Androgyny: Virginia Woolfs Androgynous Mind - Speech or Presentation Example

? Androgyny: Virginia Woolf?s androgynous mind In psychology and most importantly in the society, male and female genders have been conceptualized astwo polar ends of single field. According to this point of view an individual is either male or female. But in reality human society has observed a situation where an individual possess properties of both male and female (Bem, 155). An individual having characteristics of both male and female is said to be an androgynous person. The word androgyny comes from the Greek word androgynos which means “man-woman”. For humans, an androgynous individual is the one who does not fit clearly into either masculine or feminine characteristics of their society (Margaret, 56). Various theories have been developed to explain the nature of an androgynous individual. Various writers have included the concept in their literatures. This paper focuses on one such writer’s written examples and the use of the concept in those writings. This paper focuses on famous English author, novelist Virginia Woolf’s writings. Virginia Woolf and androgyny: Virginia Woolf, one of the most eminent female writers of all time, used the concept of androgyny in her writings. Woolf understood the concept very keenly and used it in most of her famous novels through an artist character. Her first three novels, The Voyage Out (1915), Night and Day (1919), and Jacob's Room (1922), did not have any character having the characteristics of both male and female. But she introduced the novel Mrs. Dalloway in 1925 where she used the concept of androgyny (Wolford, 1). Virginia Woolf has theorized the concept of androgyny as the reconciliation of opposites. She used the concept as “the unity and wholeness of a human mind” (Nunning, 7). According to Virginia Woolf an androgynous mind possess elements of famine and masculine characteristics and hence forms a complete integrated personality. In this regard she used the idea of androgyny not as just the merge of feminism and masculinity characteristics, rather as the equality or the equal interaction of characteristics of both male and female in the same mind. Woolf used the concept of androgynous mind as a mind where both famine and masculine features exist being cooperated and balanced. In the essay ‘A Room of One’s Own’ she said that "The normal and comfortable state of being is when the male and female halves of the brain] live in harmony together, spiritually cooperating. If one is a man, still the feminine part of the brain has some effect; and the woman must also have intercourse with the man in her" (Wolford 1). She believed that every character in the world possesses an androgynous mind; with the male characteristics of being concrete with the facts and realities and full of self beliefs and female characteristics of being more structurally creative. She also agreed that androgyny is a nothing but another form of repression or most importantly, self-discipline (Wolford 1). The main reason that she has pointed out behind using the concept of androgyny in her writings was related to the necessity of having an androgynous mind to become fully creative. She regarded it to be more mature and complete for those having an androgynous mind compared to those having either masculine or famine mind or masculine and feminine way of thinking or feeling. She opined that to be creative in writing both opposite characteristics have to work together in the writer’s mind. She also praised androgynous mind as the ideal state of mind where the author cannot be biased against any particular gender and where both the opposed features work in harmony. She used all these concepts in her writings. For instance, in her famous essay ‘A Room of One’s Own’ she used a typical scene in London where a man and a woman (both genders) come together in a taxi to describe this reconciliation of opposites (Nunning, 7-20). She used the concept of androgynous mind to point out the social context of her time related to shell shock, war, and class of the society. Her best-known work ‘A Room of One’s Own’ depicted the difficulties that female authors were facing during that time due to the dominance of men in terms of education and economic power of that time. Hence, Woolf’s writings were mainly the transformation of the cultural knowledge that was prevailing at that time (Greene, 353-359). Woolf’s writings and androgyny: Woolf used the concept of androgyny in most of her remarkable novels and essays. Mrs. Dalloway and ‘A Room of One’s Own’ are two of those remarkable works. In most of her novels she portrayed artist characters possessing the distinguishing properties of androgynous individualism. These artist characters had combinations of features of two different minds or mindsets. In ‘A Room of One's Own’ she used androgynous mind as opposed to biological traits of androgyny. In this essay she introduced the concept of androgyny for the first time. When she described her understanding of androgyny, she used it as “a literal sexual imagery of intercourse between the manly and womanly powers of the mind” (Wolford, 2). In fact in this essay androgyny was used as a metaphor. It was used as a way to control aggressive feminine characteristics and male sexuality (Hargreaves, 2). In this essay expressed her view not to abandon the heterosexual binary structure (Hargreaves, 26). In ‘A Room of One’s Own’ she expressed her androgynous mind