THE PACIFIST-FEMINIST: WAR AND GENDER IN WOOLF’S NOVELS AND ESSAYS AN HONORS THESIS SUBMITTED ON THE TWENTY-SECOND DAY OF APRIL, 2020 TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE HONORS PROGRAM OF NEWCOMB-TULANE COLLEGE TULANE UNIVERSITY FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS WITH HONORS IN ENGLISH BY _____________________ Allison Babula APPROVED: ______________________ Dr. Molly Abel Travis Director of Thesis _______________________ Dr. Adam McKeown Second Reader _______________________ Dr. Brittany Kennedy Third Reader Allison Babula. The Pacifist-Feminist: War and Gender in Woolf’s Novels and Essays. (Professor Molly Abel Travis, English) This thesis aims to examine the impacts war and political tensions across 20th century Europe had on Woolf’s life and writings. Specifically, this thesis considers World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and the rise of World War II, alongside ideas of nationalism, fascism, and Nazism. Woolf’s writings reveal notions of war and nation to be an issue relating to masculinity. Woolf believed the catastrophes of the First World War destroyed the illusions of traditional Western society, releasing women from their role as “looking-glasses… reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size” (A Room of One’s Own 30). As the Great War led Englishmen and women to believe their great civilization was on the verge of ruins, artists such as Woolf portrayed the flaws of their gender-rigid society that ultimately threw citizens into a horrific war. Thus, Woolf advocates for positive change in the form of peace and equality through the introduction of feminine voices and perspectives. Nationalism grew in Europe, reflected in the Spanish Civil War, which took the life of Woolf’s nephew, while fascism and Nazism rose within the continent. These events hit Woolf personally, generating an anxiety of impending doom for the already mentally shaken author. Finally, in 1941 as Hitler’s powers continued to grow and the world faced another total war, Woolf took her own life. As Woolf’s life, death, and legacy were engulfed in the horrors and anxieties of the 20th century, her writings embody the same. This paper will include journal entries and essays by Woolf, as well as longer works such as Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One’s Own, Three Guineas, and Between the Acts, that portray these events and ideals as problems deeply rooted in Western gender dynamics. ii Table of Contents Introduction 1-4 Chapter 1 Male Appropriation of Classical Antiquity and Shakespeare 5-13 Chapter 2 Overcoming Patriarchal Institutions Through Art and Nature 14-26 Chapter 3 Fascism and the Lives of Great Men 27-36 Conclusion 37-43 iii “As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.” – Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas Virginia Woolf published Three Guineas in 1938 at the dawn of World War II. The purpose of the book-length essay, to answer the question “How in your opinion are we to prevent war?” (Three Guineas 3), remains unanswered by the conclusion of her work. Instead, Woolf provides the unnamed, male recipient with three actions, which in her opinion may eventually halt mass destruction. Her advice to write letters of protest to newspapers, to join an anti-war society, and to donate money to the anti-war effort reflects the lack of access to education, institutions, and professions women experience. Thus, Woolf argues that the limited opportunities women have in comparison to men create an understanding of preventing war that only women are capable of grasping. To prevent war from a woman’s perspective is different than to prevent war from a man’s perspective, for their relationships with freedom and war differ greatly by gender. Therefore, her response is fundamentally incompatible with the question asked by her male correspondence. Consequentially, Woolf’s writings reveal notions of war and nation to be issues relating to masculinity, for men are the persons of power. Despite leaving the question unanswered, Woolf’s relationship with war remained at the forefront of her life. Her nephew fought and died in the Spanish Civil War. Her husband Leonard Woolf was a Jew witnessing the rise of Nazism. Finally, in 1941 as Hitler’s powers continued to grow and the world faced another total war, Woolf took her own life, arguably making herself a victim of war. As her death may suggest, Woolf’s writings reflect the horrors and anxieties of the 20th century. 