Abstract

This thesis is an exploration of the nature of Virginia Woolf in relation to her work To the Lighthouse. By analyzing the main character Mrs. Ramsay, using Freud’s Life-Death Instinct Theory and Heidegger’s Being-towards-Death Theory and considering the background of the First World War, it attempts to give an interpretation of her contradictory psychology of death, and to show an objective and factual outlook on her life through her biography and writing. With this eclectic approach, it is hoped that Woolf will come to be viewed as more than just a feminist writer she is primarily remembered as today, but a pioneer in discussing and exceeding the theme of death with the method of literature, fighting for the way of freedom and independence for female and revealing the complexity behind the genius that is too often recognized only from a limited perspective or particular standpoint.

KEYWORDS:To the Lighthouse; death consciousness; contradictory psychology

摘  要

本文通过对《到灯塔去》三部分的解读，以拉姆齐夫人为主线，以弗洛伊德的死亡本能理论和海德格尔的“向死而生”理论为切入点，综合现有的中外文献观点，以及伍尔夫生平、家庭关系和第一次世界大战前后社会背景的分析，阐释伍尔夫在《到灯塔去》中所表现出来的矛盾死亡心理，力图重新评价和认定伍尔夫死亡意识的内涵，展现其作品的价值并非仅仅局限于死亡意识，而是超越了死亡的永生主题，表现其对人生存在目标的攀升，以及她以文学形式来探讨死亡的努力，寻求女性自由独立的途径乃至人类的生存之道，突破以往伍尔夫在国内外研究界的意识流代表作家的单一形象。

关键词:《到灯塔去》；死亡意识；矛盾心理

1.    Introduction
Virginia Woolf is an important modernist in the early 20th century. Her anti-traditional ideas and experimental style have a strong impact on the writers of her time and generation. In her masterpiece To the Lighthouse, we can see a co-existence of the traditional manners and values, which reveals Woolf’s contradictory psychology of death.
As a representative novelist of streams of consciousness, Virginia Woolf has a strong sense of bringing her works into well established structures. As a novel of this genre, To the Lighthouse has a unique style for its writing technique, in which Shifting Third Person Limited Point of View and Free Indirect Speech are creatively adopted to present the inner world of the characters and exhibit the novelistic theme.