作者：刘璐
　　【Abstract】Virginia Woolf is an important literary figure who wrote ahead of her time. Living in an era when women’s contribution was suppressed and women’s voice was drowned， Woolf paid a lot of attention to the life and psychological world of women and produced many insightful works， like To the Lighthouse， in which she explicitly laid out the presentation of the awaking of her feminist ideology.
　　【Key words】Virginia Woolf； To the Lighthouse； feminism
　　With works like To the Lighthouse， Mrs. Dalloway and Orlando，， Virginia Woolf was not only regarded as one of the most influential modernist literary figures of the twentieth century， but also regarded as one of the forerunners of contemporary Anglo-American feminism. Published in 1927， To the Lighthouse is often thought of as one of Woolf’s most brilliant works. In this novel， Woolf remarkably transforms the “normal， ” trivial incidents in the life of the Ramsay family into a mythic reflection on gender， time， death and other aspects. Although the novel was written almost a hundred years ago， the concerns that Woolf raised and explored in her work have not decreased in importance that many writers now are still working on them.
　　Ⅰ. Comparison of Male Characters to Female Characters
　　In To the Lighthouse， the couple that Woolf portrayed - Mr. Ramsay and Mrs. Ramsay - respectively represents the Victorian men and women. Traditional gender roles “cast men as rational， strong， protective and decisive；they cast women as emotional （irrational）， weak， nurturing and submissive.” （Tyson 85） The classification emphasizes the differences between the two sexes and the binary oppositions further lead to the simplification or depreciation of one sex.
　　A. Rational and Emotional
　　In the novel， Mr. Ramsay embodies the male， patriarchal and linear view of the world. He thinks that “people’s achievements are like the alphabet ranged in twenty-six letters all in order.” （Woolf 25） In his head， the world is simplified into a series of facts and his mind is running like a settled program.
　　On the contrary， Mrs. Ramsay is much more sensitive， emotional， and nurturing. She persists in assuring her son that the trip of going to the lighthouse is a possibility when her husband mercilessly dashes the boy’s hope. “To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for others’ feeling was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency.” （Woolf 54）
　　B. Realistic and Imaginative