Fictionalised Biography as a New Voice for Women’s Lives in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Flush

Virginia Woolf reflects on the vulnerability of women’s voices in her essay Three Guineas (1938). More specifically, in Three Guineas, Woolf uses the term ‘influence’, which, according to her, women lack because they have neither financial power nor education, rendering them inaudible. She argues th...

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Autor principal:	Maryam Thirriard
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN FR
Publicado:	Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2021
Materias:	Virginia Woolf Modernist Biography Three Guineas Orlando Flush The New Biography Arts in general NX1-820 English language PE1-3729 English literature PR1-9680
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/acfbe57f5bd24a7c8ca335fe3c95f611
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id	oai:doaj.org-article:acfbe57f5bd24a7c8ca335fe3c95f611
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:acfbe57f5bd24a7c8ca335fe3c95f6112021-12-02T10:51:51ZFictionalised Biography as a New Voice for Women’s Lives in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Flush1168-49172271-544410.4000/ebc.11365https://doaj.org/article/acfbe57f5bd24a7c8ca335fe3c95f6112021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttp://journals.openedition.org/ebc/11365https://doaj.org/toc/1168-4917https://doaj.org/toc/2271-5444Virginia Woolf reflects on the vulnerability of women’s voices in her essay Three Guineas (1938). More specifically, in Three Guineas, Woolf uses the term ‘influence’, which, according to her, women lack because they have neither financial power nor education, rendering them inaudible. She argues that women remain ‘outsider[s]’ with ‘no right to speak’ (Woolf 2015, 116). By the end of the essay, the reader realises that Woolf has transformed this condition into a form of resistance by refusing to occupy a position in the male-dominated public sphere. In the 1920s, Woolf’s awareness of the inaudibility of women’s lives made her want to write a woman’s life herself, leading to Orlando and then to Flush. Both these fantasised biographies portray women: Orlando (1928) is a fantastical biography of her close friend Vita Sackville-West, and Flush (1933) tells the story of Elizabeth Barret Browning’s life through the biography of her dog. In contrast, Roger Fry is nonfictional. Why did Woolf choose to fictionalise her ‘woman’ biographies? This paper argues that, similarly to Woolf’s unconventional choice in Three Guineas to remain an ‘outsider’ to better fight gender inequality and militarism, fiction can be considered a political tool in that it allows for an alternative mode of biographical representation. Not only does Woolf’s use of fiction enable her to compensate for the lack of visibility of her feminine subjects, but she also develops a writing strategy capable of delivering an innovative, politicized representation of the women she depicted.Maryam ThirriardPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéearticleVirginia WoolfModernist BiographyThree GuineasOrlandoFlushThe New BiographyArts in generalNX1-820English languagePE1-3729English literaturePR1-9680ENFRÉtudes Britanniques Contemporaines, Vol 61 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN FR
topic	Virginia Woolf Modernist Biography Three Guineas Orlando Flush The New Biography Arts in general NX1-820 English language PE1-3729 English literature PR1-9680
spellingShingle	Virginia Woolf Modernist Biography Three Guineas Orlando Flush The New Biography Arts in general NX1-820 English language PE1-3729 English literature PR1-9680 Maryam Thirriard Fictionalised Biography as a New Voice for Women’s Lives in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Flush
description	Virginia Woolf reflects on the vulnerability of women’s voices in her essay Three Guineas (1938). More specifically, in Three Guineas, Woolf uses the term ‘influence’, which, according to her, women lack because they have neither financial power nor education, rendering them inaudible. She argues that women remain ‘outsider[s]’ with ‘no right to speak’ (Woolf 2015, 116). By the end of the essay, the reader realises that Woolf has transformed this condition into a form of resistance by refusing to occupy a position in the male-dominated public sphere. In the 1920s, Woolf’s awareness of the inaudibility of women’s lives made her want to write a woman’s life herself, leading to Orlando and then to Flush. Both these fantasised biographies portray women: Orlando (1928) is a fantastical biography of her close friend Vita Sackville-West, and Flush (1933) tells the story of Elizabeth Barret Browning’s life through the biography of her dog. In contrast, Roger Fry is nonfictional. Why did Woolf choose to fictionalise her ‘woman’ biographies? This paper argues that, similarly to Woolf’s unconventional choice in Three Guineas to remain an ‘outsider’ to better fight gender inequality and militarism, fiction can be considered a political tool in that it allows for an alternative mode of biographical representation. Not only does Woolf’s use of fiction enable her to compensate for the lack of visibility of her feminine subjects, but she also develops a writing strategy capable of delivering an innovative, politicized representation of the women she depicted.
format	article
author	Maryam Thirriard
author_facet	Maryam Thirriard
author_sort	Maryam Thirriard
title	Fictionalised Biography as a New Voice for Women’s Lives in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Flush
title_short	Fictionalised Biography as a New Voice for Women’s Lives in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Flush
title_full	Fictionalised Biography as a New Voice for Women’s Lives in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Flush
title_fullStr	Fictionalised Biography as a New Voice for Women’s Lives in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Flush
title_full_unstemmed	Fictionalised Biography as a New Voice for Women’s Lives in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Flush
title_sort	fictionalised biography as a new voice for women’s lives in virginia woolf’s orlando and flush
publisher	Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/acfbe57f5bd24a7c8ca335fe3c95f611
work_keys_str_mv	AT maryamthirriard fictionalisedbiographyasanewvoiceforwomenslivesinvirginiawoolfsorlandoandflush
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Fictionalised Biography as a New Voice for Women’s Lives in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Flush

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