Tilda Swinton, accomplished art house and mainstream actress famously known for her androgynous looks, plays Orlando a young man who transformed into an ageless woman in the gender-bending themed film, Orlando, adapted from Woolf’s 1928 novel of the same name “And I went on amateurishly to sketch a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female... The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating... Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine…”
- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Extracted from Virginia Woolf and Her World (1975) by John Lehmann, it was approximately two years ago when I first came across the above passage while reading the said comprehensive biography. I was immediately tempted to conduct some research with the intention to gain insight into the rational of such assertions. From the findings made on this intellectually written extended-essay, I learnt that Woolf has attempted, without fail, to highlight the potentialities of a fully cultivated mind that is apparently androgynous in nature.
She progresses on six chapters for which she points out in agreement with Coleridge’s view concerning the supremacy of an androgynous mind. Notably, Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of the prominent Romantic poet and philosopher that advocate the concept of an androgynous mind. They both share a common idea that an androgynous mind is present when one is working at the absence of sex-consciousness, thus producing output at its highest capacity, without impediment and free from gender-biasness.
Woolf’s primary intention is to mold a character that possesses both masculine and feminine feature in a harmonious blend. She realizes that female writers are not given the resources and avenue to explore their subjects and techniques, forcing them to conform to social norms and expectation of the typical themes among female writers during the time. It has therefore led to radical feminist movement which often jeopardizes the neutrality of view in the writings made.
This further suggests that the society in this ‘sex-conscious’ era are working with prejudice in defending their superiority or wrestling against their inferiority. While granting rights to uphold equality may potentially promote exploitation, intellectual work suffers too by the influence and constrain of gender sensitivities. These cumulatively result in effort not properly channeled towards frank but constructive discussion on gender concerns for the growth of humanity at large.
In contrast, an androgynous mind, according to Woolf, finds objectivity in its relation with ‘reality’. Hence, it is not concerned with ‘itself’, but with its subject, independently. It is an approach of thinking that allows women and by implication men or vice versa, to write as themselves, still in a sexed body, but without the presence of prejudice that is linked to the body. In other words, to write without consciousness of sex is to see the piece of work for itself not as its author.
Woolf’s work however receives endless criticisms for the inherently ambiguous concept of androgyny is a subject of vast interpretations, and has been approached from various ideological angles. Some accuse her ideology as promoting biological dynamism; the belief that when sex is turned into a more ‘multiple’ or ‘diverse’ category than it has been so far, then social norms will be relaxed. Woolf nevertheless sees the multiplication of the self and celebrating the difference within the self as leading to creativity and freedom from sexual bias in literature, and not in any way liberalising biological dynamism.
Her concept of androgyny is also seen as destructive male-centred self-obsession, arguing that androgyne ‘transgresses the very existence of difference.’ Thus an androgynous mind is said to be narcissistic in which the subject destructs itself. Critics claim that, “Love of self inscribed in its seemingly homogenous unity does not make for glorious difference or internalised heterogeneity, but for a narcissism which cannot create and can only self-destruct.”
Critics have also gone beyond limits by linking Woolf's ideology of an androgynous mind to her sexuality, harshly argue that the concept is a repression of her own female identity. Critics put that her vision of androgyny is a “myth that helped her evade confrontation with her own painful femaleness and enabled her to cloak and repress her anger and ambition.” They further claim the body is something that Woolf fears and androgyny offers the chance to get rid of it.
Others perceive the concept as female-centred and in essence, promoting lesbianism. Woolf has been accused for seducing female audience into sisterhood, inviting them to collude and discuss women and writing in the absence of men. Thus, Woolf’s concept of androgyny is said to privilege the female and symbolically, lesbian. Such strong accusations bring us down to the very argument of the truest implication of Woolf’s androgyny concept from her point of view.
