Feminism in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse
             To the Lighthouse, although unremarkable in character depiction by today's standards, was a radical departure from the norm in the period in which it was written. At that time, women were expected to conform to tradition, to remain subservient to men. Virginia Woolf, in creating Lily Briscoe defied convention by allowing her to assert her independence. While the novel remained traditional in the sense that it included female characters who deferred to men, the inclusion of a woman such as Briscoe, an independendent thinker, shocked many readers in the Modernist Era.
             Throughout history, women have been locked in a struggle to free themselves from the boundaries that separate themselves from men. In many circles, it is agreed that the battleground for this struggle exists in literature. In a field which has typically been dominated by men, women have seldom been represented positively through literary characters. As stated by essayists Quentin Bell and Angela Garnet, even with influential characters such as Lady Macbeth, Helen, and Ophelia, women's views have typically taken a backseat in favor of a more traditional gender role. Some of these women are merely men in disguise - used to express man 's ideas through a woman, others are representative of what men want them to be, and still others embody the dissatisfaction and despair which afflict many of us when we look upon the sorry condition of the human race (Men and Women, 1).
             In the same way Victorian literature reflects certain themes such as character and fate, hubris, social mobility, and gender roles in society, Modern literature exemplifies the same ideas. Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse not only revolves around the typical gender roles women played at the time, but also represents a transformational shift in these roles as well.
             Within the story, two types of societal roles of women are rep...