From Deconstruction To Construction The Metaphor Of Androgyny In Orlando: A Biography

Virginia Woolf, as a famous feminist writer and critic, is famous for her exploration into androgyny, an ancient conception of the harmonious coexistence of two genders from Plato's era. Orlando: A Biography proves to be a perfect text interpreting this conception. This thesis is devoted to apply theories of deconstruction as well as some relative feminist theories to the examination of Woolf's Orlando: A Biography and her idea of androgyny. This thesis points out, such binary oppositions as male and female, destruction and renascence, reality and fantasy, stability and instability, are in a constant state of flux in the deconstructive text of Orlando. Transcending the feminist discourse, androgyny turns into an ideal, a metaphor, an acme of perfection, and a probe into undecidability. Woolf reverses many of the present binary oppositions, endeavoring to find a way to reconstruct them. Androgyny proves to be the answer of reconstructing the balance. The opposite elements in dualities which can be categorized as the masculine ones and the feminine ones are fused in the androgynous mind. With such a thinking pattern to decode literature and life, Woolf establishes her own discourse and finally achieves the aim of construction. This thesis aims to interpret Woolf's concept of androgyny and her deconstruction and reconstruction of the text in such a concept and finally elaborate the ultimate aim of the deconstruction and reconstruction, which is to seek the truth in human nature and literary reflection.