Traces of 20th century feminism by

Virginia Woolf

Kuncz Maria-Kitty

3rd Year, German-English

English literature of the 20th century

Asist. Dr. Mihálycsa Erika

January 24, 2018

 This paper will evaluate feminist elements in Virginia Woolf’s works, based upon the
theory of Laura Marcus in the Cambridge Companions. She argues that Woolf’s feminism can be
viewed from two different perspectives: the first being how Woolf as a person and as a writer
perceived feminist politics and all the problems which women had to face, their day-to-day life,
and the second approach focuses on how critics of her time identified with her views on
feminism.1

The term feminism means: “the belief that women should be allowed the same rights,
power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way, or the set of activities intended
to achieve this state”2 Feminism was always an existing problem, but women chose not to talk
about it. Worshippers of feminism raised awareness for the first time only in the 19 th century,
during the so-called first-wave feminism.3

When talking about Virginia Woolf and feminism one has to mention some biographical
aspects regarding her sexual interests. She had various men (Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, Clive
Bell) in her life, but some women (Vanessa Bell, Violet Dickinson, Vita Sackville-West, Ethel
Smyth) too.4

Marcus uses the theories of Alex Zwerdling and Naomi Black to categorize two different
approaches upon Woolf’s feminism. Zwerdling talks about equality (equal rights), mostly
suggesting Woolf’s activism in the right to vote, whereas Black, who talks about difference
(social feminism), concentrates rather on the differences between men and women from the point
of view of politics. 5

1. The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, 209.

2. Cambridge Dictionary online: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/feminism.

3. Pacific University Oregon online: https://www.pacificu.edu/about/media/four-waves-feminism.

4. The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, 210.

5. Ibid., 211-212.
 Virginia Woolf wrote many letters and diary entries during her life. In one of her letters
she addresses a problem, which was brought up by Mr. Bennett claiming that: “intellectually and
creatively man is the superior of woman”.6 Her response was:

My difference with Affable Hawk is not that he denies the present intellectual equality of
men and women. It is that he, with Mr Bennett, asserts that the mind of woman is not
sensibly affected by education and liberty; that it is incapable of the highest
achievements; and that it must remain for ever in the condition in which it now is. I must
repeat that the fact that women have improved (which Affable Hawk now seems to
admit), shows that they might still improve; for I cannot see why a limit should be set to
their improvement in the nineteenth century rather than in the one hundred and
nineteenth. But it is not education only that is needed. It is that women should have
liberty of experience; that they should differ from men without fear and express their
differences openly (for I do not agree with Affable Hawk that men and women are
alike)…7

Woolf is in her feminist theories torn between having equal rights in a man dominated world, but
at the same time she yearns for a life without this pressure of sex. The latter is visible mostly in
her writings in literature because she doesn’t want to be judged upon being a woman when it
comes to criticizing her works.8

Woolf’s most frequently quoted line is: “We think back through our mothers if we are
women”9, which is a statement that points out how different female literature was, considering
the traditional language and traditional literary aspects used by female authors. Woolf placed into
center the female authors as such political changes occurred in literature in order to point out one
of her feminist approaches towards her works. Women’s works was dedicated a tradition to his
own, finding it extremely important to have critics that suited such feminist writings. Nowadays

6. The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, 213.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid., 214.

9. Ibid., 219
it comes natural to us to read a critic and not necessarily question the author’s genders, as it does
not play such a crucial role in our perception of literature.10

Woolf also addressed the problem of woman as a human being whose one particular job is to
give birth and take care of a household; men see woman as object of study but the reverse was
impossible at that time. From this fact comes Woolf’s idea of distortion of the difference
between men and women which, concluding from this fact does not even exist. This is why
Woolf, in one of her writings, brings up the idea of females studying the psychology of other
females rather than men doing it thus maybe overcoming this issue of difference between the
genders, which was considered a great problem.11

Bachelor points out the fact that Woolf was rather troubled with the nature of
womanhood than with feminism itself. This statement is slightly conflicting. On the one hand it
suggests how men and women interacted; on the other hand it reflects women as artists and as
individuals. Some critics addressed the issue of value, because women have other, superficial
values, men on the contrary have meaningful values. In the 20th century people preferred to read
about male characters, who fought in war or played sports rather than about a woman going
shopping and talking about clothes and hair; this having its root in their perception of values.12

Woolf used Freud’s psychoanalytical concepts in “Mrs Dalloway”, particularly the

repetitive structures and fragmented sequences of the novel. A women’s progress in narrative is
what really resembles the ideas Freud’s upon femininity, and at the same time “expressly
challenge his normative categories of women's sexuality”13. The plot of the novel plays during
only one day, but the plot is filled with flashbacks of the past, more precisely the characters look
back to their youth. The reader gets at this point confronted with the fact that Clarissa has had
lesbian interactions with Sally: “She and Sally fell a little behind. Then came the most exquisite
moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower;

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., 220.

12. Ibid., 227-229.

13. Ibid., 237.

kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared;
there she was alone with Sally.14” suggesting in Freudian terms the lost space-time gestures
linked to the Oedipal narrative thus the mother-daughter relationships; maternal identification.15

Bowlby has also observed the lack of fixities in Woolf’s works. She thinks that Woolf’s
contrasting forms of feminism can be seen as an exemplary for other such feminist writings.
Bowlby reflects upon the gendering of passenger and journey16:

It is precisely in her insistence on the sexual inflection of all questions of historical

understanding and literary representation that Woolf is a feminist writer. She constantly
associates certainty and conventionality with a complacent masculinity which she sees as
setting the norms for models of individual and historical development. It makes sense,
then, that it will be from the woman in the corner of the railway compartment - or the
woman not synchronised with the time of the train - that the most fruitful and troubling
questions will be posed, and that new lines may emerge.17

Woolf can in his eyes be counted to the writer’s of modern times, who focus on the gender of
their characters. Bowlby also points out how specific characters in her writings are given
relevance through depiction of themselves and their surroundings.18

Caughie is another critic who comments on Woolf as a post modernist and feminist
writer. The conclusion taken from Woolf’s critical essays is in Caughie’s mind, the fact that
Woolf as a writer wants the audience treat her texts and respond to them rather than her texts
shaping other people’s thoughts and beliefs.19

However, Marcus does not totally agree with Caughie’s ideas, because she thinks it brings just
more confusion and contrasting ideas to the critics. But one important term is constructed by

14. Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, 30.

15. The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, 237.

16. Ibid., 239.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., 239-240.

19. Ibid., 241.

Caughie, the feminist reader, which is a strategy referring to the various selves Woolf builds
within a plot and that these brighten the different theories and feminist views of that era.20

As a conclusion, I think we can all agree on the fact that Virginia Woolf was and still is
an extraordinarily diverse feminist writer, who did not let society dictate her ways of writings
and her ideas and thoughts on women’s rights and feminist politics as she was engaged, most
importantly and most actively in changing the future but also the present of the contemporary
women. She also brought insights into equal gender interests; she was one of the first women to
introduce same sex affections, which probably reflected upon her own desires. I would like to
end my essay with the words of Laura Marcus, as I find them particularly apt for the aim of the
whole essay: “The question of its continued centrality as a feminist work - as feminism itself is
alternately disowned and reclaimed - must remain as open as Woolf's own textual work and
play.”21

20. Ibid., 241.

21. Ibid.
 Bibliography

Cambridge Dictionary online: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/feminism.

Pacific University Oregon online: https://www.pacificu.edu/about/media/four-waves-feminism.

Roe, Sue, and Susan Sellers, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf. Cambridge
Companions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.