To the Lighthouse - Portrait of a Real Woman Until To the Lighthouse, I had never read anything that so perfectly described women: wives, mothers, daughters and artists. I felt like shouting "Eureka!" on every page. These were my thoughts, beautifully written. Virginia Woolf writes about the essential loneliness and indifference of human beings. In the first passage I examine, Mrs. Ramsay is the heart of the group gathered around the dining table. It is thanks to her that they reunited. She is the wife, the mother. “And all the effort to blend and flow and create was up to her.” But she feels disconnected, "outside that vortex" that held others back, alone. She sees her husband almost as an inanimate object. “He couldn't understand how she ever felt any emotion or affection for him.” The room became dingy. Beauty has dissolved. The meeting he is responsible for is simply a group of strangers sitting at the same table. "Nothing seemed to have merged. They were all sitting separately." Mrs. Ramsay realizes that she must bring these people together. "Once again she felt, as a fact without hostility, the sterility of men, because if she didn't do it no one would." So he ends up in the vortex to do his duty, albeit reluctantly. "...she began this whole affair, as a sailor who is not without tiredness sees the wind inflate his sail and yet does not want to set off again and thinks that, if the ship had sunk, he would have turned around and found rest on the shore bottom of the sea." This passage is so true! In a traditional family (my family) there is a man (husband and father), a woman (wife and mother) and children. The woman is claimed by everyone. She is held responsible, both in the eyes of her family and in her own eyes, for everyone's happiness and well-being. She is the glue, the anchor, the spark, the damper. She is alone, but never alone. The idea of ​​drifting on the sea floor may seem inviting: to be free and alone! This short passage adequately illustrates a real woman's very complicated feelings regarding family and society's demands on her. I think it's no less valid now than it was in the 1920s, when the book was written.