In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf bases her exploration of consciousness on the premise that men and women perceive the world in very different ways. However, Woolf believes that creativity can (and should) transcend gender boundaries. Life and work are incredibly fragile, but art, in her opinion, is the means to give meaning to one's life in a world without order or meaning. “Nothing stays, everything changes,” Lily Briscoe reflects while mourning Mrs. Ramsay. "But not the words, not the colors." (264) The novel's climax depends on the primary artistic figures, Lily and Augustus Carmichael, who bring together male and female creativity, thus uniting intellect and emotion. As Vivian Gornick would later argue in The End of the Romance Novel, Woolf replaced romantic love with a more powerful force: creative drive. Although Woolf has great affection for the novel's main female characters, Lily Briscoe and Mrs. Ramsay, they symbolize the changing role of women in light of this shift away from romantic love. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The adult male characters in To the Lighthouse are rigorously analytical men, philosophers, and scientists (with the exception of Mr. Carmichael, the poet). Mr. Ramsay, who traces knowledge like the letters of the alphabet, is so haunted by his own insecurities and the transitory nature of his job that he has become unbearable. (He wanted something, he wanted the thing that she always found so difficult to give him; he wanted her to tell him that she loved him. And that, no, he couldn't do that... A heartless woman, he called her; she had never told him that he loved him. But he wasn't like that, he just could never say what he felt [123-124]) Charles Tansley (a student of Mr. Ramsay) and William Bankes (a botanist). they are both adamant in their opinions and critical of Lily's painting (And it would never be seen; it would never even be hung, and there was Mr. Tansley whispering in her ear, "Women can't paint, women can't write... [48]). Male characters attempt to create order in life in the most reductive ways possible: Tansley's cynical statements, Mr. Ramsay's disjointed poetics, or impersonal images (often in reference to abstract concepts like Mr. Woolf's work), the characters, however, have a more intuitive view of life. Mrs. Ramsay is honored, above all, as the ultimate mother figure: beautiful, selfless and caring bringing people together: seeing her children and friends get married (to create more mothers and children!) or comforting her guests with a perfect dinner Lily Briscoe, on the other hand, is a "free spirit": an artist who doesn't want to get married , whose task in life is to transform his private vision into art. For Lily, as for Virginia Woolf, art is a means of creating order in an unreliable world. It would be easy to immediately label Mrs. Ramsay as simply an old-fashioned woman and Lily Briscoe as a new woman, but they are both extremely complex characters. . Mrs. Ramsay's maternal aspect does not necessarily make her a submissive woman; indeed, her assurance that her husband needs her has a sweetly superior tone to the belief that men are useless without women (Indeed, she had all the rest). sex under his protection [6]). And while this belief echoes Mr. Ramsey's philosophy, in To the Lighthouse it is suggested that the men's cold and often brutal behavior is based on their insecurities and constant need for reassurance. However, it is obvious that Woolf (pur.