The Resolution Of Binary Opposition

The thesis is designed to explore binary oppositions in Virginia Woolf's works. As one of the most prominent literary figures of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf has long been at the center of literary criticism. Recently, studies of Woolf have more often than not focused on feminist and lesbian themes in her work, trying to locate her theory by analyzing her personal experience and fiction creation. Indeed, those researches have traced the social and historical origin of Woolf's thoughts and revealed the social connotation of her literary view to a great extent. But there still exist conspicuous deficiencies on the essence of her literary thoughts. They are manifested in the following way:excessive biographic elements; too much polarized gender-based perspective; limited range of study (most focused on her novels). This dissertation assumes that, if we expand the range of study from her novels to her essays and dairies to explore the first hand materials thoroughly from binary oppositions, the rich literary connotation and essence of Woolf's works is most likely to be revealed. Therefore, the proper understanding and depiction of Woolf s thoughts still remain to be achieved.This thesis tries to analyze Woolf's works by taking pairs of seemingly opposite perspectives--emotion/reason, man/woman, divided self/ unified self, and individuality/impersonality and end with a conclusion that Woolf discards the absolute opposition between both sides but claims that the two opposites are incompatible and also mutually complementary. It is the harmonious coexistence in a dynamic balance that ensures the healthy development of human being.The thesis begins with an exploration of Woolf's understanding of emotion/reason. Woolf strongly opposes artless and personal anger in women's writing. However, her discard of anger, one form of emotion, does not mean the denial of the importance of emotion in a broad sense. On the contrary, it is just based on her acknowledgement of the importance of emotion that she warns women writers against the random release of anger in their creation. While analyzing the problem of emotion in women's writing, Woolf stresses reason from different perspectives. She emphasizes that a writer should keep calm and rational, sticks closely to human elements, and writes with a free mind. For Woolf, emotion and reason are interdependent. That is to say, a writer must possess a view of reasoned emotion in art to create lasting masterpiece.In light of Woolf,s understanding of reasoned emotion, the thesis then focuses on "androgyny", a controversial concept in the academic circle. Analyzed from the perspectives of characterization and rhetorical devices, this theory conveys two meanings: androgyny is the best state of the relation between man and woman; it is also the best psychological state in art creation. Woolf's change from criticizing patriarchy system to pursuing the dialogue and fusion between man and woman embodies her feminist thoughts developing from modernism to post-modernism.For Woolf, self is not only confined to be a synthesis of man and woman, but also is featured by its complexity, multiplicity, and variability. Due to the disillusionment and fragmentation characterizing modern society, the characters in modernist works always appear to be complicated. As a representative of modernists, Woolf is also interested in the depiction of the inner self. Only if an individual have a clear understanding of himself/herself can he/she keep independent and whole. In Woolf's novels, her characters are unexceptionally encountered with crisis of the identity--they suffer from anxiety, loneliness, confusion and pain. While describing the fragmented aspects of selves, Woolf lays more stress on the unification of divided selves to reveal the common human feelings by surpassing dichotomies and "I" and merging with others. Therefore, the true self in Woolf's mind is fragmentary as well as unified.Woolf is always concerned about the enlightenment of individual's self-consciousness. However, as a writer, how to deal with his/her own individuality and his/her works? It is almost impossible for a writer to keep absolute impersonal in creation. But too many personal elements in one's writing are also not welcome. Woolf takes an integrated view on the relationship between individuality and impersonality. On one hand, she stresses on that individuality is for the writer's thinking ability and creativity. On the other hand, she claims that a writer should combine himself/herself with his/her works, go from "I" to "We", and establish a universal bond between writers and readers. So individuality and impersonality in Woolf's mind apparently contradict with each other, but in fact they are cooperative and mutually complementary.In brief, Woolf's view on art shows her stand as a conscious female writer, which is based on her holistic study of literature. She merges those seemingly opposite elements and her thinking on women's writing is also open and diversified. Anyway, her literary conception is revealing for the diversification of today's literary theory construction as well as the development of women's writing.