|
|
A new edition of Mrs. Dalloway has been published, and I'll take the opportunity to squirt forth some bile about some attempts I have seen to turn the novel into a feminist tract. First of all, of the two main characters, neither seems to have essential problems related to the opposite sex in any way, and it is Septimus, the male, who seems to have the more severe identity problems. One of the nattering nabobs of negativism sees Lesbian significance in that fact that Mrs. Dalloway remembers having once felt "what men feel" while kissing her fried Sally. I have seen apparently heterosexual adolescent girls with teenage crushes on other girls, and I have often seen obviously heterosexual women admiring images of other women's bodies, including plain ordinary girly pictures. I have no idea why heterosexual women take pleasure in other women's beauty and emotional and physical softness, while heterosexual men have no interest in each other's bodies at all, but that seems to be the way things often are. To give political significance to these feelings in an adolescent girl is a mistake. Said nabob also saw great significance in the fact that an early version of Mrs. Dalloway mentions menopause. I have no idea what political significance that is supposed to have, but it seems obvious that Virginia Woolf attached little importance to the reference, since she deleted it from the version she sent to the publisher. I'm afraid that I don't have the book in front of me, and in any case it was just a few words, but someplace in her book of posthumously published critical essays Mrs. Woolf says that an author must be neuter. The point can be argued, but it's easy to see what she meant. Maybe she herself considered being human more important and more interesting than being female. (Though that point could be argued as well.) A side note: Before deciding if or how to turn Virginia Woolf into a Professor of Women's Studies, it is worthwhile reading not only some of her own more neglected works, including all of her works of literary criticism, but also Quentin Bell's biography of her. He knew her and all the other people involved well (He had to, didn't he?), he seems to have been intelligent and sensitive, he seems to have wanted to tell the truth, and he had access to all of the papers. Specifically, it is worth noting that: He wasn't at all sure that there had been any kind of physical relationship between Mrs. Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, though he tended to think that there had been, and Not only was Mrs. Woolf's suicide unconnected with any permanent feelings of depression relating to her social position as a woman, but in Mr. Bell's opinion she had no characterological tendency to depression at all. |
|
