedom should not be confused and she shouldn’t abandon freedom because of marriage. Despite Mrs. Ramsay loved to play matchmaker and she always introduce single men to Lily and wanted Lily to accept that “no matter what happened, women should get married” and trying to make Lily to get married. But Lily was always pursuing a completely different way of life than Mrs. Ramsey. She liked to live single life so she always maintains a unique personality to reject the rule of patriarchal age.  Even if Mrs. Ramsey keeps saying: get married, get married... But as an independent female artist, she was determined to resist marriage. She knew that in the unequal patriarchal society. Women were too native, they are habit of giving, man only kept demanding and she bravely pursue the new feminist image of independence and harmony and seek equality between men and women. Lily's view of independence is different from that of opposites. She considered that autonomy is not "uncooperative".

Second, although in the patriarchal era, women were supposed to contribute themselves to the family, Lily always distinctly pursued her own painting dream. However, in patriarchal society, no one will take her seriously.  For example, as soon as she appeared and draw for Mrs. Ramsey, no one really cared about her paintings. Just as Banks stood next to her talking to her and he only noticed her beautiful shoes. What’s more, Charles Tesley once told Lily that women could neither draw nor write. However, Lily was not afraid, she continued to pursue her own thinking, and in the end her dream came true and she became realized her pursuit to art. For Lily, her brush is the only way that she could express the feelings in her deep mind and express herself in this patriarchal society. No matter how others evaluate her, painting will be her life-long career and she will stick to painting.

Compared with Mrs. Ramsey, she played a new female character who do everything she could to fight against the rule in patriarchal age. Lily has no enchanting face, and she is still alone in middle age. But Lily doesn't care what she looks like. She desires for independence and long for having her own painting career and social status just as men. Lily wanted to resist the patriarchal era by abandoning all the feminine temperament [1,2]. 

A Resister of Patriarchal Society

Unlike Mrs. Ramsey, Lily fought against patriarchal despotism in male society by developing her femininity. Not only did she refuse to offer male protection and comfort to satisfy their vanity, just as Mrs. Ramsey did, but she mocked them mercilessly. She was very dissatisfied with Mr. Ramsey who only thought about himself and she regarded as Mr. Ramsey was a “tyrant”. Because of his existence, Lily could not focus on the colors and lines, and she could not complete the painting. Firstly, Lily had repeatedly refused Mrs. Ramsey who always wanted to seek spiritual comfort from her. In her eyes, the vulnerability of men not only failed to arouse her sympathy, but also aroused strong revulsion. Lily believed that it was Mrs. Ramsey's connivance that made these men too dependent which was harmful to them. Secondly, although Mrs. Ramsey always deliberately or unintentionally emphasized the necessity of marriage, Lily refused to get married. And she rejected the to be “Angle in the house” that the society had arranged for women at that time. She did not limit herself to trivial housework. What she did was to resist the discrimination of the personality of women in the patriarchal society. Thirdly, At the same time, she also condemned the traditional women who had no resistance to the rules in the patriarchal society and she were disgruntled by their willingness to be at the mercy of others. Lily was dissatisfied with what they did. For example, Mrs. Ramsey, who was the representative of patriarchal society, was generous to the poor animals but was caustic to the woman. It is women who succumbed to their traditional social roles and refrained from fighting that ultimately led to further repression by men. In Lily's view, only killing the “Angel in the House” can guarantee her independence [3].

The Creators of a Creator in Artistic Art 

In the novel, Lily first start drawing and this is the first step for her to become a female artist. She is excited but also afraid. On the one hand, she felt happy to be able to pick up the brush to show her unique artistic aesthetics and painting style, which also stand for a process that Lily was about to change from the traditional female identity to the modern female identity. But on the other hand, in patriarchal societies, men had a very strong negative and repulsive attitudes towards women which had also led to women had low social status in patriarchal society for a long time and even female artists may not be able to participate in the social activities. In the novel, this contradictory psychology always affects Lily. Lily remembered Mrs. Ramsey's obedience and subservience to her husband. Lily’s inner world was deeply sad to these humble women in the Victorian. In fact, this was an important reason that women are oppressed by men. Lily rejected to play the traditional female role as Mrs. Ramsey. because Lily finally figured out that if a woman wants to have an independent social status in society and had their own profession and way of living, can she be able to independent and be capable to be free from male discrimination and ridicule. Therefore, the brush in Lily's hand is a path to go get liberation. The brush in her hand is the only way she can express her heart and express herself in this patriarchal society, no matter how people judge it. Painting will be her lifelong career. In the end, Lily made great progress in drawing the painting. She realized that the creativity under love was great and the choice of truth could she draw real Mrs. Ramsey. When Mr. Ramsay and his children went to the lighthouse. At that time, Lily was painting and she added a brushstroke in Mrs. Ramsey's portrayal. In Lily’s consciousness, her attention was no longer solely focused on her own art; at the same time, she was more care about others feelings and she could be better fit in the patriarchal societies [1-3].

This chapter mainly analyzes the reasons of Lily’s characteristics from two aspects which mainly analyzes from the social factors and family factors. The two reasons have become the important cause of the form of Lily’s characteristics [4]. 

