Then there's Lily Briscoe, who wanted to be an artist; full of desire, but pretty hopeless at painting. Their chance encounter turns into an unforgettable weekend, and against the backdrop of the lighthouse-obsessed town, the two of them forge a deep connection, opening their hearts, baring their souls, and revealing secrets long kept hidden. Ramsay, Paul, and Minta, whom she wants to marry, and the children who venerate: dinner, beef stew, bedtime, end of the day, storm. She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. The location of the main story in To the Lighthouse, the house on the Hebridean island, was formed by Woolf in imitation of Talland House.

But as they grow closer, and as the lighthouse glows ever brighter, a startling discovery about Ryan leaves Amy questioning everything she thought she knew. I see the lighthouse, hazy and sprayed white by the sea imprisoning it on all sides, standing tall in all its majestic grandeur merging with the horizon, out of my reach and I wonder how it looms so large yet recedes into the distance as a mute, inanimate witness to the play acts of life. This is one of those rare books that gives you totally different reading experiences when you read it in different phases of your life.And even if you are completed uninterested in the finer points of Woolf’s overall conceit, you can still appreciate the beauty of the titular image—the lighthouse. I think this is the proof that I was on the right path; and that what fruit hangs in my soul is to be reached there.

The father insists frequently, to the child's great annoyance that bad weather tomorrow for their planned trip, will prevent this.

When darkness fell, the stroke of the Lighthouse, which had laid itself with such authority upon the carpet in the darkness, tracing its pattern, came now in the softer light of spring mixed with moonlight gliding gently as if it laid its caress and lingered stealthily and looked and came lovingly again. Her father, Kevin, who works with the police, equally struck by this tragic event, has found himself at a loss, unable to bridge the chasm this event created between him and his daughter. Lily Briscoe's meditations on painting are a way for Woolf to explore her own creative process (and also that of her painter sister), since Woolf thought of writing in the same way that Lily thought of painting.