Fear and Fragmentation in the Post-WWI Era as Shown in To The Lighthouse Lilly Milman College

In her novel To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf uses a stream-of-consciousness style in order to construct a unique account of the fragmented and isolated condition of the British citizen in the years leading up to, during, and following World War I. Written nine years after the conclusion of “the war to end all wars,” To The Lighthouse is informed by Woolf’s own anxieties about the state of her nation, which had been suffering from intense instability since the early twentieth century. She writes in a modernist style, which experienced a surge in popularity in the years following World War I. Three parts comprise the novel and each represents a different era in the timeline of the war: part one focuses on the years leading up to the war (characterized by anxiety about England’s loss of industrial power,) part two describes the tumultuous years during the war (as it describes the anxiety which arises from mass death and destruction,) and part three is a glimpse into the years following (asking the question: how does one move on?) The text begins in the early 1900s, a time where Great Britain was losing both industrial and economic power. In A People’s History of England, A.L. Morton comments on “the slow progress of the British...