A Feminist Public Sphere? Virginia Woolf’s Revisions of the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

Since the historicist turn in scholarship on modernism, critics have focused on the ways modernist writers have marketed themselves. The modernist writers who expressed disdain for mass culture have been shown to have used and depended on the tools of advertising, marketing, professionalization, and self-promotion that was provided by mass culture. Thus, Peter McDonald argues that “the cultural divisions between the high-class reviews and the illustrated monthlies were not always as rigid as might be supposed,” and Lawrence Rainey asserts that modernist publishing depended upon an intermediate economic stage, such as an early limited or subscription-based edition, during which a text’s cultural value rose, potentially helping create demand for broader sales.1 When this sociohistorical approach focuses on a single writer’s career, it shows how he or she fits into, or, more often, attempts to subvert or challenge the cultural categories of high, low, and middlebrow. Virginia Woolf was, of course, a woman, and thus something of an outsider in the London literary scene; she was also the daughter of Victorian man-of-letters and editor Leslie Stephen, and thus, the ultimate insider. This combination makes her career an ideal case for further study. As one recent critic puts it, “Woolf entered public discourse by the side door.”2