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1. Introduction
1.1 The History of Feminism
The words "feminism" and "feminist" first emerged in France and Netherlands in 1872, the Great Britain in the 1890s, and the United States in 1910, and the Oxford English Dictionary made 1852 as the year of the emergence of "feminist" and 1895 for "feminism". “Feminism is concerned with the marginalization of all women: that is, with their being relegated to a secondary position. Most feminists believe that our culture is a patriarchal culture: that is, one organized in favor of the interests of men.”(Guerin, 2004, p. 196) The history of the modern western feminist movements was pided into three "waves". Each wave dealt with different aspects of the same feminist issue. The first wave consisted of women’s suffrage movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, promoting women's right to vote. The second wave was connected with the ideas and actions of the women's liberation movement beginning in the 1960s. The third wave was a continuation of, and a reaction to, the perceived failures of second-wave feminism, beginning in the 1990s.
1.2 Brief Introduction of Virginia Woolf and To the Lighthouse
1.2.1 About the Author
Since the second wave, the study of Virginia Woolf has always been associated with the development of feminism. Born at 22 Hyde Park Gate in London in 1822, Adeline Virginia Woolf, an English novelist and essayist, is not only considered as one of the most important modernists but also a representative of feminist literary criticism in the twentieth century. Her famous dictum from the essay A Room of One’s Own, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”, shows clearly her female consciousness that women should strive not only for material but also spiritual independence.
1.2.2 About To the lighthouse
To the lighthouse is one of Virginia Woolf’s famous novel which is also a representative work on feminism. Set in the Ramsay’s summer holiday home in the Hebrides on the Isle of Skye, the novel is pided into three parts: The Window, Time Passes and The Lighthouse. The story is about the life experience of the Ramsay’s and several guests before and after World War I. Their son James desires to visit the lighthouse, which is vetoed by Mr. Ramsay who insists that the weather won’t be fine. Ten years past, Mrs. Ramsay dies and two of their children also pass away. Finally, Mr. Ramsay decides to visit the lighthouse with the remaining Ramsays, which has been long-delayed. The children’s attitude towards their father totally changes from resentment to admiration. As they reach the destination, Lily Briscoe eventually completes the painting of Mrs. Ramsay which costs more than ten years.