The Feminist Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf

Jane Goldman offers a revisionary, feminist reading of Woolf’s work. Focusing on Woolf’s engagement with the artistic theories of her time, Goldman traces the feminist implication of her aesthetics by reclaiming for the everyday world of history and politics what seem to be private mystical moments. Goldman analyses Woolf’s fascination with the Post-impressionist exhibition of 1920 and the solar eclipse of 1927 by linking her response to a much wider literary and cultural context. She argues that Woolf evolves a kind of ‘feminist prismatics’ through which she is able to express and develop both the challenge and pessimism of her feminist vision. Lavishly illustrated with colour pictures, this book will appeal not only to scholars working on Woolf, but also to students of modernism, art history, and women’s studies.

• Lavishly illustrated book, with colour photographs • New account of Virginia Woolf’s engagement with art and aesthetic theory • Appeal to scholars of modernism, women’s studies, art history

Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; 1. Introduction; Part I. Eclipse: 2. Virginia Woolf: heliotropics, subjectivity and feminism; 3. The astonishing moment; 4. The amusing game; 5. The gathering crowd; 6. The chasing of the sun and the victory of the colours; 7. Elegiacs: capsizing light and returning colour; 8. The death of the sun and the return of the fish; Part II. Prismatics: 9. Post-Impressionism: the explosion of colour; 10. Romantic to Classic: Post-Impressionist theories from 1910 to 1912; 11. The new prismatics: Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and English Post-Impressionism; 12. ‘Her pictures stand for something’: Woolf’s forewords to Bell’s paintings; 13. To the Lighthouse: purple triangle and green shawl; 14. The Waves: purple buttons and white foam; 15. Conclusion; Notes; Index.

‘In this innovative and important book, Jane Goldman argues that for Virginia Woolf, aesthetic concerns (with colour in particular) were inseparable from political and especially feminist concerns. Jane Goldman’s book is essential reading not only for readers of Woolf, but also for those interested more generally in modernism and aesthetics.’ Suzanne Raitt