[F2F Book Discussions] May 2014: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf | Moderator: Angus

[Angus]

Hello, friends! Welcome to the online discussion thread of TFG's book of the month for May:

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.

The theme that the moderator selected for this month is modernist literature. To the Lighthouse won both the online and offline polls, beating The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, and The Trial by Franz Kafka.

Here are some links that will help you participate in our online discussion that will culminate in the F2F book discussion at the end of the month:

Ebook
Audiobook (narrated by Juliet Stevenson)
Local Bookstore
Online Bookstore

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To the Lighthouse Discussion Plan:

Apr 28 - Background of Modernist Literature
May 01 - Background of Virginia Woolf and To the Lighthouse
May 05 - Part I: Chapters 01 to 05
May 08 - Part I: Chapters 06 to 09
May 12 - Part I: Chapters 10 to 16
May 15 - Part I: Chapter 17
May 19 - Part I: Chapters 18 to 19, Part II: Chapters 01 to 10
May 22 - Part III: Chapters 01 to 05
May 26 - Part III: Chapters 06 to 13
May 29 - Conclusion of Online Book Discussion
May 31 - F2F Book Discussion

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Discussion questions and activities will be posted on the designated dates. As always, the reading plan is merely a guide. You may read at a pace that you are comfortable with. However, the moderator advises the readers against binge reading. This is because the moderator wishes you to fully appreciate this novel. In addition, points will be earned by the participants of the online activities. These points will be useful in the F2F book discussion.

Please disregard this tough list, this challenging list, this difficult list, or this other difficult list. What, you didn't click them, did you? Oh wow. Just remind yourselves with what they say:

The trick is to surrender yourself, to let the prose wash over you and take you where it will--not to worry too much about understanding a dogmatic way.

Thus said, the moderator hopes you enjoy this book. :)

[Monique]

As for me, I'm just excited to (finally) read Virginia Woolf! Yay!

Copy all ready, freshly covered in plastic; post-its/highlighters, too. :D

[Angus]

NYKen: Thank you for the summary. You make my tasks easier. I agree that it is not for everybody, like genre fiction. I insist though that the willing reader can find his or her sea legs while the opposite can choose to just drown.

Also, we don't mind late answers. The plan above is a guide for us to organize the flow of the discussion. We hope you could find a copy. You may resort to the links above if your library doesn't have a copy available. :)

Monique: I'm excited to read your marginalia. :)

[Angus]

Background of Modernist Literature

What is Modernism?
(view spoiler)[
-Modernism encompasses the philosophical and artistic movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (roughly 1890 to 1939) in the western societies.

-Modernism, in general, includes the activities and creations of those who felt the traditional forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, philosophy, social organization, and activities of daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political environment of an emerging fully industrialized world.

-This was near the end of Queen Victoria's reign, marking a symbolic break from the preceding century. This also roughly coincided with the publication of several groundbreaking theories, such as Freud's Interpretation of Dreams and Einstein's theory of special relativity. As such, there were real shifts in the natural sciences, social sciences, and liberal arts occurring at this time as well.

-The poet Ezra Pound captured the essence of Modernism with his famous dictum, "Make it new!"

-Some of modernism's innovations are the stream-of-consciousness novel, twelve-tone music, and abstract art.
(hide spoiler)]

Modernism in Literature:
(view spoiler)[
-Modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th-century traditions and of their consensus between author and reader.

-Modernist writers tended to see themselves as an avant-garde disengaged from bourgeois values, and disturbed their readers by adopting complex and difficult new forms and styles.

-In fiction, the accepted continuity of chronological development was upset by Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner, while James Joyce and Virginia Woolf attempted new ways of tracing the flow of characters' thoughts in their stream-of-consciousness styles.

-In poetry, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot replaced the logical exposition of thoughts with collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions.

-Modernist writing is predominantly cosmopolitan, and often expresses a sense of urban cultural dislocation, along with an awareness of new anthropological and psychological theories.

-Its favored techniques of juxtaposition and multiple point of view challenge the reader to reestablish a coherence of meaning from fragmentary forms.
(hide spoiler)]

Literary Tactics and Devices in Modernist Literature:
(view spoiler)[
Character: a disappearance of character summary, of discrete well-demarcated characters as in Dickens; the representation of the self as diverse, contradictory, ambiguous, multiple.

Plot: scepticism about linear plots with sudden climactic turning points and clear resolutions; the use instead of discontinuous fragments, "moment time," chronological leaps in time, contrapuntal multiple plots, open unresolved endings.

Style: "stream of consciousness"--tracing non-linear thought processes, moving by the "logic of association" or the "logic of the unconscious"; imagistic rather than logical connections.

Point of View: a rejection of the single, authoritative, omniscient point of view for a narrative focalized instead through the consciousness of one character whose point of view is limited--or through several characters who establish relative, multiple points of view--or through several simultaneously-held positions maintained by the one character.

