Feminism and Insanity in Virginia Woolfs Work Essay -- Biography Biog

Feminism and Insanity in Virginia Woolfs Work The critical discussion revolving around the heraldic bearing of mystical elements in Virginia Woolfs work is sparse. Yet it seems to revolve rather neatly around two poles. The first being a preoccupation with the notion of craze and insanity in Woolfs work and the second focuses on the political ramifications of mystical encounters. More specifically, Woolfs religious mysticism reflects on her feminist ideals and notions.Even though she ultimately associates Woolfs inciter of mysticism with the 19th century Theosophists, she continually refers to the specific encounters in Woolfs work as natural mysticism (Kane 329). I contend that this brand of natural mysticism can be separated from the more traditional encounters, telepathy, auras, astral travel, synesthesia, reincarnation, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a Universal Mind (329). sequence only Madeleine Moore truly begins to draw the banknote between the tw o brands of mysticism that permeate Woolfs work, others delineate one category without acknowledging the other.Val Gough, in discussing the ironic aspects of many of Woolfs mystical encounters, introduces the inherently politicized aspects of the topic. He argues that Woolf as a writer was concerned to set up a relation with the reader which...brings an alternative form of mystical experience into being (Gough 86). This subversive, sceptical mysticism introduces, with the inherently politicized nature of irony, a feminist challenging of rigid structures of phallic (and imperialist) power, thus making it a mysticism of subversive, politically critical, feminist irony (89). While his presentation of Woolfs ironic mysticism is certainly ... ...lar Mrs. Dalloway.Works Cited Gough, Val. With Some Irony in Her Interrogation Woolfs Ironic Mysticism. Virginia Woolf and the Arts. New York Pace University Press, 1997.Kane, Julie. Varieties of Mystical Experience in the Writings of Virgi nia Woolf. 20th Century Literature Vol 41 Iss 4 (1995) 328-349. Minow-Pinsky, Makiko. How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously, fraily A psychoanalytical Interpretation of Woolfs Mysticism. Virginia Woolf and the Arts. New York Pace University Press, 1997.Moore, Madeleine. The Short Season Between Two Silences. Winchester, Mass Allen & Unwin 1984.Smith, Susan Bennett. Reinventing Grief Work Virginia Woolfs Feminist Representations of Mourning in Mrs. Dalloway and To The Lighthouse Twentieth Century Literature Vol 41 Iss 4 (1995) 310-327