The Presentation Of ?The Male? And Androgyny In Virginia Woolf?s Feminist Writings Essay, Research Paper

The central problem of Feminism is as

follows: what is ?the female?? How to define the female, and whether difference

or equality should be stressed; whether women are a single entity or whether

such identification is complicit with gender stereotyping? Feminist radical

H?l?ne Cixous ably illustrates the paradox of trying to affirm intense

solidarity and intense diversity in the same ideology: ?there is?no general

woman, no one typical woman. What they have in

common I will say. But what strikes me is the infinite richness of their

individual constitutions: you can?t talk about a female sexuality, uniform,

homogenous, classifiable.?[1]

Cixous is turned upon by her own overblown rhetoric, since if there is infinite diversity, there can logically

be no finite unity. If there is no

one definition of woman, if they transcend all classification, then Feminism

becomes a meaningless movement, a cipher. As de Beauvoir notes: ?Are there women,

really??[2]This is much the same problem as any

oppressed group has. If they accept difference, then they have also accepted

the initial terms of the oppressor. If they decry difference, and advocate

sameness, then they lose the identity for which they are fighting. In any

feminist writings, therefore, the portrayal of masculinity is of crucial, but

often overlooked, importance. It is unsurprising, therefore, that there is some

ambiguity and ambivalence in the feminist writings of Woolf; vacillating between

the poles of equality and difference.Her first major Feminist essay, A Room of One?s Own, presents an

androgynous ideal by simply denying that men exist:?in each of us

two powers preside, one male, one female; and in the man?s brain the man predominates

over the woman, and in the woman?s brain the woman predominates over the man.

The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony

together, spiritually co-operating.? (A

Room of One?s Own, p.88)This androgyny is the obvious culmination

of the equality ideal. We see it in Woolf?s consistent points: that women

should be granted access to education, to professions and to literature.

Material wealth is also seen as a pivotal consideration, and the disparity

between sons and daughters and husbands and wives is emphasised.? She decides that the best writers are those

who do not think about their gender, and relegates the ?pitting of sex against

sex?[3]

as a childish throwback. Marcus[4]

makes the accurate point that a male reader, unless he wishes to associate with

the collection of misogynists, can only have one male figure with which to

relate: the incandescent mind of Shakespeare. Whilst in itself a rather

seductive idea, Shakespeare has been ?de-gendered? and the male reader is

seduced into accepting Woolf?s ideal of a interleaved sexual mind. On a subtle

level, Woolf has presented an emotive, convincing but ultimately hollow

argument; fallaciously polarising masculinity into either misogyny or

androgyny.? Nevertheless the ideal is an attractive

one; to ?see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in

relation to reality.?[5]

Later feminists, including Bowlby in Feminist

Directions, have criticised Woolf for denying the subjectivity and

diversity of female experience: a sentiment that would no doubt be echoed by

Cixous, for whom the dissolution of gender differences is tantamount to

offering oneself in sexual subjugation. This alternative strategy ? that of

difference ? is taken up rather more keenly by Woolf in Three Guineas. Although there is the same three-point

manifesto for equality ? education, profession, literature; Woolf searchingly

questions the ideological roots of each. In her consideration of a female

college in Cambridge, she concludes that its highest goal should be to burn

down the edifice of traditional education ? ?an experimental college, an

adventurous college.?[6]

She also has grave reservations about the professions, believing they may

corrupt women into self-seeking and aggressive capitalists. The ideal income is

said to be pitched between poverty and wealth. Finally, she warns against the

cultural prostitution of those writers and artists who adulterate the ?purity?

of their intellectual endeavour by submission to the socio-economic machinery

of production: ?publishers, editors, lecture agents and so on who bribe me to

write or to speak what I do not want to.?[7]

