ader is introduced to Lily, it is discovered that Lily is embarrassed for not having read a certain novel, “Lily was ashamed to admit that she had not read Carlyle since she was not at school.”(Ref, TTL p 52) This parallels the feelings of inadequacy that Virginia felt for not being as intelligent as her father was. In this novel Lily is also used to demonstrate Virginia’s childhood fear of not being respected by her father. Virginia was always eager to please him, for this way he could not look down on her. Similarly, Lily is nervous around her father, always questioning her own actions, and hoping not to disappoint him, in the novel Lily even goes as far as to express her fears to her mother and siblings, “Then the change must be so upsetting, Lily said. He comes home from his books and finds us all playing games and talking nonsense.” (Ref, TTL p51) However Lily was not only a tool for Woolf to express her doubts and fears, Lily was also a way for her to express the hardships that she had to endure as a feminist in a man’s world. Virginia Woolf was a pioneer for women authors and feminists, but there was never any glory for her, there was only hardship. Woolf had always had feelings of low self worth, and as when she grew to be a woman author the constant reminder from male authors that women could never meet the standards that male authors had set had played a significant role in Virginia’s new feelings of low self worth. In the novel To the Lighthouse Lily is a young female artist struggling through a time where women simply could not compete with men’s talents without constantly being put down. Even in the world of art there was little place for women artists. Lily is reminded by the character Mr. Townsley that women cannot do anything that they please, that women are not equal to men, and that her painting will never be respected, simply because she is a woman, “And...
