Earticle

There has been still a controversy about the conflicts between radical feminism and feminism of androgyny, so called the duel between stage two and stage three feminism if we use Julia Kristeva (209), although this kind of dichotomy is almost losing its ground when she says the latter one does not necessarily negate the former because all three feminisms are required and needed for the liberation of women. But the issue here lies at the fact that the harmonious androgyny is still precociously utopian even today when practical feminist issues including abortion and genital mutilation have not been yet remarkably resolved so far. Theories of radical feminism and the debate between stage two and three are still paradoxically needed to lay a foundation on to solve those practical problems of the society. Virginia Woolf’s famous feminist manifesto, A Room of One's Own (1929) is, therefore, still a good literary work to deal with this issue of which is a good or “the” best feminist position. Woolf could formulate and contain her idea of radical feminism in the age of Victorian-Edwardian England in which potently surveillant patriarchy prevailed, while hiding and camouflaging her feminist anger enveloped within the surface of androgyny. Again, however, despite risking the fallacy of authorial intention, which one is Woolf's real voice out of these two? Femininity or Androgyny? The expressed one or the suppressed one behind this narrative? Both or neither? My argument is that Woolf could reveal her anger and rage while pretending to conceal her radical notion of femininity under utopian androgyny. In spite of her fear of being called a radical or sometimes a sappy feminist, she could praise femininity by using multiple personae and evasive narrative technique.

Between the Acts는 이해하기 어려운 애매모호한 텍스트이다. Virginia Woolf는 그녀의 어떤 다른 소설에서보다도 이 소설에서 인생이란 불완전하며 불확실하고 모호한 것이라는 그의 인생관을 그녀가 사용한 언어와 텍스트의 의미를 불확실하게 하여 독자로 하여금 이해하기 어렵게 만듦으로써 반영한다. Woolf가 이 소설 속에 짜 넣은 연극은 관객에게 어떤 확실한 의미를 주지 못 하며 반면에 연극이 갖는 온갖 불협화음, 구멍, 막간, 바람에 의해 소멸된 극중언어 등은 소설전편에 내재한 파편화를 강조해 준다. 이 연극과 마찬가지로 이 소설은 전통적인 소설작법에 일반적으로 사용되는 보통의 틀들을 해체시키며 독자에게 뚜렷한 메시지를 전달하기를 거부한다. 이 텍스트의 글쓰기를 통해 Woolf가 강조하는 것은 데리다의 중심사상이기도 한 불확정성이다. 본 논문에서는 Woolf의 불확실한 인생관과 그녀가 사용한 스타일이나 주제 등에 반대요소들을 양립시키며 또 더 나아가 온갖 문체를 담아냄으로써 이는 데리다의 해체주의 이론과 일치하는지를 연구한다. 동시에 이 모두는 어떻게 그녀의 텍스트를 해체시켜 단일성보다는 다양성을 지향하여 열린 텍스트로 만들어 그 의미파악을 독자 각자에게 맡기는가를 밝힌다.

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) problematizes bourgeois housewifery as a condition that puts a married woman like Clarissa Dalloway into a contradictory position in which she is at once a beneficiary of bourgeois institutions and its victim. While housewifery binds her, because she is also dependent on the dominant order and inseparable from it, she is simultaneously an accomplice and a critic. I call this ambivalent condition “bourgeois dissidence,” a concept that Raymond Williams develops to describe the writers’ ambivalent position in the inceptive period of modernism and the avant-garde, which is bourgeois but dissident, and dissident but bourgeois. This dual position is one of the key characteristics of modernists as they strived to counter the orthodox and invent the new. As such, their works contain the potential to develop into politics of wide spectrum— from fascism to communism, from aesthetic conservativism to artistically innovative progressivism, and from solipsism to realism. Clarissa, too, as a modernist figure, occupies this double position in which she is a bourgeois but dissident and a dissident but a bourgeois. Her seeming doubleness contains, like modernism does, the potential to turn into new art, new position, and new politics.

