Sex Is Not Bad: Reproduction in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own looks at creating art, writing specifically, as an act of reproduction. Not reproduction in the sense that art or literature is mimesis or a copy of the world, but that art and literature are akin to the sexual act of reproducing something new, and creating new life. The theme of fertility in A Room of One's Own is used by Woolf to explain her theory of the androgynous mind in creating works of literature. Fertility language is used to explain the start of the creative process, the reason for the success of the best literature in the best minds as well as the failure of literature in the worst, and finally that all great literature begets more great literature.
Reproduction is a common symbol throughout Woolf's A Room of One’s Own. The motif is most obvious at the center of her theory of the creative mind. She starts by imagining the mind as split into two sexes of male and female that come together and, “it is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized” (emphasis added 901). Woolf never outright explains what she means by “male”, and “female,” but through reading her text features from each sex can be pulled out and distinguished. When describing a male author who bored her Woolf says his writing indicated a “freedom of mind” (901), and that the writer is “honest as the day and logical as the sun” (902). These traits: straightforward honestly, blunt logic, and a mind that has never been opposed are attached to maleness throughout the essay, and categorize the male mind. As for the female mind Woolf traits her female characters such as Chloe and Olivia throughout the essay as being more subtle than men, and states that it is “the power of suggestion one most misses,” in male writing (903). It is when the male coded honestly, logic, and freedom, meet the female coded suggestion and subtly in the mind that great literature is created.
In proving the power of the androgynous mind Woolf shows what happens when the mind is not androgynous. The story of Judith Shakespeare plays an interesting and subtle role here. Fertility in the story is used to signal the start of the careers of both William Shakespeare, and his sister Judith. William leaves home after his “escapade” (getting a girl pregnant) “sent him to seek his fortune in London” (896). Judith runs away from home to prevent a forced marriage (and the subsequent consummation required) finding marriage “hateful to her” (897). Unlike her brother Judith can not find success as a poet because “she could get no training in her craft” (897). The sexism and misogyny of 16th century Europe will not allow Judith Shakespeare to be androgynous, as she is forcibly kept out of the male realm, and not allowed to have a male mind. Forced only into the feminine sphere and begotten with a child Judith Shakespeare kills herself and the fetus (897). Fertility is again used as symbol this time showing that anything created with only one side of the gendered mind is lacking life, and will not last long.
Woolf proves a similar thing later in the text when discussing the other side of the coin: work created with only the male mind. She “doubts whether poetry can come from an incubator,” and prophesies that if it did it would birth “a horrid little abortion” (emphasis added 904). Again fertility language is used to illustrate the lack of life present if works of art are created using only one side of the mind. The use of the word “abortion” when speaking about creating with only the male mind connects to the story of Judith Shakespeare and the symbolism of her bringing about her own death and that of the unborn fetus because she was trapped in a female only sphere.
Woolf says that “two heads on one body do not make for length of life,” and she is again referring to the theme of fertility, life, and works of literature as a type of “birth” (904). For Woolf’s metaphor it is not enough for the poet to create, they must create something that will survive. A writer who has both a male and female mind within them is not enough. These two forces must meet in an act of reproduction, “a marriage of opposites is to be consummated” (emphasis added 904). Woolf does not just separate the mind into male and female genders and identify what they create; she clearly uses images of sex, fertility, and reproduction to show that the androgynous mind must be one in which the features of male, and female come together and create something new.
Throughout Woolf's text there is a sense that great literature does not just exist on its own but that it begets new ideas. Elaine Scarry’s theory of beauty is that beauty seems to “incite even to require the act of replication” (Scarry 3). Woolf seems to be applying a similar theory to literature with her use of fertility language. In the story of Judith Shakespeare Woolf admits that it never could have happened because “genius is not born among labouring, uneducated, servile people” (emphasis added 896). She points out that Judith “had no chance of learning grammar, and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil,” implying that it is through reading other poets that great poets like Shakespeare–who got to read them–become great (896). When describing the work of the male author that bored her Woolf says that “nothing will grow there,”(902) but a sentence from Coleridge “explodes and gives birth to all kinds of other ideas, and that is the only sort of writing of which one can say that it has the secret of perpetual life” (emphasis added 903). For Woolf great literature is not that which writes with only the male, or female mind it is that which writes when these come to together and create something new. Then that new work must itself have the seeds to inspire and beget new works in the minds of other writers. Writing becomes an act of reproduction, and the survival of a species from generation to generation.
Virginia Woolf uses fertility and the act of reproduction as a metaphor in her explanation of the androgynous mind, and a symbol in the story of the creative life of Judith Shakespeare. The act of creating art or literature is compared with the act of reproducing human life. Like in the world of biology Woolf divides the mind into two sexes and gives each sex characteristics. Neither one of these spheres can act alone in creating life or “the intellect seems to predominate and the other faculties of the mind harden and become barren.” (emphasis added 904). When the two spheres come together to create something new, that new work of art or literature must be able to then inspire new ideas and stories, and have the quality of inciting further reproduction of the species (great literature). Woolf’s work gives art and literature no moral burden other than the morality behind every species gasping and crawling on the earth: literature is only a creature trying to survive.
Works Cited
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Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One’s Own.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 2nd Edition, edited by Vincent B. Leitch, William E. Cain, Laurie Finke, Barbara Johnson, John McGowan, T Denean Sharpley Whiting, and Jeffrey J. Williams, W.W Norton & Company Inc, 2010, pp 896-905.
Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton University Press, 2001.