cambridge companion Flashcards
what is social feminism
-predicated on assumptions about the differences between men and women and on the belief that womens values and skills are excluded in male dominated societies
Woolfs experiences of sexual abuse and how this is reflected in her work
- victim of sexual abuse by her two Half brothers , George and Gerald Duckworth
- critics have drawn attention to how trauma markers drawn from memories of her sexual violation appear throughout woolfs fiction
- male sexual violation is used as a weapon against womens political agendas (hugh forces a kiss upon sally for saying women should have the vote)
what does Woolf explore in Three Guineas (1938) regarding sexuality and war
-woolf traces the origin of war to men’s socialised habits of sexual dominance and violence. she suggests that to end the war gendered desire (male eroticism) must be transformed
other texts in whcih woolf explores hetrosexual seduction as dangerous and degrading for women
- voyage out (Rachel dies rather than to succumb to Hewets courtship
- between acts: isa is compared to a salmon when in love (hooked and caught)
empire and sexuality
-Woolf connects female masochistic sexual desires with the Empire, Delia marries an empire loving country gentleman in the years, peter lives in india
what did lesbian love signify for woolf
-sexual preference
personal transformation
-literary inspiration
-political resistance
woolf on sexuality (from her diary)
-she talked about ‘much preferring my own sex’
and ‘how much nicer young women are than young men’
woolf and leonards marriage
-very similar to clarissa’s and dalloways: affectionate, grounded in mutual respect and shared work, BUT not sexually passionate
woolf’s diary about her nights with vita and passages you can link it to in mrs d
-‘the june nights are long and warm; the roses flowering, and the garden full of lust and bees, mingling in the asparagus beds’
-the flowers have come, and they are adorable, dusky, tortured, passionate like you’
‘like a match burning in a crocus’ (35)
‘sally went out picked holly hocks, dahlias- all sorts of flowers that had never been seen together’
what was mrs dalloway partially for woolf
-a coming out narrative inspired by the heydays of vita and virginias courtship
when did virginia meet vita
1922
attitudes to homosexuality
- male homosexuality illegaluntil 1967
- Oscar wilde convited in 1895 for ‘act of gross indecency’
- attitudes towards lesbianism were less rigid, not offically a crimanl offence
- often reffered to herself as a saphhist
- drew upon hellenistic ideals of homosexuality (erotic sensibility, friendship alliances, and self and political transformation