Social Reasons

In Victorian times, most people though that a good wife had to properly manage their homes so they thought that it was woman's duty to provide their husbands with a comfortable living environment. And men took it for granted that women had to undertake all the household chores and satisfied all the demands of their husbands with no strings. In the family, women were recognized as male appendages rather than their wives or children’s mothers. These situations were especially common in Victorian England. Lily wanted to painting and pursued her dream. But in Victorian times, woman who wanted to paint would be thought “abnormal”.  So, she knew only broke through the dilemma in patriarchal society of female in paining is an urgent problem to be solved. 

At that time, she wanted to draw but she didn't have enough confidence since she had no formal training and there was no precedent for her to reference. She didn’t want to depict good wife and mother’s Mrs. Ramsey, but to depict the real Mrs. Ramsey observed from woman's eyes. But she found that other people’s influence resulted her couldn’t make a comprehensive and objective assessment of Mrs. Ramsey.

She tried to convey the New Woman’s world view to the women living in the patriarchal society in her own way but she found that all the expressions were marked by patriarchal thought. These situations bother her for a long time since she could not form her own style while painting.  In the novel, Mr. Tansley evaluate women that “They did nothing but talk, talk, talk, eat, eat, eat. It was the women’s fault. Women made civilization impossible with all their ‘charm’, all their silliness” (Chap17, p116). The purpose that Tansley said these aimed at Lily and he wanted others make fun of Lily. And other people also draw a conclusion that women can’t paint nor write. 

Analysis the characters in a novel can never be separated from the social background and humanistic environment. In Victorian times, there is a kind of social unconsciousness in the society. This social unconsciousness not only inhibited human instinct but also the repressed the pain caused by social contradictions. Social standardizes not only regulated people's behavior and thoughts, but also standardizes the way of people’s thinking and the way people communicated. Under the influence of social unconsciousness, people with free consciousness are eager to describe women in a way that has never been used in the past. Lily Brisco in to the Lighthouse Lily Briscoe was constantly exploring the proper way to express her thoughts.

Family Factor

First, Mrs. Ramsey always exhorted Lily that marriage is a woman's destiny. For example, she said, “Whatever laurels might be tossed to her, or triumphs won by her, an unmarried woman has missed the best of life” (chapter 9, p68). Lily had been troubled by such negative and disdainful assertions, and she stubbornly and repeatedly thought these comments in her mind. All of these resulted that she was puzzled to her own pursuit and skeptical to her own abilities and even resulted that she couldn’t find creative inspiration in drawing.

Secondly, Ramsey's husband always oppressed and discriminated Lily which made Lily wanted to a resister of patriarchal society. For centuries, women had been deprived of their economic and political rights which confined women to a small circle of the family that they didn’t have energy to participate in the social activities or did what they want. For instance, Lily always remembered that Mr. Tansley whispering in her ear, “Women can’t paint, woman can’t write...” (chapter 9, P67) When Lily wanted to paint, the male forces represented by Mr. Ramsey put invisible pressure on her. In the novel, there was a paragraph to describe Lily’s feeling, "when she took her bush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment’s fight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the waves of tears and made this passage from conception to work as headful "(chapter 4, p28). So, because in the patriarchal society men limits the scope of women's activities and women only could stay at home so they didn’t have many opportunities to learn the social experience. Lily was being look down upon by Mr. Ramsay. Lily knew that compared with the well-known Mr. Bankes, neither did she has ever been to Rome to see the murals in Sistine Chapel nor did she saw other famous works drawing by Michelangelo, Giotto and other famous painters. She had only been to Paris to see her sick aunt.    The restrictions and oppression imposed on women by the society had indeed made woman feel inferior and sensitive. For instance, Mr. Ramsay always said Lily’s these disadvantages which made Lily though whether it is right to continue painting. So, whenever Lily draw, she was afraid that Mr. Ramsey would suddenly appear so she was alert to everything around her while she was painting.  This contradictory state in Lily’s mind showed that Lily was not only happy to get rid of the traditional bondage and was happy to break through the bound of the family, but also at the same time she feared that her expression will not be accepted by others female and these thoughts prevented her to expresses herself confidently and freely [2,4].

Therefore, in "to the Lighthouse", every time Lily picked up the brush, she felt she was under heavy pressure since Mr. Ramsey and Mrs. Ramsey always told her that woman couldn’t became a real painter or writer and marriage was woman’s best destiny. So, Lily felt the heavy pressure of Mr. Ramsey even she did not see Mr. Ramsey. And no matter whenever she paints, she constantly felt the pressure of men just like Mr. Ramsey and Mrs. Ramsey. These oppression from them made it impossible for Lily to use the lines or colors correctly for her artistic creation. Therefore, the Ramsey’s family affected Lily's normal artistic exertion and it is also an important reason to resist the patriarchal society [3].

The part mainly elaborates the results of Lily’s characteristics. My paper will introduce this part from two aspects:  Lily’s achievements in her life and the surpassing of her mind [5]. 

