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awwww!! but i have such cool things to tell you about it!
j/k

ok.

... what?

i'm not out to prove my "intellectual superiority"
nothing i say about Woolf is original.

if you're sick of Woolf, then go respond to my other posts.
i have a lot! why else do you think i'm an out of control freak. haha

(a little rant first... i spent all this time, writing up a post in response... and then when i posted it, it said this:

"HTML Comments are not allowed"

even though i'm pretty sure i didn't have html in my post... so i think the messageboard is officially on crack and i'm pissed off 'cuz now i have to rewrite the whole damn post. grr)

ok moving on to more important things.

"To The Lighthouse" is mostly autobiographical. Mr and Mrs Ramsey are based on Woolf's own parents.

dividing the book into the 3 sections,
I. "The Window" takes place in the afternoon to evening of 1913 roundabout.
Mrs. Ramsey dominates this section and represents love, marriage, children. The fairytale that she is reading to James is about how men should be in charge, instills patriarchal values...
Her husband Mr. Ramsey is stuck on his military exploits, "someone has blundered" he keeps repeating.
Lily is Mrs Ramsey's shadow.

II. "Time Passes" encompasses 1913- 1923, with WWI in between.
The human characters in this section are represented by shadows. Nature and time dominate instead.
Andrew dies. Prue dies. This is because they do what their parents want them to do. Mrs. Ramsey desperately tries to keep everything together but everything only falls apart. Woolf is trying to kill the conventions of the Victorian age. Moral codes are dying because they don't work.

III. "The Lighthouse" takes place in the morning and noon of 1923 or 1924, around.
This section is now dominated by Mr. Ramsey, while the shadow is Mrs. Ramsey's ghost.
Lily is 44 years old in the end and not married, Woolf is 44 years old when she finishes this novel.

more on the characters,
Everything Mrs. Ramsey stands for is Lily's antithesis. Therefore, Lily cannot paint while Mrs. Ramsey is still alive.
the phrase "women can't write" refers to Woolf and "women can't paint" refers to Lily, who is modelled after Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell.
Mrs. Ramsey dies from giving too much while Lily survives because she doesn't give.

Charles Tansley is also Lily's opposite. While Lily is a painter/artist, Charles is a philosopher and relies on scientific reasoning. He is a misogynist and Mr. Ramsey's prodigy.

the lighthouse symbolizes hope, future, constancy, goals...

one last note on the timing structure of the novel...
if you look at the time that each section takes place during... they are fragments of a day that complete one circle and make one day.
i.e. afternoon to evening to morning to noon

oh yea that reminds me.
this is not a private conversation/argument.
everybody post!!!

i love Woolf and wish that my love could be as infectious as my teacher's was.

OMG, what is your freakin problem?

slow your roll, Mr.

when i said i loved Woolf, i meant her writings included. no freudian slip. if i wasn't being anal enough for you, with my choice of words, i'm not sorry because this is an informal message board that i like to post on, in my free time, for FUN.

additionally, don't insult me by implying (or stating blatantly) that the only reason why I love Woolf and HER WORK is because i had a FANATIC teacher who loved her and felt that i had to, in turn.

first of all, i am not a lemming, like so many other people(please refer to Dave Matthews Band song "Ants Marching"). i did not let my teacher dictate who i loved and who i didn't love, what literature i liked and didn't like, etc.

secondly, just because a teacher is a "fanatic" does not undermine their ability to inspire and teach. it is not a fault/flaw/disadvantage on my teacher's part, that she happened to love Woolf and her writings and knew an awful lot about her. she (meaning my teacher) just so happens to know a lot about a lot of things.

thirdly, i never said that because i love Woolf, everyone else should. don't project your misinterpretations onto me. i think it is pretty damn natural for someone to want to share something that they love or are passionate about. i see absolutely nothing wrong in that. and it is perfectly FINE if you don't like Woolf. i know a ton of people who don't like her and even i don't like to read her on my own because she's just too hard... she writes beautifully but sometimes it's too elusive. but my point is that i really enjoy talking about Woolf and sharing my passion for her writing with other people. that's all.

fourthly, you're a hypocrite. you basically insult me by saying that i like Woolf bc i had a teacher who loved her and felt that i should too. then you go on to say that one of the reasons why you don't like Woolf is because she has no "mass appeal." what the hell does that have anything to do with it? Woolf was not writing for "mass appeal." i would not base my judgments and opinions on the degree of "mass appeal" a person/thing/etc has. in fact, if anything, i would do the opposite. the more "mass appeal" the more i am turned away. bc again, i am not a lemming. i dislike "harry potter," i didn't like "memoirs of a geisha," i really don't like Toni Morrisson or Shakespeare, etc. be wary of anything that has "mass appeal" is what i say. learn to form your own opinions, without the crowd.

lastly, i don't know Angela Carter.
and you'll find this hard to believe, probably, but i'm actually pretty sick of "post-feminist bull" as well. i'm all for womens rights and shit but a feminazi, i am not.

oops, sorry, i don't know why i thought you were a Mr.
i do apologize for that.

you don't think you are hypocritical?
my dear, we ALL are. to a certain extent.
are you sure you want to claim you are not?

HEY! Dominique like the character in Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead"
quite possibly one of the COOLEST female characters ever to come to life for me.

anyway. moving on.

i'm actually kinda sick of Woolf right now. you're adament about not liking her and like i said before, that's fine. let's find something else to talk about!

there are a lot of stupid people in this world. (i believe there is a CB essay on this) i NEVER trust "mass appeal" even in literature.

and yes, i like your newly phrased sentence at the end, better. thanks.

okay so i made a mistake.
this phenomenon called "mass appeal" might initially pique an interest or rather, more of a curiosity, in me, but will not in any way dictate my own conclusion/opinion/judgment of whatever it is.

i don't remember what exactly i said about the Bible but i doubt i said i "liked it." i read it because i want to know what exactly i'm "embracing" by labeling myself as Christian but it is yet to be determined, what i think of it. i mean, whether or not i believe in it, that is. and i wouldn't exactly say that it was the "mass appeal" of the Bible that got me to read it. it was my religion.

i will very clearly say that i am a hypocrite. i never denied that. you were the one who did, remember?

... what?

not that they even slightly resemble each other...
what's the movie about?
is it a biography of Woolf?