Untangling the Psyche: A Study of Character through Oedipus Complex in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

The novel To the Lighthouse, published in 1927, has been selected time and again as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Being so important it has been studied vigorously especially for its complex treatment of narration as what characterizes modernist writing. Overshadowed by importance of narration in the novel, however, little attention has been given to the study of characters in To the Lighthouse. In this novel, the reader has been given a chance to follow a family of eight children with a time lapse of ten years with focus on only a few characters, one of the most important of whom being James Ramsay. This paper is an attempt to analyze James Ramsay’s character revealed through the masterful narration in the novel using Freud’s notion of Oedipus Complex, to see how James’ thoughts and actions are run by unconscious aspects of his psyche both in his childhood and adulthood.

کلیدواژه ها:

Oedipus complex ، Fear of castration ، Freud ، Psychoanalysis ، Woolf ، Modernism