생태주의 비평의 관점에서 본 꽃 이데올로기의 의미와 한계

Abstract

Victorian floral ideology socioculturally restricts people’s (in particular women’s) behavior and lifestyles as well as their consciousness through the symbolization of flowers on the presupposition that flowers have linguistic characteristics in themselves. In this paper the floral ideology is used as a “nodal point” for reading the writings of great Victorian thinker John Ruskin and 20th - century modernist feminist Virginia Woolf and analyzing them from the perspective of ecological criticism. Firstly, focused on the representations of flowers and women I search for the nascent ecological characteristics in Ruskin and the prototypical ecofeminism in Woolf's writings respectively; I also reconsider the significance that each of those archetypes has. Secondly, given that not only Ruskin but also cultural ecofeminists have been criticized for being essentialists, I read Woolf's essays “Ruskin” and “The Patron and the Crocus” and Ruskin's Proserpina and “Of Queen's Gardens” in the light of those criticisms. Thirdly, I contrast Ruskin's understanding of women— i.e., that care is women’s specific quality and duty—with eco - feminist claims that women are superior to men in the most important matter of caring which makes women superior to men, at least as far as care ethics is concerned. Ruskin highlights women's decorative and familial functions and idealizes pure and sacred women, but Woolf rejects these features violently. In “Killing the Angle in the House”, Woolf revises the Victorian floral ideology to dismantle the dichotomy and reposition women and nature.