The significance of things and objects in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse

Abstract

This thesis will provide a discussion of the significance of things and objects in Woolf’s 1927 novel, To the Lighthouse. It presents an investigation of what significance the objects and things play in relation to the protagonists of the story. Further, I will also be analysing how things can provide a type of structure in the lives of the characters, and additionally in the novel itself. The relationship between characters and things in To the Lighthouse is in accordance with the relationship all of us have with things in our own lives. Things are constantly surrounding us. In short they connect us and remind us of the external world. The relationship between things and characters is perhaps of particular prominence in To the Lighthouse due to Virginia Woolf’s writing style. Woolf was an artist of the stream of consciousness technique, and she utilised it in a manner that had never been carried out before. In To the Lighthouse there is no clear narrator, implying that Woolf grants us a representation of multiple consciousnesses through the stream of consciousness technique. Readers of Woolf are granted front row seats from which to observe the characters’ thoughts, perceptions and impressions as they arise and develop. Characteristics of Woolf’s writing style, and the fact that she was a realist and a modernist, have directed my approaches of investigation.