A critique of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? reveals language that may be viewed as anti-feminist. The language used by the male characters in the play is patriarchal, hierarchical, and phallocentric in nature and reflects their desire to control and dominate women. Hence, the language used by the female characters reflects their desire to challenge the patriarchal, hierarchical and phallocentric notions of society by using phallocentric language, seduction, and by neutralizing the phallus. The language used by both sexes is therefore political because it is used to exert power and to control the opposite sex. The patriarchal nature of the play is depicted by the power and influence associated with Martha’s father. The patriarch’s power and influence permeates and controls George and Martha’s lives. The hierarchical nature of the play is reflected in the relationships between the men in the play. It is a relationship based on privilege, force, and authority. Power is transferred from Martha’s father to George and from George to Nick. And finally, the phallocentric nature of the play is represented in the language used by both the male and female characters. The influence of phallocentrism is deeply ingrained in the psyche of the men and women in the play and both sexes use language that alludes to the power associated with the phallus.

Virginia Woolf has been spotlighted recently as the god-mother of feminism. It is true that she has affirmed woman's rights in saying that they must be extended beyond household affairs and that women should share the same social status as men. Her novels continuously demand new ways of appreciation. One of those new aspects stems from the fact that her novels can be read from a post-human point of view. A big progress was made in the fields of science and technology since the 19th century, thus bringing human beings convenience and a comfortable lifestyle. And yet the progress in civilization caused pressure for autonomy and individuality. The immediate response to this was the realization that we should maintain the dignity of human beings apart from the violence of science. This is the starting point of post-humanism. Woolf seemed to be very intentional in including the conception of human nature into her novels. Characters in her novels perceive a unity of humanity only at the moments when they feel moments of being. Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse feels a moment of her existence looking at the boat on which Lamsay family was crossing the bay. She feels as if she was watching the last moments of their fates. In Mrs. Dalloway, as Sir William told Mrs. Dalloway that a man named Septimus committed suicide, Mrs. Dalloway was thinking about death for a few moments in the middle of her party, but she didn't feel she was connected to that war hero except for her fear that the sad news might damage her party and make her guests feel grave. The Waves might be more closely connected to post-humanism. Bernard was talking of the gradual coming together, running into one, acceleration and unification at the end of the novel. And we are confronted with Bernard's apocalyptic vision of a civilization lacking the unification of his previous assertion. Consequently, Woolf's novels are regarded to be containing seeds of post- humanism when viewed from Derrida's perspective. These seeds may also subvert and undermine any attempts in building a common human essence. These warning elements are clearly visible in the opposition between Virginia Stephen's wholeness of human beings and the German raiders in Moments of Being, between the revelation of Lily Briscoe on Mrs. Ramsay's lawn and the hateful atmosphere soaking the discarded remnants of the Ramsay family in the boat.

This study analyzes Virginia Woolf’s 1915 novel The Voyage Out by adopting a corpus-based stylistic methodology. Woolf scholars have not reached a consensus on how to distinguish the novel in terms of literary genre an adventure or a female domestic novel tradition, and recently this text has increasingly been defined as a failed bildungsroman due to its slow narrative development and the tragic plot in which the female protagonist dies without achieving self-fulfillment. This study intends to investigate whether a quantitative methodology can supplement the current scholarly discussion of Woolf’s novel and see if this new methodology can help analyze lengthy modern texts more efficiently and objectively. First, using Stylo software through R, I will map out the genre of The Voyage Out among a large number of 18-19th century literary texts. After testing the legitimacy of corpus-based genre classification through a detailed reading of the novel’s lexical patterns sampled through AntConc tool, this study continues to explore the stylistic characteristics of this transitional modernist text as an incomplete coming-of-age novel.

This essay aims at examining how the trauma related to time is shown artistically in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. The themes regarding ‘time’ have been widely used by a lot of modernist writers including Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust. However, most topics are focused on the subjective time based on the stream of consciousness instead of approaching the ‘being of temporality.’ The ‘temporality of time’ has the characteristics of being both undecidable and variable so that it tends to result in the ‘trauma’ that has not been discussed not publicly until recently. Therefore it is needed that how the ‘being of temporality’ and how it brings about ‘trauma’ can be shown in the literary works. When we talk about the topics of trauma in Woolf’s work, we usually pull out the discussions on ‘sexual abuse’ or ‘shell-shock’ especially in Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf has the outstanding capacity to depict how the connection between ‘being of ephemerality’ and ‘trauma’ is represented through the work while creating the main characters like Septimus Smith and Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs Dalloway. Septimus is the key exemplar to show the main ideas about the ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ namely ‘PTSD’ through his unavoidable suicide. Clarissa also plays an important role to explain her own identity as ‘being of temporality.’ In conclusion, ‘being of temporality’ comes to us as a state of strangeness, making us realize both the essence of being in the present and trauma.

