Feminist Body, Feminist Mind: A Comparative Analysis of Hélène Cixous and Virginia Woolf 1

Part One: Virginia Woolf
By Tricia Ares

Feminism is an ideology that is increasingly difficult to define. Like many critical theories, feminism has developed into a diversified movement with varieties that include cultural-feminism, eco-feminism, and even anarcho-feminism. When addressing the changes that have occurred, it is important to remember that these varieties did not develop within a vacuum. The evolution of feminist philosophy is intertwined with social, economic, and political history. As opportunities and obligations change for women, so does feminist ideology. In her essay on twentieth-century female literature, Harriet Blodgett notes that the feminist movement evolved from “an emphasis on combating injustice, inequity, and social conditioning to an essentialist lauding of women’s inherent qualities and roles they empower,” (264).

The transition of feminism and its relation to historical context can be illustrated through a comparison of two innovative writers, Hélène Cixous and Virginia Woolf. Both were born around the turn of the century: Hélène Cixous in 1937 and Virginia Woolf 1882. Although separated by a mere generation, their approaches to feminism are remarkably different. It is important to view these changes not as a fragmentation of feminism, but as a gendered quest for identity.

Woolf was only 7 years old when Emmeline Pankhurst founded theWomen’s Franchise Leaguein 1889, marking the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement in England. Woolf was educated by her father at their family home in Hyde Park Gate. Her own educational experiences may have been formative in her passionate argument for women’s equal access to education. In fact, when columnist ‘Affable Hawk’ agreed with Arnold Bennett’s assertion that “women are inferior to men in intellectual power” Woolf fired back with a letter to the editor stating that “the advance in intellectual power seems to me not only sensible but immense . . . and the effects of education and liberty scarcely to be overrated.” (Writing 56)

Woolf revisits this educational inequity in the opening of her 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own. In this fictionalized autobiographical account, Woolf writes:

Ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction (Room 8 ).

A Room of One’s Own satirically addresses the obstacles and prejudices encountered by women writers. With this novel, Woolf attempts to define women’s place in literary history. When researching the subject of women and writing at the British Museum, the narrator asks:

Have you any idea how many books are written about women in the course of a year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe? (Room 26)

By insisting that women should be allowed to take up the cause of writing, she was advocating the development of woman as the speaking subject of text, rather than the mere object of masculine literature.

In her essay “Women and Fiction,” Woolf argued that established literary values where masculine values, since men established the conventions. She also argued that men and women have different values, and therefore women would continue to feel haunted by the desire to subvert those conventions; “to make serious what appears insignificant to a man, and to make insignificant what seems important” (Writing 49).

Masculine form sought to reign in feminine rhetoric which was criticized for being irrational and unorganized. Woolf illustrates this idea in a scene from Mrs. Dalloway. In an attempt to get her letter published in the Times, Mrs. Dalloway first submits her writing to Hugh Whitbread for revision:

Hugh began carefully writing capital letters with rings around them in the margin, and thus marvelously reduced Lady Burton’s tangles to sense.(Dalloway 110)

In Thomas J. Farrell’s work on gendered rhetoric, he notes that feminine writing often feels less processed and controlled as it recreates the natural thought process, leading the reader “through a set of experiences and/or reasoning” (909). This is the structure that Hugh Whitbread tries to ‘untangle.’ As Hugh revises Mrs. Dalloway’s letter, he begins “drafting sentiments in alphabetical order of the highest nobility” (Dalloway 110).

In “Women and Fiction” Woolf notes that even before women can sit down and write as they wish, they must first address the technical difficulty of the masculine sentence structure. “[I]t is too loose, too heavy, too pompous” (Writing 48).

Woolf develops her idea of what is feminine by contrasting it against what is masculine. Hers is an ideology of difference, but not a biological one. She makes it clear through the course of her writing that patriarchal conventions are to blame for the oppression of women. She charges the ultra-conservative customs of masculine society with shaming women into submission.

In her essay “Professions for Women,” Woolf discusses the influence of Victorian expectations on her own creative process. From her earliest journalistic endeavors, Woolf discovered that she would “need to do battle with a certain phantom . . . The Angel in the House” (Writing 58). Woolf describes her struggle with this imagined icon of sympathy, charm and self-sacrifice, a mythical opponent that constant tries to “pluck the heart out” of her writing. This phantom of female respectability vigilantly hovers in her writing experience, cautioning her to be “tender” and to “flatter” and deceive.” Woolf recognizes ‘The Angel of the House’ as a masculine construct, but one that is so deeply ingrained into her social environment that it is hard to escape as it cautions her to “[n]ever let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own” (Writing 58).