Stream of consciousness - aims to provide a textual equivalent to the stream of a fictional character's consciousness. It creates the impression that the reader is eavesdropping on the flow of conscious experience in the character's mind. It comes in a variety of stylistic forms and it is characterized by associative or dissociative leaps in syntax and punctuation.

Interior monologue - a particular kind of stream of consciousness writing (also called quoted stream of consciousness), it presents characters' thought streams exclusively in the form of silent inner speech, as a stream of verbalized thoughts.
(hide spoiler)]

Question 01:
(view spoiler)[
What are the modernist novels, short stories, poems, and plays that you have read? You may check this list of modernist writers for your reference (1 point for every book, +1 for every review).
(hide spoiler)]

[Miles]

Hi! I'm a new member here and I'd like to ask a quick question. Is there such thing as Structuralist Literature?

[Tina]

Side story! I went around looking for a print copy of To The Lighthouse, so I asked Fully Booked and apparently, it is out of stock in all branches. o_O I guess I'll go for ebook, then.

Will answer questions later! Sayang ang points. :D

[Monique]

Question 01:

(view spoiler)[
(1) The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
(2) A Passage To India - E. M. Forster
(3) Hunger - Knut Hamsun
(4) Poems by Pablo Neruda - No specific book, but here are the titles:
- Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines
- Ode to a Beautiful Nude
- A Song of Despair
- I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You
- Ode To Sadness
- I Like For You To Be Still
- If You Forget Me

(hide spoiler)]

[Veronica]

Question 01:

(view spoiler)[
1. Daughter of Fortune - Isabel Allende
2. The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende
3. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. A Room with a View - E.M. Forster
5. A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway
6. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
7. Dom Casmurro - Machado de Assis
8. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf
9. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
10. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

*happily rereading To the Lighthouse* (view spoiler)[ Hello, Virginia and Juliet! :) (hide spoiler)]
(hide spoiler)]

[Maria]

Question 1:
(view spoiler)[
1. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (I read before GR days)
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

(view spoiler)[In fairness, naka- dalawa pa ako. lol (hide spoiler)]
(hide spoiler)]

[Tin]

Question 1:(view spoiler)[None. Nil. Zilch. Zero. I have one of them on my TBR. Does that earn me half a point? A quarter of a point? Half a quarter of a point? :) (hide spoiler)]

[Mabelle]

Question 1

(view spoiler)[
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

Katherine Mansfield's Sun and Moon

D. H. Lawrence's The Blind Man

William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily
(hide spoiler)]

[Louize]

Question 1
(view spoiler)[
No books, merely poems from these guys for academic use:
TS Eliot: The Hippopotamus, The Portrait of a Lady, What the Thunder Said, Rhapsody on a Windy Night, A Cooking Egg
WB Yeats: A Cradle Song, A Dialogue of Self and Soul, Faery Song
Wallace Stevens: Another Weeping Woman, A Disillusionment of 10 o'clock, A Postcard from the Volcano
(hide spoiler)]

[Bennard]

Question 1:
(view spoiler)[
1. Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths
2. Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
3. F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby, Mayday, Diamond as Big as the Ritz, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
4. Knut Hamsun - Hunger
5. Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and The Sea, A Moveable Feast, For Whom The Bell Tolls
6 . Pablo Neruda - Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair
7. Robert Walser - A Schoolboy's Diary
8. James Joyce - Two Gallants
(hide spoiler)]

I really look forward to reading Woolf, finally.

[Tina]

Question 1:
(view spoiler)[None. :(( Huhu. Then again, I hardly every ventured into these books until now, thanks to TFG.

Buuut I've read about half of The Great Gatsby. And I've read a lot of e.e. cummings poems (for that one Facebook activity with poetry involved) and several Rainer Marie Rilke, but no book. Would that count for something? :D

Poems:
e.e. cummings
let it go-the
It May Not Always Be So; And I Say
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
Humanity I Love You
My Love Is Building A Building

Rainer Maria Rilke
Falling Stars

Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken

Pablo Neruda
I Like For You To Be Still
Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines
Sonnet XVII
If You Forget Me
(hide spoiler)]

[Angus]

Whoops, I've scanned your lists and I got excited. (view spoiler)[Double entendre? (hide spoiler)] But alas, our jobs require us to stop browsing and interact later. But I need to answer a quick question.

For works that are anthologized or reproduced in various electronic means, particularly the photocopying, a.k.a. Xerox, machine, you still earn points for those.

For poems, you earn one point for every four. For short stories, you earn one point for every two. No half points. Points will be rounded down. List the titles. We trust that you are all honest.

Another thing. I forgot to mention plays. They also count since they are works of fiction.

Here's a scenario: I will list every poem in Neruda's collection and every short story in Faulkner's instead of just listing the title of the respective collections. Is that allowed? Technically, yes. If somebody does this, we will be forced to change the pointing system, and would you really want to complicate the moderator's tasks? :)

[Mae]

Question 1

(view spoiler)[
Novels:
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Plays:
Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot
Bertolt Brecht - Galileo

Poems: (Off the top of my head lang, so sorry kung mali-mali ang titles. Haha.)
Robert Frost - "The Road Not Taken"
e e cummings - "i carry your heart with me" "in time of daffodils"
Pablo Neruda - "I Like For You to Be Still" "Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines" "If You Forget Me" "And Now You're Mine"
(hide spoiler)]

[Louize]

Oh, yes, of course.
Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken

Thank you for reminding me of that, Mae.
Too bad, Rudyard Kipling is not part of the list.

