Throughout literature, the ideology of the society in which the author lived is evident in the text. This can lead to certain groups within a text being empowered while other groups are marginalized and constrained by the social restrictions imposed on them by ideology. In Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse, Woolf shows us an awareness of gender politics in 1920s Britain by overturning traditional gender roles, but at the same time naturalizes notions of class, which constrains certain groups. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay In the novel, Woolf subverts the patriarchal representation of feminism with the character Lily Brascoe. Lily is constructed as an independent character who challenges ingrained beliefs about how a woman should act. She does this through her actions in a different style despite Mr. Tansley's assertion that "women can't write, women can't paint" and refuses to marry even though it was a popular belief according to that all women should marry “because a single woman has missed the best of life”. Instead, Lily thought that "she didn't need to get married, thank God, she didn't need to go through this degradation." Woolf applauds this attitude, because at the end of the novel, Lily is one of the few characters who has achieved fulfillment or in her case the completion of a painting begun ten years previously. Yet although Lily's character and her decisions are applauded in the text, Lily is only allowed to have such an attitude because of her status as a member of the wealthier class. In the novel, class is seen more as a benign structure for the common good than as one in which members of the upper classes have greater life chances. Therefore, the class system is not examined in the text, although gender roles are. Lily was only able to make the decisions she did because she had the financial means to support herself in a leisure style. Otherwise, she would have been forced to marry or take a job as a governess. It is in this sense that the richest classes are privileged by their class. Mrs. Ramsay was also favored by her class. Although she did not subvert gender roles, she was instead a model wife who acted in whatever ways the dominant ideology dictated. She was constantly there to support her husband, help the underprivileged and be a loving mother to her children. Yet she was only able to do this because she came from a higher class and did not need to work to support her family. Nonetheless, Mrs. Ramsay's character contrasts with that of Lily Briscoe in their actions to fulfill the gender roles expected of them. Although Mrs. Ramsay is not openly criticized by the text, she can be seen as being overly generous and willing to immerse herself in the needs of others, like a "fountain." This can be considered one of the reasons for his untimely death. Mr. Tansley is another character who found himself affected by class constraints. He was from the working class but he was trying to be accepted as an intellectual. It was for this reason that he revered Mr. Ramsay's work and was invited to the cottage with them, but as a character he was criticized because of his attitude towards the lower classes. Even children criticized him: "He didn't know how to play cricket, he.