You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
An application of Freud's theory of symbolism to Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse reveals the journey to the Lighthouse as a metaphor for dispelling the illusions with which Victorian morality surrounded sexuality and sanctified male supremacy. Besides this explicit theme the novel embodies hostility towards Mrs Ramsay as the 'benevolent' bearer of that alienation, and as the archaic mother suspected of inflicting genital damage upon her daughters. Lily Briscoe, a model for the author, finds Mrs Ramsay to be narcissistic and ungiving, and sets artistic and intellectual achievement at a higher level than Mrs Ramsay's mere procreativity; Mr Ramsay assists the adolescents towards a similar independence. Lily's
'grief' for Mrs Ramsay is spurious and conceals a reproach for the daughter's castration, reflected in Lily's problem of filling the 'awful space' in the centre of her painting. There are signs that Woolf herself could not quite master doubts of her own genital adequacy, or divest herself of the suspicion that her work was in part a fantasy substitute for childbearing—a regrettable legacy of her Victorian upbringing.