[Ranee]

nagulat ako, meron pala akong nabasang modernist!

The Old man and the sea- Ernest Hemingway with review
The Metamorphosis- Franz Kafka (ala pa review, paano kung gawan ko within this month? pwede?) (view spoiler)[ competitive lang? hahaha (hide spoiler)]
Late and PostHumous Poems by Pablo Neruda. This is pre GR, during the kasikatan of Patch Adams. But bad memory, I cannot remember the poems, hiniram ko lang sa housemate ko dati, when she transferred, ala na rin.

Bunch of Poems I read and studied when I took Poetry lessons back in college:
A Cradle Song- W.B. Yeats
Mowing; and A Prayer in Spring- Robert Frost

[Angus]

Miles: Hello and welcome to the group. I don't think I'm the best person to answer your question. I'm also not inclined to answer it for we wish to focus on modernist literature. But don't despair! Google is your friend.

Tina: Whoops. Maybe we better keep in touch with our contact from FB? I'll give you her contact details next time.

Monique: Ooh, I know how you feel about A Passage to India! I still remember the fatigue when I read that.

Miss Ronnie: Wow! You're a certified Virginia Woolf reader. And yes, I temporarily issue those certifications, at least for this month.

Maria: Two is not bad. It's quite promising kaya. It would be three soon, yes?

Tin: Sorry, no points for TBR. And this might be the time to explore this kind of books!

Mabelle: I haven't heard of those stories by Mansfield and Lawrence. I'd like to look up these works that you mentioned for my quick reads. Thanks!

Mommy Louize: Merely poems? You don't say merely when we're talking about the poems of Eliot and Yeats!

Bennard: Wow! Your list gives you an early lead. Kudos!

Mae: Hmm. I haven't heard of Brecht. I'll check him out. Thanks!

Doc: In the spirit of competitiveness, go! Just let us know once it's done.

Here's my answer to the question (and I'm only answering this because I can't resist lists):
(view spoiler)[
Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot (3-stars)
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness (3-stars); The Secret Sharer (2-stars)
T. S. Eliot - Four Quartets (5-stars)
Ralph W. Ellison - Invisible Man (3-stars)
William Faulkner - Absalom, Absalom! (4-stars); A Rose for Emily (read from an anthology); The Sound and the Fury (4-stars)
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (3-stars); The Great Gatsby (3-stars)
E. M. Forster - A Passage to India (2-stars)
Knut Hamsun - Hunger (5-stars); Mysteries (5-stars)
Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms (3-stars); Hills Like White Elephants (read from an anthology); The Old Man and the Sea (3-stars)
James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1-star)
Franz Kafka - The Trial (1-star)
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis - Dom Casmurro (4-stars)
Pablo Neruda - Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (5-stars)
Luigi Pirandello - Six Characters in Search of an Author (3-stars)
Marcel Proust - Swann's Way (currently-reading shelf)
Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse (originally 4-stars; rereading this is changing my feelings)

These are 20-something modernist works, and my ratings are so varied. It just shows that hitting one doesn't mean all modernism is for you, while missing one doesn't mean you have to ditch this whole modernism thing.
(hide spoiler)]

By the way, if you wish to rant and rave about any of the works that you mentioned, feel free to do so. And keep those lists coming. You know that we love them!

[Ranee]

Angus, meron pala pero maiksi lang. Mga 3 sentences lang. Hahabaan ko lang ng konti, wait lang

[Bennard]

Surprisingly, I liked/loved all the modernist works that I have read.

[Maria Ella]

(view spoiler)[I think I need to read some of those names I am not familiar with! But there are some that I read, sadly, konti lang.
Novel:
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

Short Story:
F. Scott Fitzgerald - Babylon Revisited, The Cut-Glass Bowl, The Lost Decade

Poems:
Pablo Neruda - Tonight I can Write the Saddest Lines
Robert Frost - The Road Not Taken
T.S. Eliot - The Wasteland (hide spoiler)]

[Miles]

Absurdism can loosely be called late-modernist. I noticed somebody mentioned Kafka who was an absurdist, so I think works by Camus or even Kierkegaard count. :3

[Arjaye]

question1:

Ooohhhh.. Tough! Some titles are really familiar... Maybe read for academic purposes.. Will that count? kahit hndi ko na masiado alala..haha maybe or maybe not read. Half points pede? All those are pre- gr pa...way way back!

[Mabelle]

Angus: I studied them in college (Under Contemporary English Lit). You can find them in A Survey of English Literature by Fernando, Habana and Cinco.

Addition to my answer...

Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, Stopping by the Woods on A Snowy Evening and Mending Wall

[Tina]

Aha. So I have read some stuff, mostly poems. Updated my list on the previous post.