This study examines how ‘the method of historical narration’ is displayed in Virginia Woolf’s The Years. It considers two main points regarding Woolf’s views of the historical novel or historiography. First, Woolf’s book is not a history but a creative historical novel composed with Woolf’s creative method of historical narration. She combines the explanation of one family history with the characteristics of modernism like ‘consciousness’ and ‘dreams.’ No other of Woolf’s works can equal The Years with reference to ‘the method of historical narration.’ This work gives us realistic facts along with artistic achievements. Second, Woolf tries to show the background of existentialism in order to deliver the feelings and attitudes of the main characters. Especially Eleanor and Peggy have the self-awareness of their beings while they wonder what their place in the world might be. It is very valuable that these attitudes also give other characters as well as themselves the possibility of energetic activities. For this reason, Eleanor tries to keep the tradition of the Pargiters in spite of giving up the role of ‘angel of history’; Peggy wishes to develop individualism for the sake of the younger generation. Therefore, this essay argues that The Years is a superior work for inspiring readers with the artistic vision and dreams of the main characters when compared with other historical works.

The purpose of this paper is to trace Bernard’s obtaining process of artistic vision and to examine the meaning of life, ‘reality’. Bernard is the central character. He summarizes the various lives of his five friends and experiences a mystic vision. When he is young, he chooses language as the tool of expressing himself. And while the other friends search their identities in school days, he shows that he has prepared for the way of an artist, elaborating his phrases. But through Percival’s death and the meeting of Hampton Court, Bernard begins to understand the relation of fact and vision. In his old age, he comprehends not only the lives of his friends but also the essence of his life. Through the process of his vision, he experiences the momentary spiritual unity with others and the nature. Also, he achieves the insight into the ultimate reality of life and death. Giving up his phrase book, he is resurrected into a new being with creative will. That is, he realizes himself as an artist.

This study focuses on the libido theory-based narcissism of Sigmund Freud in “The Legacy” written by Virginia Woolf. “The Legacy” is the story of quite a successful politician, Gilbert, who is a self-centered man, unable to concentrate his attention on anyone but himself. There are some reasons to prove he is possessed by narcissism like this. He considers his wife to be his dependency rather than an independent one, being always inferior in intelligence to him. As a narcissist, Gilbert defines others by his own standards. He thinks Sissy Miller, who has always lived as a family helping his wife with her work, is just one of many kind, dull, and small women. He even decides that the B. M. in his wife's diary is a spineless man who talks his opinions among women and has never done honest things during the day. Furthermore, he lives in a world of his own megalomania. His world is so full of distorted reality that it is impossible for him to communicate with others. Even when his wife takes one step forward in her journey to find herself, he is completely unaware of it and only thinks of himself. After all, in his world, where she is only asked for service under the name of wife, Angela chooses death. Her death is believed to give Gilbert a chance to look back on his life and re-establish a relationship with others.

Edward Albee’s represen- tations of the theme of dysfunctional family culminate in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which combines a realist critique of contemporary American culture and an absurdist interest in language games. In the manner of Samuel Beckett’s narrative construction of familial relations and Harold Pinter’s dramatization of male-female power struggles, Albee’s characters construct an imaginary family through family games. These games replace the bankrupt metanarrative of the middle-class family, substituting it with verbal practices in which George and Martha perform man and wife. Their storytelling is the single most impor- tant ingredient of the family games through which the couple “conceive” and “kill” their son and retell the stories of their own and their parents’ marriages. Albee’s family games constitute, contrary to the common assumption that they belong to the realm of illusion, a peculiarly postmodern entity that exists in the performative present and subverts the “truth”/“illusion” binarism.

This study aims to review Antonin Artaud’s ideas shown in The Theatre and Its Double and to analyze Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by using Artaud’s concept of the Theatre of Cruelty. The performance of Balinese dancers with their highly stylized ritual movements and strange music made an impression on Artaud. This was a decisive influence on his thinking the theory and doctrine of the Theatre of Cruelty. Most kinds of verbal dueling on the stage in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? have a shocking effect. Even though some critics denounced it was a filthy play, there is little disagreement that Albee’s insights into the human condition are more a bitter attack upon man. The provocation of violence in the play is the calculated one. It is against the audience itself. By undergoing a really harrowing experience, Albee believed, ultimately the audience can walk out of the vacuity and loneliness of life and can make a real relationship with other people without any pretense. George and Martha have resorted to the hostile games for 21 years, which were exposed as a negativistic delusion. To bridge the spiritual gap between them, the ritual of violence and abuse which gradually draws in their guests, Nick and Honey, and which reveals the inadequacy of their lives is essential. Through their long night’s journey into day, they progress from performance to being. Nick, as a new generation, can understand the necessity of history and Honey wants a child. Martha can lead her genuine life for herself without any aid of superficial things. This play demonstrates the cathartic principle that destruction and violence are not ends in themselves, but purge both the actors and spectators, and prepare the way for rebirth. This is why Albee sees Artaudian violence and death as life-giving.

