Memory function in Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse

The mood of To the Lighthouse is one of nostalgia. The bulk of the novel (section I) takes place before World War I, before the death of Mrs. Ramsey, and before the end of childhood of the Ramsey children. The rest of the novel looks back on those moments of wholeness, innocence, and desire. The novel is heavily overlaid with a sense of memory. Each of the vivid moments of the first section has the …

…the family Mrs. Ramsey lives on. Virginia Woolf infuses this book with the concepts of time passing and its toll on the world around it. Besides the people lost within the family, there is the war taking the lives of many. Through the eyes of the people around Mrs. Ramsey we get to see how memory can battle the effects of time and preserve someone in our hearts and minds despite the years going by.