Angus - I have Victoria's number! I'll contact them na lang and ask when they'll restock. Baka naman ibang members na nakabili dito and they are secretly reading with us. XD

[Monique]

Updated mine as well. Just listed the favorite poems from Pablo Neruda. :)

[Tricia]

Oh creys.

I haven't read any of those dudes in the list. (view spoiler)[ Well, except for the Fitzgerald's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and 1/4 of The Great Gatsby.

For poems
Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken
Pablo Neruda's Carnal Apple, Woman Filled, Burning Moon (lol, this was a poem/joke I dedicated to a friend in college), Tonight I can Write the Saddest Lines, Sonnet XVII (hide spoiler)]

[Alexa]

This is embarrassing. I only have most of them in my to-read list :)) I'm populating my list with short stories and poems instead so The Great Gatsby won't be so lonely by itself

(view spoiler)[
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
William Carlos Williams - Nantucket, This is Just to Say, The Red Wheelbarrow
W.H. Auden - As I Walked Out One Evening
W.B. Yeats - Down by the Salley Gardens, He Wishes for the Colths of Heaven, When You Are Old
William Faulker - A Rose for Emily
e.e. cummings - May I Feel Said He (I can hear Tom Hiddleston's voice in my head and I melting all over again)
(hide spoiler)]

[Ycel]

Mostly Hemingway because of school, I think.
(view spoiler)[
Novels
Ernest Hemingway - A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

Plays
Eugene O'Neill - Long Day's Journey Into Night

Poems
Dylan Thomas - Do not go gentle into that good night
e e cummings - somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
e e cummings - i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
Rainer Maria Rilke - Falling Stars
Robert Frost - The Road Not Taken

Short Stories
Ernest Hemingway - A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
Ernest Hemingway - Hills Like White Elephants
Ernest Hemingway - The Killers
Ernest Hemingway - Mr and Mrs Elliot
Ernest Hemingway - Cat in the Rain
(hide spoiler)]

[Maria]

Chami: Yes! I am promising, chos. Hopefully, To The Lighthouse will be my 3rd. *winks*

[Tina]

Alexa: Whenever I read any poem by e.e. cummings, I hear Tom Hiddleston's voice in my head. ♥

[DC]

Question 1: (view spoiler)[
Hemingway, The Old Man and The Sea
Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned + Benjamin Button
D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow + Women In Love
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

I've read of Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, and e.e.cummings, but that was some time ago. I also have a penchant for passing over poem titles.

I found James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence difficult to read. I was amused with Hemingway. I adore Fitzgerald. I am ickified by Kafka's Metamorphosis :)
(hide spoiler)]

[Angus]

Hello, all updated lists have been double-checked.

Ella: Sadly? It's better than nothing, really.

NYKen: Ulysses for school? Well, Joyce meant it for the academicians anyway.

Miles: So ... are you going to answer the question or discuss absurdism? By the way, you may open new threads for other topics of interest.

Arjaye: Many have read modernist literature for academic purposes, so go ahead and list them.

Tricia: Can you describe your friend's reaction? ;)

Blue: It's not embarrassing. There's the attempt, at the least.

Ycel: Looks like we have a Hemingway scholar in you!

DC: I think I will drink a cup of Zonrox if someone says Joyce is a walk in the park.

[Gwaxa]

Question 1: (view spoiler)[BOOM! Nagcheck pa ko wala naman talaga. Lels. This would be my first. Hopefully, I'll like it. (hide spoiler)]

[Louize]

I am bad with titles and seeing your post made me remember a lot of things, especially Tom Hiddleston's ee cummings and yeats. I do have him on itunes. ♥

[Bennard]

Updated my list too and added a Joyce collection that I forgot I read.:)

[Angus]

Hello, I've tallied your points and they are on the other thread.

Gwaxa: With some effort, I think it's possible.

[Arjaye]

Angus: sabi mo nga from school hehe: eto ang aking updated list:

1. the metamorphosis- franz kafka
2. the beautiful and the damned - fitzgerald
3. old man and the sea - ernest hemingway
4. i carry ur heart with me - ee cummings

eto na to..pigang piga na! haha kung me iba pa i dont want to consider kasi forgotten na sa sobrang tagal... :)

[Angus]

Background of Virginia Woolf and To the Lighthouse

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(view spoiler)[
-Virginia Woolf was born on January 25, 1882, a descendant of one of Victorian England's most prestigious literary families.

-Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and was married to the daughter of the writer William Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair.

-She wrote for the prestigious Times Literary Supplement.

-She was part of the literary community known as the "Bloomsbury Group."

-She published her most famous novels by the mid-1920s, including The Voyage Out, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and To the Lighthouse.

-Her parents died when she was young, and she was prone to intense, terrible headaches and emotional breakdowns.

-After her father’s death, she attempted suicide by throwing herself out a window.

-She married Leonard Woolf in 1912 and loved him deeply, but she was not entirely satisfied romantically or sexually.

-She sustained an intimate relationship with the novelist Vita Sackville-West.

