A Study Of Androgyny In Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), member of the Bloomsbury Group, was an outstanding English female writer, literary critic and essayist in the twentieth century. She is the one of the representative writers of stream-of-consciousness and shares high reputation with James Joyce and William Faulkner. She is the forerunner of modernism and feminism as well.Woolf's theory of androgyny occupies a special position in her feminist thought. In 1929 she put forward her theory of androgyny in A Room of One's Own. According to her, writers, especially women writers, must forget their gender during their creation of artistic works. Only with the androgynous mind can great works be produced. It is important for us to make clear that she suggests the androgyny from the mental and psychological perspectives. Androgyny is quite different from bisexuality and hermaphroditism. This theory is a challenge to the patriarchy and the binary opposition. Prior to 1929, Woolf described the ideal of androgyny in To the Lighthouse.To the Lighthouse is a poetic fictional work that takes Woolf's parents as models. Around the Lighthouse, the novel has simple plot with profound meaning. This thesis analyzes Woolf's theory of androgyny by exploring its social background and psychological basis. The binary opposition exists between men and women, between women and women, even within the woman's self. Woolf argues that androgyny is the solution to the mitigation and elimination of the binary opposition. She hopes that androgyny will bring about equality, harmony, and freedom. She adopts the techniques of interior monologue, symbol, image, and post-impressionism to describe Lily's evolution of androgynous mind. She wishes to tell the readers that the process of the androgynous evolution is long and painstaking, which requires patience, wisdom, and courage.