DOCSLIB.ORG

“Androgynous” Virginia Woolf's Orlando: a Biography; David

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
“Androgynous” Virginia Woolf's Orlando: a Biography; David “Androgynous” ! Orlando invites Nick Greene, a famous poet, to comment on his poetry. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography; David Peterson Greene tears him to shreds. Orlando destroys most of his literary works ex- cept a poem called “The Oak Tree.” Adeline Virginia Stephen ! Writing one day, Orlando takes note of a woman—a Duchess—who takes a • Born January 25, 1882 in London. shine to him, and tries to move in on him. Orlando is creeped out by her, and • Married Leonard Woolf (whence the name); helped found Bloomsbury Group. goes to Constantinople as an ambassador. • The Bloomsbury Group discouraged “sexual exclusivity”. ! While in Constantinople, a revolution of sorts breaks out which Orlando • The most productive years of her life followed. sleeps through. • Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927) catapulted her to fame. ! Orlando becomes a woman. • In 1941, she drowned herself (walked into a river with rocks in her pockets). ! Orlando, the woman, lives with a band of gypsies for a bit, but leaves after she and her ideas about life become a nuisance to the gypsies. Then came Orlando… ! Orlando returns to England, where she’s the subject of several lawsuits, • Published in 1928. which seek to determine her gender, and her holdings. • Received mostly favorable reviews. ! Orlando meets up with the Duke, and has an affair with him for a bit, but she • Most notable, though, was the tie to Victoria “Vita” Sackville-West, to whom the eventually bores of him. book was dedicated. ! She takes up with a band of prostitutes, and evidently becomes one herself • Virginia and Sackville-West had an affair for a bit, and gets pregnant. ! After pretending to be married with unsatisfactory results, Orlando meets up Before Moving On… with Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, and marries him, since he, too, ap- • Orlando: A Biography purports to be something different. parently has changed genders. • A re-envisioning of what a biography is. To get at the character, stretches Or- ! While her husband’s away, Nick Greene, still alive, reads “The Oak Tree”, lando’s life over almost 400 years. and now has nothing but praise for it. He helps Orlando publish it, and she • Orlando based on Sackville-West. wins much acclaim. • Major characters (some): ! Orlando decides to return to her ancestral home, where, a bit ambiguously, ! Orlando: Main character. she reunites with Shelmerdine, who leaps from a passing airplane. ! The Muscovite Princess: Orlando’s early paramour. ! Nick Greene: A poet in the 17th century; critic in the late 19th, early 20th. Style (Excerpt pg. 32) ! The Duchess/Duke: An admirer of Orlando’s. • Mainly description; little action and dialogue. ! Marmaduke Bontrhop Shelmerdine: Orlando’s husband. • The description’s function is to dull the reader’s sense of time; allows her to slip ! Queen Elizabeth: Herself. from 1588 to 1928 while Orlando ages only about twenty years. ! Alexander Pope: Himself • An odd feature of this work, in contrast to Woolf’s other books, is the humor, • Plot: cynicism and sarcasm. Orlando often ridiculed, as is everything s/he deems im- ! Orlando, in the late 16th century, is 15 or 16, and male. He writes poetry and portant (cf. last line of the excerpt). five act plays in the attic of his ancestral home. Here Come the Critics… ! Queen Elizabeth takes a shine to Orlando, and makes him her protege. • Arnold Bennett’s review from 1928 = hilarious. ! Orlando tires of English society, and falls in love with a Muscovite Princess. • “You cannot keep your end up at a London dinner-party unless you have read ! The Princess cheats on Orlando (or so he believes), and leaves him. Mrs Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.” ! Orlando retires to his estate to write poetry. • Extremely short. Claims the first part is “goodish”, while the second chapter be- trays a “startling decline”, and the rest of the book is “tedious”. • And that’s it. No specific examples. Jealous much? Here Come the Feminist Critics… • Once it became socially acceptable in academic circles to discuss homosexuality, Virginia Woolf’s lesbian affair with Sackville-West became a hot topic. • After years of relative obscurity, Orlando becomes hot. • Most critics say two things about Orlando: (1) the main character is based on Vita Sackville-West; and (2) the main character is androgynous. (Cf. first line of the back of the book jacket.) • At this point, critics say little else. Orlando is interesting insofar as it says some- thing about Virginia Woolf’s sexuality, or the sexuality of women in the early twentieth century (cf. Smith’s Lesbian Panic, and what little attention Orlando receives therein). • Paperback editions of Orlando