-She became terrified by the idea that another nervous breakdown was close at hand, one from which she would not recover.

-On March 28, 1941, she wrote her husband a note stating that she did not wish to spoil his life by going mad. She then drowned herself in the River Ouse.

-Woolf’s writing bears the mark of her literary pedigree as well as her struggle to find meaning in her own unsteady existence.

-Her work examines the structures of human life, from the nature of relationships to the experience of time.

-She celebrates and analyzes the Bloomsbury values of aestheticism, feminism, and independence.

-Her stream-of-consciousness style was influenced by, and responded to, the work of the French thinker Henri Bergson and the novelists Marcel Proust and James Joyce.
(hide spoiler)]

To the Lighthouse
An excerpt from Daniel S. Burt's study published in The Novel 100 (view spoiler)[I'd really appreciate it if you read this section because I copied this not from the Internet but from a paper book. :D (hide spoiler)]

"Never have I written so easily, imagined so profusely."
-Virginia Woolf, Diary, February 8, 1926, during the composition of To the Lighthouse
(view spoiler)[
The fifth of Virginia Woolf's eight novels, To the Lighthouse, is unquestionably her greatest, one of the seminal works of modernist fiction and the ultimate justification for her experimental method in her ability to give form to the flux of human experience and consciousness. To the Lighthouse derives its power from the novelists's exploration of her own past and her grappling with the artist's mission. Having proclaimed that "On or about December 1910, human character changed," Woolf set out to reflect that change in a radically redefined novel. In her important essay written in 1924, "Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown," Woolf laid down the challenge for the modern novelist: how to best capture ordinary life personified by the unremarkable, obscure Mrs. Brown. Rejecting the surface materialism and moralism of the Edwardian novelists as insufficient to the task, Woolf predicts that eventually Mrs. Brown will be caught, and that "The capture of Mrs Brown is the title of the next chapter in the history of literature." Making her own contribution to this effort, Woolf announced, in her essay "Modern Fiction," an aesthetic principle that would govern her fictional approach:

Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad of impressions--trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel ... Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; but a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberrations of complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible?

For Woolf's purposes, fictional realism, conventional characterization, and plot were inadequate, missing the drama of consciousness and existence itself. The artistic problem she faced in To the Lighthouse was how to give shape and form to the "luminous halo."

The incident at the core of To the Lighthouse occurred in 1892 at her family's vacation home at St. Ives in Cornwall, recorded by the 10-year old Virginia Stephen in her chronicle of her family's activities, the Hyde Park Gate News:

On Saturday morning Master Hilary Hunt and Master Basil Smith came up to Talland House and asked Master Thoby and Miss Virginia Stephen to accompany them to the light-house as Freeman the boatman said that there was a perfect tide and wind for going there. Master Adrian Stephen was much disappointed at not being allowed to go.

The frustrated trip to the lighthouse would recur to Woolf's imagination 34 years later, in 1925, as she finished Mrs. Dalloway and began to conceive her next novel, a book that would reach back to the novelist's past and wold be inspired by her attempt to deal with her feelings about her dead parents, the domineering, brilliant Leslie Stephen and her mother, Julia. In a 1925 diary entry, Woolf summarized her intention for her proposed novel: "This is going to be fairly short: to have father's character done completely in it; & mother's; St. Ives; & childhood; & all the usual things I try to put in--life, death, etc. But the centre is father's character, sitting in a boat, reciting We perished, each alone, while he crushes a dying mackerel."

Woolf would later recall in her essay "Sketch of the Past" that the memory of her mother dominated her plan: "It is perfectly true that she obsessed me, in spite of the fact that she died when I was thirteen, until I was forty-four. Then one day walking around Tavistock Square I made up, as I sometimes made up my books, To the Lighthouse; in a great, apparently involuntary rush ... I wrote the book very quickly; and when it was written, I ceased to be obsessed by my mother. I no longer heard her voice; I do not see her. I suppose that I did for myself what psycho-analysts do for their patients. I expressed some very long felt and deeply felt emotions. And in expressing it I explained it and then laid it to rest." Both Leslie and Julia Stephen are refracted in the novel as Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, and Woolf managed her greatest fictional achievement in her attempt to capture both clearly, her version of Mr. and Mrs. Brown, while making sense of her own past and its impact on her career as an artist.
(hide spoiler)]

Question 02:
(view spoiler)[
What other facts and trivia not mentioned here can you share about Virginia Woolf and To the Lighthouse? (1 point per trivia)
(hide spoiler)]

Question 03:
(view spoiler)[
Do you have any hopes and fears in reading To the Lighthouse? (2 points)
(hide spoiler)]

[Miles]

Q. 2
V. Woolf also wrote literary criticism. Her most widely read are the two series of The Common Reader.

Her novel Flush is the biography of E.B. Browning told from the viewpoint her dog.

Q. 3
Stream-of-consciousness is scary(Ulysses,samot pang Finnegans Wake! wa gyud nko na human). I hope to enjoy the novel and this game.

Sorry. I don't know how to do the "hide spoiler" effect thingy.