This is a militant and radical political bent to the feminist agenda of

difference.She also provisionally concedes the unity

of the sexes in private, but switches rapidly to the political side and affirms

that the abuses of the public life are firmly rooted in the unspoken tyranny of

the private house. Indeed, she enlists a rather inexact variant of Freudianism

in the idea of an ?infantile fixation? to support the hypothesis. Similarly,

she declares the death of Feminism, yet proceeds to advocate (cached

unavoidably in the language of paradox, perhaps) a progressive society of

outsiders: an anti-society. Despite these ambiguities, which are rooted in the

equality/difference dilemma of Feminism (to integrate or to overthrow), it is

apparent that Woolf had progressed far closer to a quasi-revolutionary ideal of

difference:?Our

country?throughout the greater part of its history has treated me as a slave,

it has denied me education or any share in its possessions. ?Our? country still

ceases to be mine if I marry a foreigner. ?Our? country denies me the means of

protecting myself, forces me to pay others a very large sum annually to protect

me?if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ?our? country, let it be

understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify

a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not

shared and probably will not share.? (A

Room of One?s Own, p.234)Could such a volatile affirmation of the

female outsider status ? ?different sex, a different tradition, a different

education and the different values?[8]

? really grow out of the androgyny ideal? The answer is no: if we return to A Room of One?s Own, we see it is

subject to the same contradictions and ambiguities as Three Guineas.For an essay that purports to celebrate the

mind of androgyny, the sexless writer, Woolf paradoxically elevates the

Victorian women novelists as pioneers of a female tradition: ?they wrote as

women write, not as men write.?[9]

How can one reconcile ?that is a man?s sentence?unsuited for a women?s use?[10]

with ?it is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex.?[11]

Woolf?s own tentative defence is that the contemporary era is a ?sex-conscious?

one in which writers? work is ?compartmentalized?, yet that contradicts her

earlier analysis of pre-Victorian female literature where female writers were

considered ridiculous and insane. Is that not ?sex-consciousness?? Bowlby[12]

makes a better defence, which sees androgyny as one of a series of gender

identities: male, female, queer, lesbian and so forth. Yet the question is not

answered, merely deferred: is literature supposed to be conscious or unconscious

of gender identities? The idea of this sexual freedom is also underminded by

the attack mounted on Oscar Browning, a gay man: ?the reference?implies a link

between misogyny and homosexuality and might thus be seen as somewhat

homophobic on Woolf?s part.?[13]Thus, despite the rhetoric of androgyny and

equality, Woolf was heavily committed to the ideal of difference; a stance

which hardened by the time she came to write Three Guineas. Women are to be defined in contradistinction, even

in resistance, to men. Woolf is, perhaps understandably, far from

charitable to men. As already mentioned, they are personified as a series of

misogynists ? the Beadle, the librarian, the writers who?s books line the

shelves of the British museum and the society figures who uphold the bastions

of education, the professions and literature. The male reader is corralled into

identifying with the sexually ambiguous figure of Shakespeare. Woolf?s image of

masculinity culminates in? ?Professor

von X. engaged in writing his monumental work The Mental, Moral and Physical Inferiority of the Female Sex.?[14]This tendency is accented in Three Guineas. Woolf ruthlessly points

out the tyrannies of the patriarchy; the male control of institutions:

education, professions, the civil service, literature, culture, science, the

military, property, marriage and the family. The patriarchal society and its

institutions are condemned to failure; indicted by the ugly brutality of

warfare, the myth and trappings of which endlessly fascinate the male gender.

Whilst male society has been dragging civilisation to the trenches of Belgium

and the valleys of Andaluc?a, women have been universally oppressed.? Unable to own property or wealth,

sacrificing their own education for that of their brothers, bringing up

children unpaid, women have been forced to submit to the yoke of father and

then husband. It is a wide-ranging, and fierce critique: ?you shall not earn,

you shall not learn, you shall not ? such was the society relationship of

brother to sister for many centuries.?[15]

Again, Woolf works up to a culminating image, associating masculinity with

Fascism:?It is the

figure of a man; some say, others deny, that he is Man himself, the

quintessence of virility, the perfect type of which all the others are imperfect

adumbrations. He is a man certainly. His eyes are glazed; his eyes glare. His

body, which is braced in an unnatural position is tight cased in a uniform.

Upon the breast of that uniform are sewn several medals and other mystic

symbols. His hand is upon a sword. He is called in German and Italian F?hrer or

Duce; in our language Tyrant or Dictator.? (Three

Guineas, p.270)On the crucial question, Woolf vacillates.