to discuss all the material barriers that women of that time were facing to produce literature. She also expressed the barriers faced by women in actual life as well their barriers of mind. Hence, she used her androgynous mind in the essay. In the essay she concluded that a secure life for a woman with 500 pounds of annual income and a lockable door will give that woman the power to thing for herself, help a lot to recover in her mind the androgynous qualities of it and hence restore naturally creative power in herself. She used this concept to show the feelings of an androgynous mind to express its viewpoints on women’s inequality in the society of that time (Gregoriou, 1). In the novel Mrs. Dalloway, she portrayed a character named Clarissa Dalloway who possesses an androgynous mind with both masculine and famine characteristics. Clarissa Dalloway tries to create a sense of unity in her own mind and also a similar kind of sense in the surrounding environment (which is cleared at the end when she gives a party) (Wolford, 2). When the Clarissa Dalloway enters into the domestic field of her life she starts to feel like a woman and her famine characteristics dominate her male characteristics. But when she enters into the outside world, she starts to feel like a man, with supreme self-beliefs and dominating power. This was one of the cases where her androgynous mind came into the writings (Wolford, 3-5). Even in a letter written to her sister Woolf expressed her sentiments saying the dual nature of male and female characteristics and the rapid and regular interaction between those feminine and masculine characteristics are extremely sensitive and emotional (Hargreaves, 18). According to Carolyn Heilbrun, To the Lighthouse is Woolf best novel in terms of use of androgyny. In this novel femininity and death have been shown as the conditions for androgyny (Hargreaves, 38). Critical reception from other authors: Woolf first appearance with the concept of androgyny in ‘A Room of One’s Own’ received many criticisms. Some critics loved the use of the concept; but some have rejected it. Carolyn Heilbrun and Nancy Topping Bazin actually loved the use of androgyny by Woolf. They have argued that in Woolf’s writings androgyny was a balance as well as union between two opposite entities. This gave a convincing pattern of life. However, others including Elaine Showalter and Lisa Rado have found androgyny in Woolf’s writings as an endeavor to escape from the famine characteristics. Daniel Harris and Barabara Charlesworth Gelpi have viewed it as a “sexist myth in disguise” that perpetuates the principle of phallogocentrism, which the androgyny seeks to deconstruct. According to Julia Kristeva and Francette Pacteau this was an idea of self-destructing narcissism. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Edward Carpenter, Havelock Ellis, Otto Weininger, and Sigmund Freud all have argued that the use of androgyny by Woolf came up with the existence of a third sex where both male and female characteristics came together in one body. Freud named it as “homosexual” mind (Wright, 1-3). Conclusion: Despite all these criticisms it can be said that the use of the concept of androgyny by Virginia Woolf was prominent and perfectly contextual. Woolf, like other female authors, did not on her own experiences of female lives knowing that finally men will judge her works. Rather Woolf tried to equate men with the universal. Woolf wanted to clear the fact that androgyny is nothing but a capacity of an human being to possess all human characteristics of both male and female despite the cultural attempts to provide either of the two extreme characteristics. In this regard it can be said that Woolf’s use of androgyny was quite justifiable from her point of view. References: 1. Bem, Sandra L. “THE MEASUREMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL ANDROGYNY”, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, (1974), 42, 2, 155-162, December 28, 2011 from http://www.ekgp.ugent.be/pages/nl/vragenlijsten/Scoring_BEM.pdf 2. Farwell, Marilyn R. “VIRGINIA WOOLF AND ANDROGYNY”, Contemporary Literature (JSTORE), (1975), 16, 4, 433-451 3. Greene, Sally. “Virginia Woolf in Performance”, Women’s Studies, (1999), 28, 353-359 4. Gregoriou, Zelia. “Writing Where the Poles of the Worlds Meet, Inventing Identities Where There's No Room of One's Own: Virginia Woolf and Early Modern Women Writers”, PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION SOCIETY, (1995), December 31, 2011 from http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/PES-Yearbook/95_docs/gregoriou.html 5. Hargreaves, Tracy. “Virginia Woolf and Twentieth Century Narratives of Androgyny”, University of London, (1994), Ph.D. Dissertation paper, December 28, 2011 from https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/jspui/handle/123456789/1444 6. Margaret, Anderson. “ANDROGYNY”, December 28, 2011 from http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/Androgyn.pdf 7. Nunning, Vera Und Ansgar. “Virginia Woolf”, (1991), Germany: Junius Verlag GmbH 8. Wolford, Jenn. “Virginia Woolf: A Shift From Androgyny to Anonymity in the Artist Figure”, (n.d.), December 28, 2011 from http://dspace.centre.edu:8080/jspui/bitstream/123456789/275/1/wolford_jenn.pdf 9. Wright, Elizabeth. “Re-evaluating Woolf’s Androgynous Mind”, University of St Andrews (n.d.), December 28, 2011 from http://www.dur.ac.uk/postgraduate.english/ElizabethWrightArticleIssue14.pdf Read More