and the recent movie have taken the cue, and now focus almost exclusively on the male/female aspect of this book. • Orlando is first definitely male (cf. pg. 5), then definitely female (cf. pg. 67). • While male, Orlando is very male, and not a bit female. • While female, Orlando retains memories of her male existence, but not the im- pulses, desires or attitudes. • To claim Orlando is androgynous is to deny two very basic facts: (1) Orlando, as a male, is completely male, and has no questions about his gender or sexuality; and (2) after becoming female, Orlando accepts in its entirety the role of a female, along with the genetic differences. The Role of Sackville-West Or Paramount Importance • Yes, it’s a real thing. In a letter to Sackville-West, she writes, “But listen; suppose • Whatever one says of the male/female issue, by focusing one’s attention on that Orlando turns out to be Vita; and its [sic] all about you and the lusts of your flesh aspect alone, one misses the point of the novel. and the lure of your mind…” • The biography is not of Sackville-West, or even Orlando, but of the artist. • Plot parallels Sackville-West’s life, to an extent (Muscovite Princes = a former • The most important aspect of the novel is time and its effect on the protagonist. lover of Sackville-West; the regal, upper-class history similar to Sackville-West’s • Regardless of what is and isn’t most important, a simple fact that critics before history; Shelmerdine = Sackville-West’s husband, himself a bisexual like his wife, and after the feminist revolution miss is that the novel, as a whole, must be ad- etc.). dressed—not merely the male/female half, or the historical half. • Sackville-West, though, if anything, is an inspiration. Orlando the character be- comes quite different, and the book is a complete creation. References Banks, Joanne T., Ed. Congenial Spirits: The Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf. San • Plus, Orlando is constantly criticized. Far from a “loving portrayal”. ! Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1989. • At least an equal inspiration: E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, which Woolf Bennett, Arnold. “FIRST IMPRESSION: ‘Orlando’ by Virginia Woolf, 8 November despised. Most of the novel is a critique of literature, literary theory, and literary ! 1928”. The (London) Independent. FindArticles.com. 2 Dec. 2008 criticism. ! <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20050603/ai_n14652352>. Smith, Patricia J. Lesbian Panic: Homoeroticism in Modern British Women’s Fiction. Androgyny ! New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1997. Tetterton, Kelly. “Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: The Book as Critic”. The Fifth Annual • No. ! Virginia Woolf Conference at Otterbein College. 18 June 1995. • Androgynous denotes a person or style that prominently features traits of both Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. Orig. published 1928. Ware, UK: Wordsworth sexes, or of neither. ! Classics, 1995..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • It Is Time for Virginia Woolf
    TREBALL DE FI DE GRAU Tutor/a: Dra. Ana Moya Gutierrez Grau de: Estudis Anglesos IT IS TIME FOR VIRGINIA WOOLF Ane Iñigo Barricarte Universitat de Barcelona Curso 2018/2019, G2 Barclona, 11 June 2019 ABSTRACT This paper explores the issue of time in two of Virginia Woolf’s novels; Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. The study will not only consider how the theme is presented in the novels but also in their filmic adaptations, including The Hours, a novel written by Michael Cunningham and film directed by Stephen Daldry. Time covers several different dimensions visible in both novels; physical, mental, historical, biological, etc., which will be more or less relevant in each of the novels and which, simultaneously, serve as a central point to many other themes such as gender, identity or death, among others. The aim of this paper, beyond the exploration of these dimensions and the connection with other themes, is to come to a general and comparative conclusion about time in Virginia Woolf. Key Words: Virginia Woolf, time, adaptations, subjective, objective. Este trabajo consiste en una exploración del tema del tiempo en dos de las novelas de Virginia Woolf; La Señora Dalloway y Al Faro. Dicho estudio, no solo tendrá en cuenta como se presenta el tema en las novelas, sino también en la adaptación cinematográfica de cada una de ellas, teniendo también en cuenta Las Horas, novela escrita por Michael Cunningham y película dirigida por Stephen Daldry. El tiempo posee diversas dimensiones visibles en ambos trabajos; física, mental, histórica, biológica, etc., que cobrarán mayor o menor importancia en cada una de las novelas y que, a su vez, sirven de puntos de unión para otros muchos temas como pueden ser el género, la identidad o la muerte entre otros.