[Meliza]

Question 01
(view spoiler)[I haven't read any novel, short story or play from those authors. I have a few in my to-read shelf though. Hehe. But I remember reading Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken and Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet in high school. (hide spoiler)]

Question 02
(view spoiler)[Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando was sort of a love letter to Vita Sackville-West, and was illustrated with photographs of Sackville-West dressed as Orlando.

In a personal essay in the 1930s, Virginia Woolf posed the question, "Am I snob?" She concluded: "Yes."

To the Lighthouse is definitely the bestselling, surpassing sales of all her other books. (hide spoiler)]

Question 03
(view spoiler)[I'm hoping that this book won't be too difficult for me to read so that I could finish it this month and have my first modernist novel in my read shelf. Heh! (hide spoiler)]

[Louize]

Question 2:
(view spoiler)[
- Contrary to what Virginia Woolf encouraged people to believe, that her father do not agree to women's formal education, Virginia and her sister was actually sent to King's College London's Women's Department.

- She was a lecturer in Newnham College, Girton College, and two women's colleges at Cambridge University simultaneously in 1928.
(hide spoiler)]

Question 3:
(view spoiler)[
I guess, I am more afraid with the digression she will put us through, more than her language. So, I am hoping that the innermost reader in me will exercise 4-ply of patience.
(hide spoiler)]

[Mae]

Question 2
(view spoiler)[Her birth name is Adeline Virginia Stephen.

Her childhood nickname was "The Goat".

When Virginia and Leonard Woolf, who together ran the Hogarth Press, received the manuscript of the first chapters of James Joyce’s Ulysses, they turned it down for publication because it was impossible to print the entire book on their handpress.

In 1910, Virginia Woolf and five male friends dressed up in blackface and exotic robes and presented themselves to the British Royal Navy as the Prince of Abyssinia (then a British colony, now Ethiopia) and his entourage. They requested—and received—a personal tour of the warship H.M.S. Dreadnought. For forty minutes they toured the ship with its Commander, babbling amongst each other in a made-up language. The gleeful pranksters alerted the press as soon as they were off the ship. The navy was horrified to learn that it had been duped. (hide spoiler)]

Question 3
(view spoiler)[I hope I can finish it in time for the discussion. I really, really do. Crazy May schedule is crazy so I'll be relying mostly on the audiobook. I'm really not good with audiobooks. :( (hide spoiler)]

[Bennard]

Question 2:
(view spoiler)[
- To The Lighthouse is an autobiographical novel and parts of the novel were taken from the author's experience in St. Ives, Cornwall when she was a child.

- There is a suggestion among modern scholars that part of Woolf's depression were rooted in the sexual abuse that she has suffered from her half-brothers.

- Virginia Woolf's fiction is used to get insight into the effects of shell shock, the trauma that soldiers suffer from battle.

- Virginia Woolf and her husband, Leonard, were listed in the The Black Book, a list of prominent British citizens to be arrested if Germany successfully invades Britain.
(hide spoiler)]

Question 03:
(view spoiler)[
I'm quite afraid that I won't have the patience to read To The Lighthouse. Although I am quite excited to read it, I just fear that my impatience will get the better of me.
(hide spoiler)]

[Maria]

Question 2:
(view spoiler)[
- Woolf first tried to kill herself at the age of 22 by jumping out of a window. The window she jumped from, however, was not high enough to cause serious harm.

- Woolf was highly critical of her friends’ eating habits at the dinner table, often reproving them for eating with either too little grace or too much enthusiasm.

- Woolf was an ardent fan of attending concerts and the opera.

- At an early age, Woolf would torment her older sister, Vanessa, by scratching her nails against the wall.

- One of the things Woolf disliked most in life was being peered at or having someone take her photograph.

- Woolf struggled with anorexia, believing that her body was monstrous, and that her mouth and stomach were sordid in their demand for food.

- When Woolf’s childhood music teacher, Miss Mills, asked her what the meaning of Christmas was, she responded by saying to celebrate the Crucifixion before bursting into laughter and being removed from the room.
(hide spoiler)]

Question 3:
(view spoiler)[
I'm not afraid. LOL. The key for me is the reading plan. (hide spoiler)]

[Alexa]

Question 2
(view spoiler)[
1. She has this quote I really like about women being exalted in the arts but being treated so poorly in reality.

Women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time. Indeed if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some would say greater.
But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out, she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room. A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history.
She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words and profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read; scarcely spell; and was the property of her husband.

