To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf alludes to the autobiographical underpinnings of To the Lighthouse in her diary entry for May 9, 1925, in which she reflects that the novel ‘will be fairly short: to have father’s character done complete in it: & mothers; & St. Ives; & childhood; & all the usual things I try to put in—life, death &c.”

Woolf’s father, Leslie Stephen, is ‘done complete’ in the character of Mr. Ramsay, who blusters about the terrace and gardens, quoting Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poetry and pondering metaphysical principles. Like his fictional counterpart, Leslie Stephen was a respected academic writer, preoccupied with his own thoughts, and predisposed to outbursts of both self-importance and self-pity. Woolf’s mother, Julia Duckworth Stephen, devoted herself to her children, her husband, and helping others. An archetype of Victorian motherhood and female beauty, the character of Mrs. Ramsay strongly resembles Julia Stephens, whose own celebrated beauty inspired respected painters of the era. The novel’s setting in the Hebrides islands off the Scottish coast is a thin disguise for the Cornwall coast and the village of St. Ives, where the Stephenses and their seven children enjoyed summer holidays at Talland House—and sailed to nearby Godrevy lighthouse.