    [Show full text]
  • Bloomsbury Scientists Ii Iii
    i Bloomsbury Scientists ii iii Bloomsbury Scientists Science and Art in the Wake of Darwin Michael Boulter iv First published in 2017 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.ucl.ac.uk/ ucl- press Text © Michael Boulter, 2017 Images courtesy of Michael Boulter, 2017 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Non-derivative 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for personal and non-commercial use providing author and publisher attribution is clearly stated. Attribution should include the following information: Michael Boulter, Bloomsbury Scientists. London, UCL Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787350045 Further details about Creative Commons licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 006- 9 (hbk) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 005- 2 (pbk) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 004- 5 (PDF) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 007- 6 (epub) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 008- 3 (mobi) ISBN: 978- 1- 78735- 009- 0 (html) DOI: https:// doi.org/ 10.14324/ 111.9781787350045 v In memory of W. G. Chaloner FRS, 1928– 2016, lecturer in palaeobotany at UCL, 1956– 72 vi vii Acknowledgements My old writing style was strongly controlled by the measured precision of my scientific discipline, evolutionary biology. It was a habit that I tried to break while working on this project, with its speculations and opinions, let alone dubious data. But my old practices of scientific rigour intentionally stopped personalities and feeling showing through.
    [Show full text]
  • Virginia Woolf's Carlylean Pilgrimages
    Revisiting a Great Man’s House: Virginia Woolf’s Carlylean Pilgrimages MARIE LANIEL LTHOU G H MANY EARLY TWENTIETH -CENTURY WRITERS TEND TO disparage Thomas Carlyle’s moral earnestness, emphatic A hero-worship, and stern authoritarianism, most of them also feel strangely compelled to express ambivalent feelings of involuntary allegiance towards the Victorian sage. Enveloped in spiritual turmoil, Bertrand Russell found comfort by reading Carlyle’s account of his own religious crisis in Sartor Resartus (1833– 34) and felt obliged to acknowledge that he was oddly “moved by rhetoric which [he] could not accept. Carlyle’s ‘Everlasting No’ and ‘Everlasting Yea’ seemed to me very splendid, in spite of my thinking that at bottom they were nonsense” (27). Such remarks help to explain Carlyle’s curiously cloaked influence in the novels of the period, ranging from E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View (1908) to D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (1920). In these circumstances, it was perhaps inevitable that James Joyce should recognize the advent of Carlylean rhetoric as a momentous stage in the development of English prose writing by including a true-to-life, if slightly irreverent, impersonation of the Victorian prophet in the “Oxen of the Sun” chapter in Ulysses (1922). Of all modernist writers, Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was perhaps the most reluctant to acknowledge any debt towards Carlyle. Throughout her life she was impervious to his egotistical rhetoric and critical of his authoritarian streak. In a letter to Margaret Llewelyn-Davies (23 January 1916), Woolf derides his oracular tone and dismisses his gloomy insights as the ravings of a misguided prophet: “I’ve been reading Carlyle’s Past and Present, and wondering whether all his rant has made a scrap CSA 24 2008 118 CARLYLE STUDIE S ANNUAL of difference practically” (Letters 2: 76).
