Matriarchal myth-making for a postpatriarchal age: The anti-war writing of Virginia Woolf and Hilda Doolittle

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) and Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961) lived and wrote during a period of political and ideological upheaval when the world wars, lesbian and gay, women's and psychoanalytic movements of their time challenged traditional assumptions about human nature and cultural values. Familiar with influential intellectual circles, both Woolf and H. D. helped develop the challenges to gender, sexuality, and myth presented by the important political and literary movements of their time. Like the male writers of this period, Woolf and Doolittle were deeply troubled by the world wars and they interpreted the wars as symptoms of everything that was most wrong about our civilization. However, unlike their male contemporaries, they analyzed the causes of war from a women's perspective--interpreting the world wars as the inevitable consequence of a patriarchal culture centered on an ideal of masculinity which fostered violence in men. To make war, you need warriors and both Woolf's and H. D.'s anti-war writings attempt to de-romanticize the heroic ideal, analyze the social and psychological forces which perpetuate this type of masculinity (including roles for women created to nurture heroic men), and to imagine the possibility of creating a post-patriarchal society based on creative, feminine values rather than the will to dominate and destroy.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Cramer, Patricia

Contributors dc:contributor

• Baym, Nina

• Literature, American
• Literature, English

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1989 Cramer, Patricia

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI8924797
(UMI)AAI8924797

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/20115