1 Woolf’s writings trace the relationship between hyper-masculinity and the World Wars. Out of patriarchy comes nationalism, then comes Fascism, then comes, more specifically, Nazism. As war becomes an inevitable outcome for hyper-masculine Europe, Woolf devotes her life and legacy to challenging the prominent male literary culture. In both context and form, Woolf’s novels illustrate a divergence from the male literary tradition and the masculine styles of popular modernism. Austen, Eliot, and the Brontës paved the way for Woolf – Milton did not, Thackery did not, Fielding did not. Moreover, women could not have been poets in the time of Shakespeare. Woolf argues in A Room of One’s Own that “Any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at” (A Room of One’s Own 49). As women were barred from education, institutions, and professions – then and during the majority of Woolf’s life – Woolf argues that “It is useless to go to the great men writers for help” (A Room of One’s Own 76). “Never did any book [Ulysses] so bore me” (Letters 3:80). Woolf had several critiques regarding the boys’ club that was modernism, and literature in general. Woolf argued that men write about women, and of course incorrectly at that, that men’s writing is too flooded with their own voice, and that men are materialistic writers. Likewise, Woolf declares, “Women do not write books about men” (A Room of One’s Own 27). Women write about life. On men’s writing, Woolf notes, “It was so direct, so straightforward after the writing of women” and “indicated such freedom of mind, such liberty of person, such confidence in himself” (A Room of One’s Own 99). Furthermore, “he had full-liberty from birth to stretch itself in whatever way it liked… but after reading 2 a chapter or two a shadow seemed to lie across the page. It was a straight, dark bar, a shadow shaped something like the letter ‘I’” (A Room of One’s Own, 99). Woolf argues that male privilege and male ego infiltrates male writing so that the actual author is implanted into the narrative. Lastly, in her essay “Modern Fiction,” Woolf refers to some of her fellow modernists as materialists, “that they write of unimportant things; that they spend immense skill and immense industry making the trivial and the transitory appear the true and enduring” (Common Reader 149). By doing so, Woolf believes “life escapes” (Common Reader 149) the work. Despite it being obvious that “the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex… it is the masculine values that prevail” (A Room of One’s Own, 73-74). The literary techniques practiced by men create “an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war” (A Room of One’s Own, 74). In contrast, the critic assumes another book insignificant “because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room” (A Room of One’s Own, 74). Woolf describes this phenomenon as “everywhere and much more subtly the difference of value persists” (A Room of One’s Own, 74) and it is the masculine values that carry the larger critical audience. Thus, Woolf advocates to “look within and life, it seems, is very far from being ‘like this’ [as shown in materialistic fiction]. Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day” (Common Reader 149). These three objections, though there may be many more, ultimately led Woolf to explore the mundane through indirect discourse, and Woolf’s experimental novels like Jacob’s Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Between the Acts (1941) attempt to break away from the masculine fundamentals of Western literature. 3 Woolf rejects the notions of “the nature of manhood and the nature of womanhood,” that “the nature of manhood [is] to fight” for these problematic ideologies are “frequently defined by both Italian and German dictators” (Three Guineas 326). Hence, Woolf challenges the masculine tradition by reclaiming literature, art, and history through a feminine, or oppositional lens, that refuses to emphasize the military conquest of England. Ultimately, Woolf’s novels examine the manipulation and appropriation of literature and history to glamorize militarization and promote ideals of nationhood and masculinity as an instrument of patriarchy in order to attain power over women and other nations. Through her examination and exploration of classical and Shakespearean literature and her rejection of history as the lives of great men, Woolf ultimately advocates for the necessity of feminine perspectives to reclaim scholarship. This newfound feminine perspective would function as a means of healing and rebuilding in the form of social and political progress, and eventually peace. However, in order for peace to be achieved, women must actively take a stance against patriarchy and fascism, which are both masculine at their core. 4 Chapter 1 Male Appropriation of Classical Antiquity and Shakespeare I Woolf’s earliest experimental novel, Jacob’s Room, functions as a modern bildungsroman of Jacob Flanders: a boy growing up in middle class English society before the Great War, whose last name may signify the battlefield on which he perishes.