To the Lighthouse Topics for Discussion & Projects | BookRags.com

To the Lighthouse Topics for Further Study

Virginia Woolf summed up James Joyce's writing style as "the work of a queasy adolescent fingering his pimples." Look at the different versions of stream of consciousness to be found in Woolf s To the Lighthouse and Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in light of this assessment. What are the differences between the two narrative techniques? What do you think led Woolf to see Joyce's style as immature and self-absorbed?

Feminist critiques of To the Lighthouse have drawn very different conclusions about its gender politics. Elaine Showalter suggests that the novel is a retreat from feminism into mysticism, while Toril Moi argues that it is a radical feminist attack on the logic of patriarchal male society. Which assessment seems to you better supported by Woolf s book? What textual evidence can you find for either of these viewpoints?

"Had there been an axe handy,...
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