The Surpassing of her Mind 

At first, Lily’s properties of each nature were not harmonious. First of all, as an artist, Lily clearly showed the masculinity. For instance, she respected the color in her drawing just as Mr. Ramsey respected the facts and she believed that change the color in painting was an insincere performance. What’s more, when Lily was painting, she was totally involved in it just as Mr. Ramsey always devoted himself in thinking whenever he thought about philosophical issues. Secondly, when Lily evaluated Mrs. Ramsey and Mr. Ramsey, she also showed the imbalance and contradiction to the properties to each sex. Thus, until the age of 44, she created some valuable works and the reason that she had never been able to complete the paintings was an illustration of her radical cognitive bias and her complete denial of the masculine principle. It also reflects that she had not yet achieved the harmony between male and female and it is also an important reason that she had not achieved success in her creative drawing. In the third part of the novel, Lily became a major character. Ten years later, Mr. Ramsey, who represented men, and other male guests Lily was strongly shocked by the change in Mr. Ramsey and other male guests’ personality. Mr. Ramsey lost his imperious and tyranny, and he was enthusiastic and kind to Lily. And gradually she affirmed the social status of women in the society. All of these made Lily reconsider feminist consciousness. On the one hand, Lily recalled Mrs. Ramsey, she realized the significance that Mrs. Ramsey did for her husband and family and she affirmed the value of femininity in the society. For example, Lily remembered a scene that she and Taslay was sitting on the beach: “that woman sitting there, writing under the rock resolved everything in to simplicity [1,4,5].

At that moment, Lily woke up and she realized that Mrs. Ramsey was an extraordinary artist. The work she created was she maintained the family harmony and the dinner that she did for her family. Lily was also aware of the important role that femininity plays in a patriarchal society. And it is Mrs. Ramsey who use her own ability to bind her family members and friends. Finally, after Mrs. Ramsey dead, Lily even wanted to play the role as her. For example. For example, she praised the style of Mr. Ramsey's shoes and had a friendly communication with him. In the end, the harmonious between Mrs. Ramsey and Mr. Ramsey represented the united between men and women in patriarchal society [4]. 

The Achievements in her Life

Lily gradually found a compromise points in the sexual conflict which made her suddenly understand the significance of Mr. Ramsay had done and her inspiration in drawing suddenly flowing out. Beside the lighthouse, she drew the last bush in the middle of Mr. Ramsay’s portrayal, which made the phantom that haunts on her mind for many years became a real artistic work. For Lily Briscoe, "But that any other eyes should see the residue of her thirty-three years, the deposit of each day’s living, mixed with something more secret than she had ever spoken or shown in the course of all those days was an agony. At the same time, it was immensely exciting" (72; Ch. 1) Lily's persistent pursuit of art and personal value. Lily's inner world was quite certain that as long as she drew the real Mrs. Ramsey, could she have a transcendence in drawing. She didn’t want to painted the woman in the eyes of male but she wanted to paint a real image of a woman form woman’s eyes. And in man’s opinion, women played two roles: ‘angels’ or ‘demons. Either they are very kind or very evil. The considerate Mrs. Ramsey was undoubtedly a typical ‘angel’ which was praised by the male chauvinist, such as Tasley. But Lily saw that Mrs. Ramsey, was not exactly the same as what men had saw. Although Mrs. Ramsey was a relatively gentle woman in her daily life, Lily also knew sometimes Mrs. Ramsey showed concern to others just wanted to satisfy her own vanity. Men couldn’t find the two extreme images of Mrs. Ramsey and only a painter as earnest as Lily could find such a subtle problem. After World War I, Ramsey family decided to take their children to the lighthouse. When Ramsey family arrived at the lighthouse, Lily Briscoe knew the significance of Mrs. Ramsey had done. She had painted the real image of Mrs. Ramsey and became a successful artist [1-5].  

This paper mainly analyzes the image of Lily Briscoe from three aspects. First of all, this paper understands the overall image of Lily from the perspective of new woman, and then it analyzes she resists of patriarchal society and her insistence in painting and achievement in painting. Finally, we summarize the role of Lili image in the whole novel. From all of these, we can draw a conclusion that Lily is the representative of the Victorian Age and she is also an example for women in Patriarchal society.

In to the Lighthouse, through describing Mr. Ramsey and Mrs. Ramsey 's characters, Virginia Woolf had a new view towards men and women [2]. Through describing Lily’s characters, the author wanted to express her own hope to explore the healthy relationship between men and women.  The mental course of Lily's own growth process not only reflected the development process of her personal consciousness, but also revealed the evaluation and re-evaluation of others. In the end, Lily achieved integration between men and women.

1. Pan, Yan. A Study of the Aesthetic Presentational Methods in “To the Lighthouse”. 2016.

2. Woolf, Virginia. Virginia Woolf’s Diary. Triad Grafton, 1987.

3. Zhu, Xiao. Pursuit of Individuality: A Thematic Study of Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”. 2018.

4. Zhao, Mei. "The harmony and wholeness in “To the Lighthouse”." Read and Write Periodical, 2009.

5. Wang, Jing. "An important study on Lily Briscoe’s feminine consciousness in “To the Lighthouse”." Journal of Xiangtan Normal University (Social Science Edition), 2008.