Fragmentary Beauty

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is a famous English woman writer and critic. In her short life, she has written about 350 works and articles, which are in many fields. As a woman writer, Woolf paid attention to women's writing and the development of women's literature from her own literature practice. In feminists' view, she probed feminism theory and practice. She pointed out the relationship between women's writing and women's living space. She also expounded stream-of-consciousness novels in feminism. Most importantly, she put forward that the androgyny is the best state for writing and the best way to annihilate the differences between men and women."Feminism" has been a well-known word for decades, and people use it in various fields of researching. Different critics have different point-of-views and it is difficult to give an exact definition. Previously, feminism is concerned about women's movement, and has been seen as women's struggle for equal rights to men's. Nowadays, feminism has broader definition, because it has developed into many branches. In this ubiquitous, cross-cultural and cross-historical social structure, women are unequal to men in many fields. It is necessary to develop feminism because of the characteristic of women's status. Feminism became Woolf's main research topic after it sprang up.Night and Day is written in her early life of writing. Orlando is written at the height of Woolf's writing life. It is a work that indicates that Woolf's feminism thought has become mature. These two novels are valuable to research. After comparison, the author of the paper has gotten the conclusion that Woolf's feminism is developed and changed over time. As time goes on, Woolf changed her feminism from radical-feminism to passive-feminism.This thesis from comparing the characters and plots in Night and Day with that in Orlando in feminism gets the conclusion that Woolf's feminism is developing and changing all the time, from radical-feminism to passive-feminism. The androgynous theory is criticized by many feminist critics, especially by Elaine Showalter. Elaine Showalter in her work A Literature of Their Own points out that Woolf's androgyny is a Utopian vision to get rid of the conflict between men and women and to get rid of the fact that she is a woman. But the androgyny which shows us the vision of reconciliation can fetch up the shortage of traditional feminism which is only object to the inequality in law between men and women and support modern feminism, establish woman visual angle and destroy man culture hegemony. The thesis also points out that Woolf's feminism is an idealization. It is difficult to realize. The struggle of freedom and equality for women will be continuing.The thesis consists of five parts: The first part presents a short introduction to Virginia Woolf and an introduction to her two works—Night and Day and Orlando.The second part points out the definition and the development of feminism and shows the relationship between Woolf and her feminism theory.The third part takes Katharine in Night and Day and Orlando in Orlando, and compares these two heroes to show the development and changes of Woolf's feminism.The fourth part puts forward some feminists' evaluations of Woolf's feminism to analyze the limitations and positivity of Woolf's feminism.The fifth part is a conclusion, which underlines the central theme and significance. From the comparison of these two novels, the author of the paper analyzes the development trend of Woolf's feminism. After comparison, the author of the paper gets the conclusion of this thesis. Of course, there are many limitations in Woolf's Feminist theory. The most important limitation is that her feminism thought lacks of social and class consciousness.