Has Virginia Woolf shown me how to live, what to do?

I'm a fan of Virginia Woolf. I think that woman has a backbone. I have read 'The Lighthouse', 'A Room of One's Own', various essays and critiques, and even 'The Virginia Woolf Writers Workshop' by Danell Jones. I enjoy her very much and applaud her for her courageous efforts with words. She did things in her time women were never doing, and gave a strong and critical voice to females everywhere. I adore her.

But, has she shown me how to live and what to do with her work in 'To the Lighthouse'? I'm not sure how to answer this question. Is it possible for an author to show us how to live and what to do with their work, or can they merely give us one example out of many, one experience to rest our heads on, find comfort in, or find a common bond with? Do writers ever really show us HOW to live?

I think Virginia Woolf has shown me the way I want to VIEW things, but not the way I want to live. She leaves a lot of room for interpretation in 'To the Lighthouse', and I think she encourages readers to grasp hold of that and own that element of the text. Still, I think some of the characters in her novels show me how I don't want to live and what I should avoid!

I read 'To the Lighthouse' for the first time in a class with Susan Kollin and didn't find there was much to it, but I think I either wasn't looking or was being one of the boring readers and just not caring enough to get anything out of it. I do remember, though, the first day of discussion, Susan Kollin told us about her experience with 'To the Lighthouse'. She read it for the first time when she was 19 years old and she WAS Lily! She said everything about Lily spoke to her and who she wanted to be and she felt the urge to break free of her constraints like Lily and just be an artist! Years later, she came back to the text and was able to relate more with other characters than with Lily, but she said we all should do that with different texts; revisit them.

Texts need to be revisited because there are always epiphanies to be found, and those change with time, wisdom, and experience. T.S. Eliot might argue with me and tell me time and experience do not matter, but I think they do. And I think they shape how we view the world and how we view literature, one reason why Susan Kollin was able to find something new each time she read 'To the Lighthouse'. She would read the novel, put it down for a years, and then read it again... each time she found the text was different because she was, in fact, different.

Oh, the things to think about....