Virginia Woolf's novel “To the Lighthouse” (1992) can be considered a modern quest narrative. In literature, a quest is often used as a narrative device and can be described as a journey towards a goal. The journey is mostly undertaken by the hero of the story who has to overcome many complications to achieve his goal. There are four significant missions in the novel expressed by the four key characters; Mrs Ramsay, Mr Ramsay, James Ramsay and Lily Briscoe. The author, Virginia Woolf, also has her own evolving research that develops unconsciously through Lily Briscoe. Compared to Woof's modern narrative approach, the Russian formalist scholar Vladimir Propp follows a traditional research scheme, believing that there must be only one hero to prevail and that, after having represented the initial situation, the story takes on a sequence of thirty-one functions (Propp 19). However, further investigation of “To the Lighthouse” (Woolf, 1992) reveals some similarities between Propp and Woolf's approaches to mission narratives. In the first part of the novel, "The Window", Mrs. Ramsay is the central focus and most influential figure. . Mrs Ramsay is the emblem of Victorianism and does not want the new order to emerge. She seeks to support and instill in children traditional Victorian ideals, such as marriage and the role a wife should assume by giving her husband constant reassurance and empathy; “…an unmarried woman has lost the best of her life” (Woolf 43). Mrs. Ramsay's research pays particular attention to Lily Briscoe, much to the objection of Lily, who believes that the current Victorian system cannot persist. As for Vladimir Propp, the scholar who identified narrative elements in Russian folk tales, his...... middle of paper ...... is different from the next. Virginia Woolf followed a modern narrative research in the novel, an innovative writing style for her time and above all as a woman of her time. Compared to the Russian formalist scholar Vladimir Propp, the quest narrative is quite different with only a few similarities between Woolf's modern quest narrative and Propp's traditional quest narrative. If Woolf were to follow Propp's thirty-one functions of a quest, the novel would change completely, for although Propp's theory may be accurate when writing folk tales, it is not an effective structure to follow for a modernist, revolutionary novel like “To the Lighthouse ” (Woolf, 1992). Works Cited Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the fairy tale. American Folklore Society. United States of America, 2003.Woolf, Virginia. At the lighthouse. Oxford University Press Inc. New York, 1992.