    [Show full text]
  • Novel to Novel to Film: from Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway to Michael
    Rogers 1 Archived thesis/research paper/faculty publication from the University of North Carolina at Asheville’s NC DOCKS Institutional Repository: http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/unca/ Novel to Novel to Film: From Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway to Michael Cunningham’s and Daldry-Hare’s The Hours Senior Paper Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For a Degree Bachelor of Arts with A Major in Literature at The University of North Carolina at Asheville Fall 2015 By Jacob Rogers ____________________ Thesis Director Dr. Kirk Boyle ____________________ Thesis Advisor Dr. Lorena Russell Rogers 2 All the famous novels of the world, with their well known characters, and their famous scenes, only asked, it seemed, to be put on the films. What could be easier and simpler? The cinema fell upon its prey with immense rapacity, and to this moment largely subsists upon the body of its unfortunate victim. But the results are disastrous to both. The alliance is unnatural. Eye and brain are torn asunder ruthlessly as they try vainly to work in couples. (Woolf, “The Movies and Reality”) Although adaptation’s detractors argue that “all the directorial Scheherezades of the world cannot add up to one Dostoevsky, it does seem to be more or less acceptable to adapt Romeo and Juliet into a respected high art form, like an opera or a ballet, but not to make it into a movie. If an adaptation is perceived as ‘lowering’ a story (according to some imagined hierarchy of medium or genre), response is likely to be negative...An adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative—a work that is second without being secondary.
    [Show full text]
  • Author's Name
    Cross-Cultural Management Journal Volume XVI, Issue 2 / 2014 Dana BĂDULESCU Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi BLOOMSBURY AND Theoretical article SPACE BOUNDARIES Keywords Bloomsbury Monk’s House Charleston Rooms The Omega Workshops Abstract The purpose of this paper is to explore the complex ways in which Bloomsbury artists approached space, challenging and blurring the boundaries between the domestic/private domain and the public sphere, and also between life and art. Looking deep into the private space, these artists posited the self, which was of utmost importance to them, at the intersection between two previously distinct spheres. With their metaphorically charged symbolism of rooms, windows, houses, gardens, on the one hand, and streets, parks, and squares, on the other, Virginia Woolf's novels, diary and essays, E. M. Forster's novels and essays, the paintings of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and the Omega Workshops organized by the Bloomsbury artists suggest an ambivalent contrast and fusion between the most intimate aspects of the self and the public space. 247 Cross-Cultural Management Journal Volume XVI, Issue 2 / 2014 In her essay “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. sake. What artists like Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Brown” Virginia Woolf famously stated that the Beardsly, or art historians like Walter Pater human character changed around the year 1910. highlighted was a need of the human mind and soul What she meant by this is that a whole set of to be surrounded by beauty. Two decades or so values, norms, customs, attitudes, even life style before the Bloomsbury Group lived up to the same and fashion took a dramatic turn at the end of the principle, the late nineteenth century artists had first decade of the twentieth century.
    [Show full text]
  • South East England & the Bloomsbury Group July 10-18
    South East England & The Bloomsbury Group July 10-18, 2021 In the early part of the 20th century a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who lived and worked in Bloomsbury were perhaps best known for their liberal views on politics and social conventions as well as their infamous love triangles. Luminaries including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strachey also undertook an experimental attitude to ways they decorated their homes, resulting in highly original and inspired designs. We uncover the finest examples of their work as we visit the houses where they lived and loved. Saturday, July 10: Arrival On arrival at Heathrow airport, a private transfer will take you to our overnight hotel, the Castle Hotel Windsor – MGallery. In the evening, join the group for a welcome drink, followed by dinner. (D) Sunday, July 11: Knole House and Standen After breakfast, we check out of our hotel and journey to visit Knole House in Kent where we enjoy a guided tour*. One of Britain’s most important and complete historic homes, the property is now cared for by the National Trust and here we can discover more about its colorful past. Knole House was home to the Sackville family for 400 years, including novelist Vita Sackville-West who used the house as inspiration for her novel The Edwardians. Next we visit Standen, a fine Arts and Crafts property, which combines the skills of architect Philip Webb and his friend William Morris. The light, airy rooms are decorated with Morris’ wallpapers and textiles with William de Morgan pottery.