Woolf notes that it is impossible to pursue writing as a profession without “having a mind of your own” and without “expressing what you think to be the truth” (Writing 58). This is the basis of Woolf’s brand of feminism: independent and critical thinking—especially about language. For Woolf, power is in language. The relationship between ideology and language is best illustrated in Woolf’s work Three Guineas:

Woolf’s particular rhetorical strategy . . . implicitly distinguishes between denotation and connotation, between lexical definition and contextual meaning, and . . . explicitly connects language and power. (Middleton 406)

  In Three Guineas, Woolf utilizes the epistolary format which emphasizes dialogue; an informal and personal style that is now considered a key element of the feminine mode. Published in 1938, Three Guineas is a sequel to A Room of One’s Own that was nearly a decade in the making. The delay was the result of her own inhibitions. She was proud of Three Guineas but afraid of the social and political backlash. It appears the ‘Angel’ was at work again.

In part one, Woolf again addresses women’s education. Woolf begins by addressing the superficial appearance of social equality. She notes that both the barrister and herself are members of the ‘educated class’ and that they both earn a living through their own professions, however Woolf continues by pointing out the discrepancies in their education and pay, as well as the consequences:

But . . . those three dots mark a precipice, a gulf so deeply cut between us that for three years and more I have been sitting on my side of it wondering whether it is any use to try to speak across it.

With this statement, Woolf asks the implied question: How will men and women effectively engage in meaningful communication when they do not have a common frame of reference? At the same time she challenges the ideological assumptions that created the gap. If patriarchal power structures define the political, social and economic parameters in which women must operate, then the segregation of women from these power structures will make it difficult for them to be successful as defined by it. If patriarchal and matriarchal ideologies are inherently different, the language used to describe reality will need to be altered in order to accommodate equality.

As noted previously, Woolf defended the difference between masculine and feminine modes of rhetoric. As a writer who manipulates language, she argues against inherent truth and singularity of definition.  For Woolf, language is pluralistic. In a BBC interview from 1937, Woolf explains why the English lexicon can not be reduced to static definitions:

Words, English words are full of echoes, memories, of associations. They’ve been out and about on people’s lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields for so many centuries, and that is one of the chief difficulties in writing today. They are stored with other meanings, with other memories.And they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.

Woolf uses this metaphor of marriage to illustrate the promiscuity of her native tongue. “Royal words mate with commoners. English words marry French words, German words, Indian words, Negro words . . .” The true power of words, however, is the fact that “a word is not a singular and separate entity. It is part of other words.” Here Woolf understands what later literary critics would term the ‘integrated approach’ to writing. Woolf did not separate process and product, but realized that writing and reading operated as a dialect in which both the reader and writer constructed meaning together.

Woolf’s method of feminist discourse was very analytical. She believed that by advancing the feminine intellect, woman would achieve independence and equality by rewriting social conditioning.

 

Works Cited

 

Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2001. 2039-2056.

Cixous, Hélène. Rootprints. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Crowder, Diane Griffin. “Amazons and Mothers? Monique Wittig, Hélène Cixous, and Theories of Women’s Writing. Contemporary Literature. 24.2 (1983): 117-144. JSTOR. Mercy College Lib., New York. 27 July 2006 <http://www.jstor.org>

 

Farrell, Thomas J. College English. 40.8 (1979): 909-921. JSTOR. Mercy College Lib., New York. 18 July 2006 <http://www.jstor.org>

Jones, Ann Rosalind. “Writing the Body: Toward an Understanding of L’Ecriture Feminine” Feminist Studies. 7.2 (1981): 247-263. JSTOR. Mercy College Lib., New York. 27 July 2006 <http://www.jstor.org>

Middleton, Victoria. “Three Guineas: Subversion and Survival in the Professions.” Twentieth Century Literature. 28.4 (1982). 405-417. JSTOR. Mercy College Lib., New York. 27 July 2006 <http://www.jstor.org>

Murdock, Maureen. The Heroine’s Journey. Boston: Shambhala, 1990.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1981.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1981.

Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. TheUniversity of Adelaide Library Electronic Texts Collection.  2 Aug. 2006 <http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91tg/>

Woolf, Virginia. Women and Writing. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1979