Though the term ‘Androgynous’ is often biologically used to describe individuals that are not distinctly masculine or feminine in appearance or behavior, Woolf takes a step further to examine it at a different angle. Since Woolf dissociates androgynous attributes as asexual (she believes that gender deviation is still important), it is apparent that, in my opinion, her argument revolves more on the ‘functioning qualities’ of an androgynous mind, a fusion that eradicates gender-consciousness.
Note that it does not imply an absolute absence of gender. Difference is to be celebrated still, but 'should exist within the individual androgynous self-fertilising mind', thusly achiving an androgynous mind that is united. Woolf highlights this point by asking,“What does one mean by ‘the unity of the mind’? She then points out, "The power of the androgynous mind lies in its ability to alternate simultaneously between a million different subject positions preserving heterogeneity at the same time as giving the impression of unity".
The degree of success in creating a pure and fully productive androgynous mind as advocated by Woolf is rebuttable. Nevertheless, Woolf’s honest intention is still unaltered; to promote a constructive creative force that eliminates gender stereotype, discrimination and prejudice in literature. Therefore it is never meant to instil colourless homogeneity, self-dissolution, fear of the body or narcissistic death. Woolf asserts that, “androgyny is the capacity of a single person of either sex to embody the full range of human character traits, despite cultural attempts to render some exclusively feminine and some exclusively masculine”.
Therefore extending the concept to the society at large, the wholesomeness of an androgynous mind could be made practical by cultivating a culture of awareness towards the transcendental, unbiased, and perpetuating mind of gender-fused. It is hence believed that individuals that promote a fusion of both masculine and feminine traits in mind will be able to jointly support and co-operate effectively. In that, attributes which are egoistic in nature, i.e. self-righteousness must be combined with considerable amount of sensitivity, compassion and understandability. Emotionally-charged qualities must in contrary, be neutralized through the instilment of objectivity, decisiveness and wisdom. Ultimately, the ability to access this ‘full range of character traits’ may be a rare commodity, perhaps logically impossible but not an unreasonable pursuant. An androgynous mind remains an idealistic concept, the highest form of attainment by any writer that aspires to be gender-less in mind.
“Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create (?), any more than a mind that is purely feminine…”
Extracted from Virginia Woolf and Her World (1975) by John Lehmann, it was approximately two years ago when I first came across the above passage while reading the said comprehensive biography. I was immediately tempted to conduct some research with the intention to gain insight into the rational of such assertions. From the findings made on this intellectually written extended-essay, I learnt that Woolf has attempted, without fail, to highlight the potentialities of a fully cultivated mind that is apparently androgynous in nature.
She progresses on six chapters for which she points out in agreement with Coleridge’s view concerning the supremacy of an androgynous mind. Notably, Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of the prominent Romantic poet and philosopher that advocate the concept of an androgynous mind. They both share a common idea that an androgynous mind is present when one is working at the absence of sex-consciousness, thus producing output at its highest capacity, without impediment and free from gender-biasness.
Woolf’s primary intention is to mold a character that possesses both masculine and feminine feature in a harmonious blend. She realizes that female writers are not given the resources and avenue to explore their subjects and techniques, forcing them to conform to social norms and expectation of the typical themes among female writers during the time. It has therefore led to radical feminist movement which often jeopardizes the neutrality of view in the writings made.
This further suggests that the society in this ‘sex-conscious’ era are working with prejudice in defending their superiority or wrestling against their inferiority. While granting rights to uphold equality may potentially promote exploitation, intellectual work suffers too by the influence and constrain of gender sensitivities. These cumulatively result in effort not properly channeled towards frank but constructive discussion on gender concerns for the growth of humanity at large.
In contrast, an androgynous mind, according to Woolf, finds objectivity in its relation with ‘reality’. Hence, it is not concerned with ‘itself’, but with its subject, independently. It is an approach of thinking that allows women and by implication men or vice versa, to write as themselves, still in a sexed body, but without the presence of prejudice that is linked to the body. In other words, to write without consciousness of sex is to see the piece of work for itself not as its author.
