Anxiety, Dilemma and Transcendence - The Case of Lilly's Drawing Process

In Virginia Woolf's classic work To the Lighthouse, although Lily is not the main character, the idea of bisexuality embodied in her makes her one of the most important objects in the study of feminist thought. This paper intends to start from the rough painting process of Lily in To the Lighthouse to discover the content of Lily beyond feminist thought. Through the study, it finds that Lili not only symbolizes the beautiful personality of bisexuality, but she is also full of anxiety and dilemmas: the dilemma of the mind when creating, the anxiety about the right of free choice, the anxiety about the meaning of life existence, and the dilemmas of communication between human beings and human beings, between human beings and the ego, and the book also puts forward the way of transcending anxiety and dilemmas. The book also suggests ways to transcend anxiety and dilemma. Through analyzing the process of Lili's painting, this paper uncovers the anxious and difficult side of Lili's image, which not only enriches the previous research on Lili's image (bisexual homoeroticism), but also further reveals her complex and varied inner spiritual world, and these discoveries provide us with a more comprehensive and in-depth perspective for understanding and interpreting this important character in this masterpiece of literature.