    [Show full text]
  • John Halperin Bloomsbury and Virginia W
    John Halperin ., I Bloomsbury and Virginia WooH: Another VIew . i· "It had seemed to me ever since I was very young," Adrian Stephen wrote in The Dreadnought Hoax in 1936, "that anyone who took up an attitude of authority over anyone else was necessarily also someone who offered a leg to pull." 1 In 1910 Adrian and his sister Virginia and Duncan Grant and some of their friends dressed up as the Emperor of Abyssinia and his suite and perpetrated a hoax upon the Royal Navy. They wished to inspect the Navy's most modern vessel, they said; and the Naval officers on hand, completely fooled, took them on an elaborate tour of some top­ secret facilities aboard the HMS Dreadnought. When the "Dread­ nought Hoax," as it came to be called, was discovered, there were furious denunciations of the group in the press and even within the family, since some Stephen relations were Naval officers. One of them wrote to Adrian: "His Majesty's ships are not suitable objects for practical jokes." Adrian replied: "If everyone shared my feelings toward the great armed forces of the world, the world [might] be a happier place to live in . .. armies and suchlike bodies [present] legs that [are] almost irresistible." Earlier a similarly sartorial practical joke had been perpetrated by the same group upon the mayor of Cam­ bridge, but since he was a grocer rather than a Naval officer the Stephen family seemed unperturbed by this-which was not really a thumbing·of-the-nose at the Establishment. The Dreadnought Hoax was harder to forget.
    [Show full text]
  • Leonard Woolf's
    Journal X Volume 6 Number 1 Autumn 2001 Article 7 2020 Metropolitan Civility Bloomsbury and the Power of the Modern Colonial State: Leonard Woolf’s “Pearls and Swine” Anindyo Roy Colby College Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jx Part of the Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons Recommended Citation Roy, Anindyo (2020) "Metropolitan Civility Bloomsbury and the Power of the Modern Colonial State: Leonard Woolf’s “Pearls and Swine”," Journal X: Vol. 6 : No. 1 , Article 7. Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jx/vol6/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal X by an authorized editor of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Roy: Metropolitan Civility Bloomsbury and the Power of the Modern Colo Metropolitan Civility, Bloomsbury, and the Power of the Modern Colonial State: Leonard Woolf’s “Pearls and Swine” Anindyo Roy Anindyo Roy is Assis­ Leonard Woolf, one of the key figures in the Blooms­ tant Professor in Eng­ bury circle, is perhaps most widely known for his role lish at Colby College in labor party politics in Britain and for his engage­ where he teaches cours­ ment, during the first two decades of the twentieth es in critical theory, century, with internationalist politics associated with the League of Nations. As someone closely allied postcolonial literatures with Bloomsbury, Britain’s pre-eminent circle of aes­ and theory, and thetes and intellectuals, Woolf’s political thinking British Modernism, can at best be described as unorthodox: although a He has published essays member of the exclusive Cambridge circle that had on postcolonial theory been nurtured by the aesthetic and moral philosophy and literature, fiction of G.
    [Show full text]
  • The Posthumanistic Theater of the Bloomsbury Group
    Maine State Library Digital Maine Academic Research and Dissertations Maine State Library Special Collections 2019 In the Mouth of the Woolf: The Posthumanistic Theater of the Bloomsbury Group Christina A. Barber IDSVA Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalmaine.com/academic Recommended Citation Barber, Christina A., "In the Mouth of the Woolf: The Posthumanistic Theater of the Bloomsbury Group" (2019). Academic Research and Dissertations. 29. https://digitalmaine.com/academic/29 This Text is brought to you for free and open access by the Maine State Library Special Collections at Digital Maine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Academic Research and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Maine. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IN THE MOUTH OF THE WOOLF: THE POSTHUMANISTIC THEATER OF THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP Christina Anne Barber Submitted to the faculty of The Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy August, 2019 ii Accepted by the faculty at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in partial fulfillment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. COMMITTEE MEMBERS Committee Chair: Simonetta Moro, PhD Director of School & Vice President for Academic Affairs Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts Committee Member: George Smith, PhD Founder & President Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts Committee Member: Conny Bogaard, PhD Executive Director Western Kansas Community Foundation iii © 2019 Christina Anne Barber ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iv Mother of Romans, joy of gods and men, Venus, life-giver, who under planet and star visits the ship-clad sea, the grain-clothed land always, for through you all that’s born and breathes is gotten, created, brought forth to see the sun, Lady, the storms and clouds of heaven shun you, You and your advent; Earth, sweet magic-maker, sends up her flowers for you, broad Ocean smiles, and peace glows in the light that fills the sky.
