The Virginia Woolf Reading Group discussion

Hi :) Yesterday I finished the book Desiring Women, The partnership of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, by Karyn Z. Sproles, and I poorly went through and digested a swamping blast of Lacan, lesbian representation, Freud at its worse, and feminism (historic revisionism). Dismayed by this lot, I made an effort to finish it, not so much for the subject matter, but the poor writing due to excessive repetition in some chapters.

I don't want to be too tough on the author; perhaps I'm interested in the relationship between these themes (not a happy meeting of souls) in a limited way, and an introduction would have been good enough for me. I saw good ratings of the book in Goodreads.

I just wonder what you may think about the interaction between these topics. I hope some of you have heard of Otto Rank and his pychoanalysis of the artist (he worked in partnership with Henry Miller and Anäis Nin). His story is somewhat different from Freud's and more in tune with Jung. He believed that artists should endevour to express their inner landscape to escape psychosis. None of this phallic stuff and sex sex sex ... errr, don't take me wrong, I mean, more to follow on this ...

My main interest in Woolf and Sackville-West (a match made in heaven) is their delightfully expressed sensuality, their word games and arousing tenderness, and how they brought out the best of each other. Sproles argues that, although they both "made each other", they couldn't express into words their lesbian identity, as there weren't enough words to depict it at that time. Gosh, couldn't they? If they didn't, who has? I don't think their hard core sexual letters would have necessarily seen the light (would they have landed on our tables now?), and if they hadn't written them, didn't they have each other's bed time hours to fully express their sexuality? Sure, lesbian identity is not the same as sexuality, but the essential feminine as interpreted and displayed through their letters is making ME a better more attuned and clued up lesbian (if this is relevant enough to point out, that is).

Such sensual, alluring, prone to banter, sensitive ladies surely don't need lessons on language. They invented a whole new way of literature and biography. I'm not sure that they would necessarily define themselves as lesbians either if they were teletransported to this age. They did love their men, and they weren't Sally Seton either ... (whoever she truly was). They might not have known the scope and definition of their sexuality traits as defined by our (thankfully) decades of feminist theory and writing, but they were in a room of their own ...

I certainly find their word games far more sexual than some erotic texts by other contemporary authors fully clued up on lesbian representation.

Anyway, I don't want to create this false polemics between then and now, and my knowledge on feminism converging with psychoanalysis is dismal. If anything, Ms Sproles has unveiled a whole world for me to explore. Each expression and historical context has its place in our hearts and our readings. Ms Sproles is very right in pointing out how identity representation is organically linked with societal construction, roles, history, etc.

I just wanted to know what you all thought on the lesbian identity, feminism and psychoanalysis connundrum. Do we really need Freud? I don't think he was too clued up on women's sexual identities and fluidity ...

It would be great to hear your approach, whatever superficial; I'm just learning as I go along.

Happy readings!

Paloma

You might want to have a look at this: "Virginia Woolf meets Sigmund Freud"
http://www.charleston.org.uk/virginia...

Sigrun wrote: "You might want to have a look at this: "Virginia Woolf meets Sigmund Freud"
http://www.charleston.org.uk/virginia..."

Thank you so much, Sigrun. I devoured the stuff, it's fascinating! I will go on to Moments of being next. Very inspiring.

What do you actually think about the article's approach? Sigrun, did you see the difference in personal insight or central view points on VW's later writings?

Dear Paloma, your asking a capacious question - . Since I'm not reading Woolf at the moment, I think I will wait for your answer to the quest.
:)

Sure, I will :) Cheers

I am a few years late here, just glancing through some old discussions on this group page and I was wondering what you meant by "word games" referring to Virginia and Vita... do you mean this literally or just in terms of their letters and writings? I did a quick search of their names and "word games" together and it didn't really bring much up, but if there is an actual game invented by Virginia Woolf, I need to know about this! :) Thanks, if you see this!

Faith wrote: "I am a few years late here, just glancing through some old discussions on this group page and I was wondering what you meant by "word games" referring to Virginia and Vita... do you mean this liter..."

Hi, Faith :)

Sorry for the late reply. Well, those word games are all over the place in their letters. There's particularly one that I find very funny, and it's the one used by Vita on her visit to Egypt (Luxor, 29th January 1926). She describes her visit in the following way:





There are loads of funny, romantic and tender interactions between them in their letters. The best book to check them out is via The letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virgina Woolf, edited by Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell Leaska. You'll find disappointing that most letters in the book are from Vita to Virginia. I worked around it by reading Virginia Woolf's letters published by Harcot Brace Jovanovich in several volumes.

I hope this helps :)

Paloma wrote: "Faith wrote: "I am a few years late here, just glancing through some old discussions on this group page and I was wondering what you meant by "word games" referring to Virginia and Vita... do you m..."

Their book of letters (and Virginia's book too) have been on my to-read list forever, so I'll have to push it higher up the list! Thanks so much for sharing this excerpt. :)