Virginia Woolf as a creative social artist: Female transcendence and male ambivalence in To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf, one of the most gifted female authors of 20th century England, is recognized as a major female modernist author of her time. Woolf's use of the (feminist) narrative voice has been the hallmark of her work and an influence to many of her contemporaries. Her description of female characters often overshadow their male counterparts in domestic and social spheres of life in the past century. This paper dissects the female protagonist in To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway and their role in maneuvering through the patriarchal framework of their societal construct, simultaneously demonstrating their individual strengths to achieve a transcendence of consciousness that is illuminating while amalgamating moments of transient happiness with the turbulence of life through the use of the narrative voice dominant in her two novels.