SOURCE: "G. E. Moore's Table and Chair in 'To The Lighthouse'," in Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 15, No. 1, Summer, 1988, pp. 161-68.

In the following excerpt, Steinberg examines elements of Moore's philosophy in the text of Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse.

Over the years critics have argued that Virginia Woolf s fiction echoes the philosophy of, variously, Henri Bergson, Plato, G. E. Moore, John McTaggart, Bertrand Russell, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and C. G. Jung. Since many of these men professed widely differing philosophies, the only conclusion that can be drawn from all of these mutually contradictory claims and counterclaims is that, in her novels, Virginia Woolf does not espouse, adhere to, instantiate, or even reflect the ideas of any particular philosopher or philosophy.¹

In her writing, Virginia Woolf treats philosophy gingerly. In A Room of One's Own, for example, after encouraging women "to write books of travel...