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

womens lib and Insanity in Virginia Woolfs Work The critical discussion revolving around the movement 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 depression of madness and insanity in Woolfs work and the second focuses on the policy-making ramifications of mystical encounters. More peculiar(prenominal)ally, Woolfs mysticism reflects on her feminist ideals and notions.Even though she ultimately associates Woolfs brand of mysticism with the 19th century Theosophists, she continually refers to the specific encounters in Woolfs work as natural mysticism (Kane 329). I recognise 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). enchantment only Madeleine Moore truly begins to draw the distinctio n between the two 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 touch to set up a relation with the reader which...brings an alternative forge of mystical experience into being (Gough 86). This subversive, sceptical mysticism introduces, through the inherently politicized nature of irony, a feminist challenging of rigid structures of phallic (and imperialist) power, therefrom making it a mysticism of subversive, politically critical, feminist irony (89). date his presentation of Woolfs ironic mysticism is certainly ... ...lar Mrs. Dalloway.Works Cited Gough, Val. With Some derision in Her Interrogation Woolfs Ironic Mysticism. Virginia Woolf and the Arts. New York Pace University Press, 1997.Kane, Julie. Varieties of Mystical suffer in the Writings of Virginia Woolf. Twentieth 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 sunbathe? Miraculously, fraily A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Woolfs Mysticism. Virginia Woolf and the Arts. New York Pace University Press, 1997.Moore, Madeleine. The Short era Between Two Silences. Winchester, Mass Allen & Unwin 1984.Smith, Susan Bennett. Reinventing Grief Work Virginia Woolfs Feminist Representations of distress in Mrs. Dalloway and To The Lighthouse Twentieth Century Literature Vol 41 Iss 4 (1995) 310-327