2. The sudden death of her mother in 1895, when Virginia was 13, and that of her half-sister Stella two years later, led to the first of Virginia's several nervous breakdowns.
3. Early in her literary career, Woolf once remarked that the names of fictional characters were of little importance.
4. For a time, Woolf considered marrying the British writer and fellow Bloomsbury Group-member Lytton Strachey, partially because he was a homosexual and she considered him more of a brother than a sexual partner.
5. At the age of 27, Woolf admitted to being afraid of sex.
6. On one occasion, Woolf went shopping for a book she was meant to review after losing her original copy. When told at a bookstore that they weren’t stocked with this particular book, she grew angry and caused a scene. Woolf found the supposedly lost copy of the book in her bag when she returned home.
7. Woolf felt that James Joyce wrote for a clique. She referred to other readers and writers of Joyce’s ilk as “these people” belonging to the “Underworld,” a group of people more interested in reputations than talents.
8. Woolf struggled with anorexia, believing that her body was monstrous, and that her mouth and stomach were sordid in their demand for food. (view spoiler)[I wonder if this was caused by societal pressure, because I didn't think women were as conscious of their figures before as they are now! (hide spoiler)]
9. Woolf usually became depressed upon finishing writing a book.
10. To the Lighthouse (1927) is set on two days ten years apart.
11. When her brother in law made fun of her hat, Woolf was mis­er­able for a full 24 hours.
12. Even though Woolf's rep­u­ta­tion as an intel­lec­tual grew, she sup­ported fem­i­nist causes by spend­ing hours writ­ing addresses on envelopes.
13. She wrote some little known science fiction under the name of E V Odle
14. After the wide critical acclaim of Mrs Dalloway Woolf was able to focus on her more serious works and dropped the use of her pen-name, but her E V Odle books still enjoyed mainstream popularity way into the 1930s. However, due to the low brow style of the works they were largely forgotten when Woolf’s popularity made a comeback in the 60’s and 70’s; today they remain largely out of print and prove difficult to get hold of.
15. I find her really pretty (okay I saw her photo while looking for facts and I just had to say it)

Sources: x, x (view spoiler)[even though it's Wiki, I made sure the facts I had grabbed citations! (hide spoiler)], x, x, x, myself (for the last one HAHA)
(hide spoiler)]

Question 3
(view spoiler)[
I spend a lot of time on Reddit, and I've seen it time and again discussed to be one of Woolf's more difficult works ("a difficult work by an already difficult author" if I remember correctly, the way she was described by a Redditor (not me)), so I'm pretty excited to see how this discussion would go. I hope I get to catch up in the discussion.
(hide spoiler)]

[Monique]

Question 2:

(view spoiler)[
1. As a child, it took Woolf longer than usual to begin speaking in coherent sentences.

2. For a time, Woolf wrote while standing at a desk 3’6″ tall because she wanted to be like a painter who could instantly step away from her canvas to get a better view.

3. While still in the nursery, she was nicknamed “The Goat.”

4. Woolf first tried to kill herself at the age of 22 by jumping out of a window. The window she jumped from, however, was not high enough to cause serious harm.

5. While writing her first novel, The Voyage Out, Woolf asked friends and relatives for advice whenever she got stuck or had doubts. After that, no one was allowed to see her manuscripts until they were finished.

6. Woolf’s dog, Hans, was known for interrupting parties by getting sick and relieving itself on the hearthrug.

7. As a child, Woolf was a formidable bowler.

8. Woolf once discovered a diary she had written during one particular sane and lucid period in her life, and laughed upon rereading it.

9. Woolf was highly critical of her friends’ eating habits at the dinner table, often reproving them for eating with either too little grace or too much enthusiasm.

10. Woolf once said that her death would be the “one experience I shall never describe.”

11. Some of Woolf’s first articles were published in The Guardian.

12. For a summer, she went mad believing that the birds were chirping in Greek and King Edward VII was uttering curses from behind nearby shrubbery.

13. When Woolf taught at Morley College, she made her students write essays about themselves.

14. Woolf delighted in the physical act of writing words on paper. From the age of 11, she was continually experimenting with different kinds of pens in hope of finding one that would provide the perfect sensation.

15. Woolf was an ardent fan of attending concerts and the opera.

16. At an early age, Woolf would torment her older sister, Vanessa, by scratching her nails against the wall.

17. As a teenager, Woolf became so terrified of people that she blushed when someone spoke to her and was incapable of looking strangers in the eye.

18. Early in her literary career, Woolf once remarked that the names of fictional characters were of little importance.

19. When separated from her sister, Vanessa, Woolf wrote letters to her daily.

20. For a time, Woolf considered marrying the British writer and fellow Bloomsbury Group-member Lytton Strachey, partially because he was a homosexual and she considered him more of a brother than a sexual partner.

21. One of the things Woolf disliked most in life was being peered at or having someone take her photograph.

22. In 1909, Woolf and others in the Bloomsbury Group invented fictional characters and attempted to write a novel by sending letters back and forth in the mail.

23. At the age of 27, Woolf admitted to being afraid of sex.

24. Woolf read and wrote compulsively to compensate for the fact that she lacked what she called “a real education,” meaning a university degree.

25. Woolf got the idea to write a sequel to A Room of One’s Own while lying in the bath.

26. Woolf once said she felt miserable for a full 24-hours after her brother-in-law, Clive Bell, made fun of her hat.

27. After getting married, Woolf thought she should learn some domestic skills, so she enrolled in a school of cookery. Shortly after, she accidentally baked her wedding ring in a suet pudding.

