Spectral Elegy and Moments of Being

Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse* (1927) functions as what Woolf herself called “a spectral

elegy.” To the Lighthouse is conceived as “all character”: a world perceived through shifting

consciousnesses, fragmented time, and fleeting moments of awareness. At its core,

the novel explores Woolf’s concept of “moments of being,” the passage of time, and the possibility

of a female mode of knowledge and artistic creation distinct from patriarchal logic.

Central to Woolf’s aesthetic is her distinction between “moments of being” and “moments of

non-being,” articulated in her autobiographical essay A Sketch of the Past (1939). These moments resemble

James Joyce’s “epiphanies” but are less sudden revelations than heightened perceptions of connection,