    [Show full text]
  • Servant of One's Own: the Continuing Class Struggle in Feminist Legal Theories and Practices
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research CUNY School of Law 2008 Servant of One's Own: The Continuing Class Struggle in Feminist Legal Theories and Practices Ruthann Robson CUNY School of Law How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cl_pubs/188 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Review/Essay A Servant of One's Own: The Con tin uing Class Struggle in Feminist Legal Theories and Practices MRS. WOOLF AND THE SERVANTS: AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF DOMESTIC LIFE IN BLOOMSBURY by Alison Light. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008. 376 pp. $30 hardcover. Reviewed by Ruthann Robsont I. INTRODUCTION Virginia Woolf is a feminist icon. The author of classic essays such as A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas, novels such as To The Lighthouse, The Waves, and Mrs. Dalloway, and volumes of diaries, letters, and essays,' her popularity has only increased since her death by suicide in 1941. She is an object of study in academia: the International Virginia Woolf Society has branches in the UK, Canada, and the United States, 2 and sometimes it seems as if no conference is complete without a panel discussing some aspect of Virginia t Copyright © 2008 by Ruthann Robson, Professor of Law and University Distinguished Professor, City University of New York School of Law. I am grateful to Anna Krieger and the membership of the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice for their nurturing of this project.
    [Show full text]
  • Virginia Woolf's to the Lighthouse: Toward an Integrated Jurisprudence
    Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse: Toward an Integrated Jurisprudence Lisa Weilt I. INTRODUCTION Since the publication of Virginia Woolf s novel To the Lighthouse in 1927, a significant volume of critical commentary has grown to surround the work. These critical interpretations come in two types: some consider Woolf's technical experiments in style and form;' others consider her ideology. Commentaries which address Woolf's ideology include discussions of her views on philosophy, aesthetics, relations between the sexes, and feminist issues.2 In recent years, scholars have approached the novel with the insight of Woolf's autobiographical writings and have taken a particular interest in feminist and psychoanalytical themes in the work. This Article's analysis differs from the existing body of commentary by exploring another dimension of Woolf's ideology: her legal philosophy. Existing commentaries interpret the celebrated expedition to the Lighthouse as a quest for psychological maturity, truth, harmonious social relations between men and women, and aesthetic harmonies. This Article adds another dimension to the symbolic voyage and interprets the expedition as a quest for justice. Critics have often placed Woolf within the intellectual aristocracy of her time and judged her as an elitist who avoided themes of social and political importance.4 This Article counters that criticism and concludes that Woolf's t B.A. University of Pennsylvania, 1989; J.D. Georgetown University Law Center, 1993. 1 would especially like to thank my research advisor, Professor Robin West, whose scholarship and teaching, and insightful comments enriched this essay and this author. I would also like to thank Professor Mari Matsuda for her exemplary integration of feminist method and theory in the classroom.
    [Show full text]
  • Virginia Woolf, the Problem of Language, and Feminist Aesthetics
    W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1993 A Voice of One's Own: Virginia Woolf, the Problem of Language, and Feminist Aesthetics Lisa Karin Levine College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Levine, Lisa Karin, "A Voice of One's Own: Virginia Woolf, the Problem of Language, and Feminist Aesthetics" (1993). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539625831. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-fz2e-0q20 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Voice of One's Own: Virginia Woolf, the Problem of Language, and Feminist Aesthetics A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Lisa Karin Levine 1993 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Lisa Karin Levine Approved, May 1993 Esther Lanigan, Chair Elsa Nettels Deborah Morse DEDICATION The author wishes to dedicate this text to Drs. Arlene and Joel Levine, without whose love and support none of this would be possible. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes to express her appreciation to Professor Esther Lanigan for her many hours of reading and invaluable criticism of this text, and also to Professors Deborah Morse and Elsa Nettels for their time and instruction.
    [Show full text]