Virginia Woolf’s vision of the city in her London essays departs from male modernists’ perceptions of a modern city. While T. S. Eliot and James Joyce often reduce the metropolis merely to a space for abstract and general psychological dramas, with their main concerns about urban evils and social pathology, Woolf does not focus on urban ugliness but embraces diverse aspects of city life and their abundance. I unfold a reading of Woolf’s London stories in parallel with Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Both writers pay attention to the heterogeneous urban space, uncovering its fascinating and unattractive in/visible cities. Their phantasmagoric vision of the city is that of a modern metropolis that cannot be unitary, standardized, unchangeable, or immortal. However, Woolf does not share Calvino’s sense of urban blues and his apocalyptic vision of the city. As an urban flaneuse, Woolf enjoys the flitting, fragmented moments of street encounters in twisted streets. She celebrates human connectedness and glorifies subversive freedom in city streets. Observed with “an enormous eye,” not the egocentric “I,” Woolf’s London emerges as a dynamic, charming space, in its bustle and chaos, coloured with her own idiosyncratic, but, at the same time, starkly realistic vision. The eye of an urban haunter marks in/visible, heterogeneous mutipli-city, layer upon layer, in London. Woolf opens up the possibility of and necessity for ceaseless narratives about the modern city. To explore the urban blessings and vitality, travelling with Woolf, might be helpful in renewing our appreciation of the 21st century metropolises. Her guidance and inspiration allow us to restore life to dying cities, while being ceaselessly attentive to urban phenomena that can be easily degenerated by our abuse.

Although Virginia Woolf’s scholarship has examined To the Lighthouse within the feminist critique of the Victorian patriarchal tradition and has critiqued Mr. Ramsay as the representative of Victorian patriarchy, Woolf puts a more essential emphasis on revising the problematic patriarchy through the male character. Woolf presents the tyrannical Mr. Ramsay first, revises his despotic masculinity in the middle, and envisions a post-Victorian masculinity through the altered Mr. Ramsay who forgets his previous preoccupations with authority at the end of the novel. Aiming to enrich current gender discussions in To the Lighthouse, this essay explores Mr. Ramsay’s domineering patriarchy in “The Window” and how it has been reconfigured in “The Lighthouse.” To do so, this essay importantly examines the single, female painter Lily Briscoe’s painting in which Lily evokes Mr. Ramsay’s gentlemanly moment in the buried past. By remembering Mr. Ramsay’s helping hand to Mrs. Ramsay in the revisited memory, Lily envisions Mr. Ramsay’s post-Victorian masculinity that forgets previous preoccupations with the patriarchal authority.

The ideal of a cosmopolitan person’s being a ‘citizen of the world’ is multifaceted encompassing both conflicts between individuality and universality, affiliations to community, family and conflicts within each of these, plus displacements from home to home. This paper attempts to analyze Woolf’s feminist and modernist works Three Guineas and Mrs. Dalloway in the context of cosmopolitanism. Among the inconsistencies and contradictions in Woolf’s works, the question of how her cosmopolitanism can be compatible with her Englishness requires also a reexamination of related topics such as her alleged anti-Semitism and patriotism. Firstly, in order to advance the study of cosmopolitanism in Woolf’s modernist literature I will compare the speculations of Kwame Anthony Appiah’s rooted cosmopolitanism and Martha Nussbaum’s Stoic cosmopolitanism. Secondly, attentive especially to her eloquent statement in Three Guineas, “As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world”, I will analyze the significance of Woolf’s contentions as to how marriage, nationality, and patriotism relate to the desire for world citizenship. Finally, in Mrs. Dalloway, focusing on the daily lives of immigrants, expatriates and foreigners living in the cosmopolitan city, London, I will interpret Woolf as being inseparably associated with feminist and pacifist patriotism and performing the ethical practice of cosmopolitanism?doing kindness to strangers?through her modernist narrative techniques and strategies.