The Androgynous Mind in Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own'

While the term 'androgynous' may appear to undermine gender dualism -- which is predicated on gender essentialism -- on initial inspection, its truly neutral sense proves impossible in a patriarchal context. As Simone de Beauvoir argues in her introduction to The Second Sex (1949): 'man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity.' Furthermore, its implications in those individuals largely perceived as men (so clumsily termed because 'androgynous' has such a capacity to question our perceptions of other people's genders) are to effeminate attributes - a word which seems to carry exceedingly negative connotations.

To see the use of this word in Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own' however was rather exciting. Perhaps she could reclaim it for all its deviating qualities! She starts by questioning mental disparities between individuals of different sexes: 'Why do I feel that there are severances and oppositions in the mind, as there are strains from obvious causes on the body?' (p.92) Why indeed. Then, introducing this notion of unity that the term 'androgyny' would imply, she further questions, 'But the sight of two people getting into the taxi and the satisfaction it gave me made me also ask whether there are two sexes in the mind corresponding to the two sexes in the body, and whether they also require to be united in order to get complete satisfaction and happiness?' (p.93). While I dispute the dualism of this suggestion, and that they correspond  necessarily to the sex of each individual, Woolf also appears to suggest that all individuals have access to a wider range of mental attributes than merely those that are assigned to one's gender.

Unfortunately, Woolf then begins to reinforce gender essentialism with the notion of how one gendered mind predominates  over the other to parallel whether that person is a man or a woman: 'In each of us two powers preside, one male, one female; and in the man's brain the man predominates over the woman, and in the woman's brain the woman predominates over the man' (pp.93-4). Considering that androgyny denotes "hermaphroditism" - or intersex people - their fit into this now reinforced binary is disregarded.

She continues this vein of thought in suggesting a unity in the opinions of each gender: 'Do what she will a woman cannot find in [supposedly "masculine" books written by men] that fountain of perpetual life which the critics assure her is there. It is not only that they celebrate male virtues, enforce male values and describe the world of men; it is that the emotion with which these books are permeated is to a woman incomprehensible. […] The emotion which is so deep, so subtle, so symbolical to a man moves a woman to wonder' (p.97). This suggests that women all feel the same about writing which celebrates male virtues, enforce male values and describe the world of men. Woolf does not clarify what these supposedly gendered virtues and values are and I confess I know not a virtue or value that is specific to men. There is apparently an essential incapacity for one gender to understand an emotion of another gender, if it pertains to only the "masculine" mind or the "feminine" mind.

Woolf returns to suggest of writing without one's gender: 'It is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. […] It is fatal for a woman […] in any way to speak consciously as a woman' (p.99). Perhaps my distrust of gender essentialism would suggest me to be empathetic with this idea, but I am not. I do not deny commonality in gender, but find this most perceptible  in the experience of individuals of the same gender, not in essentially inherent characteristics. That is to say, to refer to Alex Zwerdling's article, 'Anger and Conciliation in Woolf's Feminism', that the 'subjection of women' against which Woolf rightly holds considerable anger, is common to womankind. So, if one is not to speak consciously as a woman, but rather as neutral with an androgynous mind, one does disservice to the unexplored capacity of female writing. To apply my own questioning of strangely gendered terms such as "female writing", what is that if we are denying gender essentialism? Hélène Cixous' theory of écriture féminine is problematic in its own gender essentialism by suggesting that a feminine form of writing should write out of, and to the rhythms of, a female body. Susan Billingham however has suggested of the capacity to adapt Cixous' theory to transwomen and one could go further to expand the notion to other marginalised genders, because thereby one can write out of the shared experience of gender-based oppression. To adopt a neutral voice when one is starved of a voice will do nothing to quench that need, but to return to Simone de Beauvoir's claim, the neutral is absorbed back into the dominance of men.