Virginia Woolf and bell hooks:

1
Virginia Woolf and bell hooks

• A Dialogue on Female Creativity
• ENGL 250 / WMST 255
• 1 February 2005

2
Points in Common

• An emphasis on the cultural and historical
  repression of women writers
• An assumption that literature and literary
  history are shaped by the interactions of
  language, gender, and class.
• A critique of the myth of the author as sovereign
  and solitary and of his perspective as
  universal and male. (See Woolf on Shakespeares
  sister p. 38 and on masterpieces p. 47 see
  hooks on the importance of legacy, allies,
  support p. 76.)

3
An Important Difference

• Woolf tends to emphasize class, where hooks
  emphasizes race. Specifically, hooks is
  interested in making sure that African-American
  womens speech has power and authority. Note
  hookss use of the term terrorism to describe
  the social processes that suppress womens voices.

4
A Room of Ones OwnKey Points and Strategies

• Room as polemic a vigorously argumentative
  work, setting forth its authors attitudes on a
  highly controversial subject (A Handbook to
  Literature, 3rd edition). Important precursors
  Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of
  Women (1792) and John Stuart Mill, The Subjection
  of Women (1869). But its also a polemic written
  in a witty, conversational style that is in
  itself an act of feminist critiqueof the dry,
  rational, objective style of masculine argument.

5
The Context of Room

• Published in 1929
• Woolf an accomplished novelist, critic, and
  publisher, with her husband Leonard, of Sigmund
  Freud, T.S. Eliot, and others. Also an advocate
  for womens suffrage.
• The tumultuous period between WWI and WWII the
  battle for the vote and the rise of fascism in
  Europe.

6
Rooms Major Questions

• What do women need in order to create?
• Historically, what barriers have prevented women
  from reaching their creative potential?
• What might womens writing become in the future?
  
• (From Longman, p.15)

7
Things to Love and Remember about Room

• The fishing for thought metaphor (p. 17)
• Lunch at Oxbridge (pp. 19-20) vs. dinner at
  Fernham (pp. 23-4)
• The way the war keeps intruding, finding its way
  into the discussion (e.g., pp. 20-22)
• Woolfs emphasis on the need for physical space
  (a room), material support (money), and community
  (friends, mentors, precursors) to make creativity
  possible

8
A Big Thing

• Her effort to confront and deconstruct the
  masculinism and misogyny of patriarchal
  cultureher survey of books on women by men (pp.
  27-32) of hostile responses to creative women
  (pp. 41-42)

9
Things continued

• Women as looking-glasses (pp. 32-3)which takes
  us into the psychological dynamics of patriarchy
• Her feminist critique of history and her call for
  a re-write, a supplement, a gathering up of the
  scattered bits of knowledge about womens lives
  (p. 37)
• Her wonderful Judith Shakespeare (pp. 38-9) and
  the theory that womens creativity often led to
  madness or suicide
• Anon. . .was often a woman (p. 39)

10
More Things

• Her theory of the incandescent mind (p. 43)of
  the need for a mind free from anger and
  impediment. Is this the same as the
  androgynous mind she discusses later on (p.
  64)?
• Her sketch of a feminist literary history (pp.
  43-54). Note her emphasis on the middle-class
  woman beginning to write, her comparison of Jane
  Austen and Charlotte Bronte, her insistence on
  the importance of tradition For we think back
  through our mothers if we are women (p. 53).

11
Some Tricky Things

• Consider Woolfs comments on gender and language
  on pp. 53-54. Should we take literally her
  suggestion that womens books should be shorter
  because the book has somehow to be adapted to
  the body?
• Why does she make so much of the sentence Chloe
  liked Olivia (p. 56)?

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Tricky Things continued

• What do you make of Woolfs ending? (pp. 67-72)
  Think about the shift in voice, the effort to
  forestall criticism, the comments on women on the
  bottom of p. 70, and the return of Judith
  Shakespeare at the very end.