The beautiful, beguiling Mrs.Ramsay defines the role of wife and mother to everybody staying at her guest-house. Plain Lily Briscoe, the frustrated artist, Minta and Paul, two young lovers, and the misantropic student Charles Tansley, who seems purely obsessed by his disseration, all fall under her spell, and cannot comprehened her love for the sullen, mercurial Mr.Ramsay.Their youngest son James harbours an ardent desire to visit " The Lighthouse ", but he is constantly quashed by his pragmatic father. It is not until many years lates, after much tragedy and bereavement has befallen the family, that the trip is eventually undertaken.