Voyage To The Androgynous Destination

Virginia Woolf is generally regarded as one of the forerunners of feminist criticism. She sets forth her feminist ideas in many critical works, among which, A Room of One's Own is the most important one. In this book she displays the inequality between man and woman, analyzes the reason that there are few female writers in the history; and most importantly, she puts forwards the theory of androgyny. According to Woolf, only the writer with androgynous mind can write best books. And the ideal relationship between man and woman is not the binary opposition but should be androgynous unity.Woolf also portrays many female figures in her novels. Among her novels, To the Lighthouse is the best one that conveys her feminist ideas. The present thesis will provide a feminist approach to this novel, focusing on the analysis of the traditional gender relationship and the process of androgynous fulfillment, so as to illustrate what Woolf advocates is not the binary relationship between man and woman, but the androgynous unity of two sexes.The thesis is divided into three chapters, in addition to an introduction and a conclusion. Chapter One analyzes the sources for Woolf's feminist ideas and summarizes her unique feminist thoughts mainly reflected in A Room of One's Own, focusing on her androgynous theory. Chapter Two studies the traditional binary relationship between male and female as represented in To the Lighthouse and shows how the patriarchal ideology confines women and distorts their psychology. Chapter Three is devoted to presenting Lily's feminist consciousness and demonstrates how the androgynous mind is developed by displaying her psychological progress; meanwhile this part also discusses some of other characters, such as Mr. Ramsay and James, and how they get their androgynous fulfillment.