SOURCE: “Spaces: ‘To the Lighthouse,’” in The Author in His Work: Essays on a Problem in Criticism, edited by Louis L. Martz and Aubrey Williams, Yale University Press, 1978, pp. 375–89.

In the following essay, Gregor argues that the autobiographical elements in To the Lighthouse ultimately compromise the novel's success because of Woolf's difficulty in distancing herself from her narrative and her characters.

I, I, I,—how we have lost the secret of saying that.¹

—Virginia Woolf

I

On Wednesday, 28, November 1928, a year after the publication of To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary:

Father's birthday. He would have been 96, 96, yes, today; and could have been 96, like other people one has known: but mercifully was not. His life would have entirely ended mine. What would have happened? No writing, no books;—inconceivable.

I used to think of him and mother daily; but writing the Lighthouse laid them in...