Does the symbol stand for a particular type of man, or does he stand for

universal man? There is no clear answer. Woolf does, on a number of occasions,

talk of universal liberty for all classes, all genders and all races. Yet the

unconscious is surely no respecter of class, infantile fixation presumably

implicating all fathers. She speaks

too of the relationship between siblings, which again must transcend class

boundaries, and implicate all men into the oppression of women. Of men

themselves, only the atheist philosopher Betrand Russell and poet Wilfred Owen

are cited as outside the patriarchy, and they are not seen as anecdotal

representatives, but rather isolated individuals. Woolf from the start

identifies a militaristic solidarity that spans different classes: ?the

Scarborough Conference of educated men, the Bournemouth Conference of working

men are both agreed.?[16]It must be said that Woolf does not engage

with questions of class or race very deeply. Nationality is dismissed in an

exaltation of Feminist internationalism: perhaps the women of colonised nations

such as Ireland might disagree on such an issue. The essays are also

occasionally marred with a hint of racism. Her class interest is unrelentingly

bourgeoisie ? educated men and women only – and the working class get the

barest of rhetorical recognition. Her plan to provide state wages for mothers

is rather chillingly fascist itself, since it is noted that mothers of the

working classes do not receive wages, since their sons and daughters are not

considered to be as useful to society. Woolf?s ideological integrity is

instantly bought into question. It is also worth considering whether the

oppression of a Victorian marriage, however degrading and indefensible it is,

can really be compared with the exploits of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.Why does Woolf remain so ambiguous as to

whether masculinity or patriarchy is being indicted as fascist? It is, as

always, a question of identity: ?it seems both wrong for us rationally and

impossible for us emotionally to fill up your form and join your society. For

by so doing we would merge our identity in yours, follow and repeat and score

still deeper the old worn ruts.?[17]

Feminism, Woolf feels, needs resistance to define itself. This is clearly

apparent in her prevarication in this equality/difference dilemma. As an

intelligent and perceptive writer, she realises that masculinity is not a

single stereotyped entity, but deeply fragmented by class, sexuality, race,

profession and politics. Yet Feminism thrives on the homogenized idea of ?the

male?, the illusion that all men are patriarchal oppressors, and all are

equally implicated in the crimes of the upper classes. It is easier to espouse

a cause when you have demonised all who are different to you. This is the

other, and largely unacknowledged, side to the dilemma of Feminist writing: how

to avoid falling into demeaning generalisations that, if reversed, would be

seen as the gross examples of male prejudice. Woolf, and other feminists, faced the same

problems as the revolutionaries and nationalists in colonised nations. To

achieve a true identity, they had to first pass through an uneasy stage where

they were complicit with, but trying to overthrow, the ?us vs. them? polarity first put in place by the coloniser. In

Woolf?s writing, we see a similar transitional stage in Feminism, where to

acknowledge the diversity of male experience would be to undermine the identity

of the female. Woolf, trapped between the equally unsatisfactory poles of

equality and difference, had little choice but to bracket out anything but the

Victorian patriarchy, and show masculinity as an image and a stereotype. BibliographyVirginia Woolf, A Room of One?s Own and Three

Guineas, ed.Mich?le Barrett (London, 1993) Jane Marcus, Virginia Woolf And The Languages of Patriarchy (Indiana, 1987) Rachel Bowlby, Feminist Directions and Further Essays on Virginia Woolf

(Edinburgh, 1997) Literature

in the Modern World, ed.Dennis Walder (Oxford,

1990) [1] H?l?ne Cixous, The Laugh of

the Medusa (1976) collected in Literature

in the Modern World, ed. Dennis Walder (1990) [2] Simone de Beauvoir, Women and

the Other (1949), collected in Walder. [3] A Room of One?s Own,

collected in A Room of One?s Own/Three

Guineas ed. Mich?le Barrett (1993) p.95 [4] Jane Marcus, The Languages of

Patriarchy (1987) [5] A Room of One?s Own,

collected in Barrett p.102 [6] Three Guineas, collected

in Barrett, p.155 [7] Ibid. p.219 [8] Ibid. p.239 [9] A Room of One?s Own,

collected in Barrett, p.68 [10] Ibid, p.69 [11] Ibid. p.94 [12] Rachel Bowlby, Feminist

Directions and Further Essays on Virginia Woolf (1997) [13] Mich?le Barrett, Notes to

A Room of One?s Own, collected in

Barrett, p.109 [14] A Room of One?s Own,

collected in Barrett, p.28 [15] Three Guineas, collected

in Barrett, p.230 [16] Ibid., p.123 [17] Ibid. p.231