In one of her major novels, To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf shows in contrast the destructiveness of Mr. Ramsay`s oppressive and authoritative attitude and that Mrs. Ramsay`s submissive self-sacrifice. Mrs. Ramsay is forced to obliterate her self-identity, remain an angel in the house, and finally comes to death and to self-effacement in the egoistic patriarchal society. But Mrs. Ramsay`s death ad resurrection in the consciousness of a woman artist, Lily Briscoe, represents her transformation from a docile wife to a real woman with her independent individuality. Lily, as a single woman with androgynous mind, frees herself from the criticism of female artistic inferiority, and completes her ten-year delayed painting by giving the picture balance and unity, with the epiphany of Mrs. Ramsay in her memory. Woolf`s feminist perspective resists against the male-dominant society and her writing strategy struggles against the existing men`s language, the symbolic universe of the father. They are strongly expressed in Lily`s painting in which she accomplishes her vision not verbally, but by visual representation. Lily`s final diagonal stroke on the canvas stands for the hard-achieved and well-balanced relationship between men and women, going beyond the established realm of men`s language and domination. By representing her vision and wish through the composition, Woolf shows at once the task and dilemma of the women artists working while still confined within the symbolic universe of men`s discourse, and the possibility of putting and alternative for the language of patriarchy. Woolf implies in this novel that the establishment of the female identity precedes or coexists with women`s language.
한국중앙영어영문학회 [The Jungang English Language And Literature Association Of Korea]
설립연도
1968
분야
인문학>영어와문학
소개
본 학회는 영미어문학의 학술연구와 이에 부합하는 아래의 사업을 기획 수행하며,
또한 회원 상호간의 친목을 도모함을 목적으로 한다.
1. 학회지 발간
2. 연구 발표회, 강연회, 공동연구
3. 영미어문학 관련 도서출판
4. 영미어문학 관계 도서 및 자료의 모집 및 비치
5. 기타 본회의 목적 달성에 필요한 사업
간행물
간행물명
영어영문학연구 [The Jungang Journal of English Language and Literature]