28. During the height of World War II, when it looked as if the Nazis would win, Woolf and her husband, Leonard, considered committing suicide via poisoning themselves with car exhaust. The couple kept a sufficient amount of petrol in their garage just in case.

29. Woolf was a difficult shopper, often arguing with shopkeepers over what products they had for sale and what products she imagined they should have for sale.

30. When Woolf was 13-years-old and her mother, Julia, had just died, she said it was “the greatest disaster that could happen.”

31. On one occasion, Woolf went shopping for a book she was meant to review after losing her original copy. When told at a bookstore that they weren’t stocked with this particular book, she grew angry and caused a scene. Woolf found the supposedly lost copy of the book in her bag when she returned home.

32. One summer, Woolf bought a Singer, a luxurious automobile, and took driving lessons. After driving it through a hedge, however, Woolf preferred to sit in the passenger’s seat.

33. Woolf was never fashion savvy. She perpetually worried about being properly dressed for the occasion.

34. Woolf felt that James Joyce wrote for a clique. She referred to other readers and writers of Joyce’s ilk as “these people” belonging to the “Underworld,” a group of people more interested in reputations than talents.

35. Woolf was not especially interested in contemporary painting.

36. Woolf often walked up to eight miles in the afternoon, sometimes jumping over ditches, climbing up hills, or maneuvering through barbed-wire fences if necessary.

37. Before Woolf was even 7 years old, her mother, Julia, was teaching her Latin, French, and History.

38. Woolf struggled with anorexia, believing that her body was monstrous, and that her mouth and stomach were sordid in their demand for food.

39. Woolf was a pacifist who would not advocate the use of violence for any reason.

40. The following is an excerpt from a letter Woolf wrote to her sister, Vanessa, in June 1911: “I could not write, & all the devils came out — hairy black ones. To be 29 & unmarried — to be a failure — Childless — insane too, no writer.”

41. Woolf’s husband, Leonard, owned a pet monkey named, Mitz.

42. Woolf and five of her male friends once received a 40-minute tour of the British battleship H.M.S. Dreadnought with the ship’s commander after painting their faces black, dressing in robes, and presenting themselves as the Prince of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) and his entourage.

43. When Woolf’s childhood music teacher, Miss Mills, asked her what the meaning of Christmas was, she responded by saying to celebrate the Crucifixion before bursting into laughter and being removed from the room.

44. Woolf once said, “I don’t like old ladies who guzzle.”

45. To lower her increasing anxieties as a teenager, Woolf’s family doctor, Dr. Seton, suggested she stop all lessons and play outside for four hours per day.

46. At one point, Woolf attempted to budget the daily household expenditures, but soon gave up, leaving it to her husband, Leonard.

47. Woolf usually became depressed upon finishing writing a book.

48. Close to the time of Woolf’s death, a bomb was dropped on the bank of the River Ouse, causing a miniature lake to form that reached the edge of her garden and attracted multitudes of waterfowl.

49. Woolf was a member of the Fabian Society, a political movement in favor of democratic socialism.

50. Woolf once had a review on a book about the French Reformation rejected by The Times Literary Supplement for being devoid of serious criticism from a historical point of view.

51. Woolf and her husband, Leonard, originally wanted to spend their honeymoon in Iceland, but because it was too late in the season, visited France and Spain, instead.

52. Despite Woolf’s growing reputation as an author and intellectual, she began supporting the feminist cause by spending hours upon hours writing addresses on envelopes.

53. Sometimes Woolf would write while sitting on an old armchair with a board of three-ply on her lap.

54. Woolf listened to Beethoven’s late quartets while writing The Waves.

55. Whenever Woolf’s husband, Leonard, would come in contact with a dog, he would shout at it until the animal felt dominated — after which Leonard would return to a calm state and befriend it.

56. When Woolf asked T.S. Eliot at a particular dinner party to define his belief in God, Eliot did not answer.

57. When Woolf’s comedy, Freshwater, was performed in 1935 at the studio of her sister, Vanessa, it’s said that Vanessa’s husband, Clive Bell, and his brother Cory laughed so hard that no one else in attendance could hear the dialogue.

58. In her early twenties, Woolf’s journal entries consisted of fastidious essays written as though for publication describing a day in the country or a night listening to music.

59. As a child, Woolf would tell nightly bedtime stories to the other children about the family next door, the Dilkes.

(view spoiler)[I'm so sorry, there were no other rules or restrictions, so... :D (hide spoiler)]
(hide spoiler)]

Question 3:

(view spoiler)[I am hoping that my first Woolf novel will be both rewarding and worthwhile. I've wanted to read one of her works for the longest time, so I'm excited, as well! My only fear is that I will be an unworthy reader. (Nux.) (hide spoiler)]

[Alexa]

Atty Monique: (view spoiler)[we have the same source! haha (hide spoiler)]

[Monique]

Blue wrote: "Atty Monique: [spoilers removed]"

Oo nga! Haha. (view spoiler)[Although I double-checked pa kung nasabi na sa taas yung ibang trivia, sayang naman, haha! (hide spoiler)]