Woolf’s work however receives endless criticisms for the inherently ambiguous concept of androgyny is a subject of vast interpretations, and has been approached from various ideological angles. Some accuse her ideology as promoting biological dynamism; the belief that when sex is turned into a more ‘multiple’ or ‘diverse’ category than it has been so far, then social norms will be relaxed. Woolf nevertheless sees the multiplication of the self and celebrating the difference within the self as leading to creativity and freedom from sexual bias in literature, and not in any way liberalising biological dynamism.
Her concept of androgyny is also seen as destructive male-centred self-obsession, arguing that androgyne ‘transgresses the very existence of difference.’ Thus an androgynous mind is said to be narcissistic in which the subject destructs itself. Critics claim that, “Love of self inscribed in its seemingly homogenous unity does not make for glorious difference or internalised heterogeneity, but for a narcissism which cannot create and can only self-destruct.”
Critics have also gone beyond limits by linking Woolf's ideology of an androgynous mind to her sexuality, harshly argue that the concept is a repression of her own female identity. Critics put that her vision of androgyny is a “myth that helped her evade confrontation with her own painful femaleness and enabled her to cloak and repress her anger and ambition.” They further claim the body is something that Woolf fears and androgyny offers the chance to get rid of it.
Others perceive the concept as female-centred and in essence, promoting lesbianism. Woolf has been accused for seducing female audience into sisterhood, inviting them to collude and discuss women and writing in the absence of men. Thus, Woolf’s concept of androgyny is said to privilege the female and symbolically, lesbian. Such strong accusations bring us down to the very argument of the truest implication of Woolf’s androgyny concept from her point of view.
Though the term ‘Androgynous’ is often biologically used to describe individuals that are not distinctly masculine or feminine in appearance or behavior, Woolf takes a step further to examine it at a different angle. Since Woolf dissociates androgynous attributes as asexual (she believes that gender deviation is still important), it is apparent that, in my opinion, her argument revolves more on the ‘functioning qualities’ of an androgynous mind, a fusion that eradicates gender-consciousness.
Note that it does not imply an absolute absence of gender. Difference is to be celebrated still, but 'should exist within the individual androgynous self-fertilising mind', thusly achiving an androgynous mind that is united. Woolf highlights this point by asking,“What does one mean by ‘the unity of the mind’? She then points out, "The power of the androgynous mind lies in its ability to alternate simultaneously between a million different subject positions preserving heterogeneity at the same time as giving the impression of unity".
The degree of success in creating a pure and fully productive androgynous mind as advocated by Woolf is rebuttable. Nevertheless, Woolf’s honest intention is still unaltered; to promote a constructive creative force that eliminates gender stereotype, discrimination and prejudice in literature. Therefore it is never meant to instil colourless homogeneity, self-dissolution, fear of the body or narcissistic death. Woolf asserts that, “androgyny is the capacity of a single person of either sex to embody the full range of human character traits, despite cultural attempts to render some exclusively feminine and some exclusively masculine”.
Therefore extending the concept to the society at large, the wholesomeness of an androgynous mind could be made practical by cultivating a culture of awareness towards the transcendental, unbiased, and perpetuating mind of gender-fused. It is hence believed that individuals that promote a fusion of both masculine and feminine traits in mind will be able to jointly support and co-operate effectively. In that, attributes which are egoistic in nature, i.e. self-righteousness must be combined with considerable amount of sensitivity, compassion and understandability. Emotionally-charged qualities must in contrary, be neutralized through the instilment of objectivity, decisiveness and wisdom. Ultimately, the ability to access this ‘full range of character traits’ may be a rare commodity, perhaps logically impossible but not an unreasonable pursuant. An androgynous mind remains an idealistic concept, the highest form of attainment by any writer that aspires to be gender-less in mind.
“Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create (?), any more than a mind that is purely feminine…”
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