EMBODIMENT, GENDER AND IDENTITY: A STUDY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF’S THREE GUINEAS

Abstract

— Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas, highlights the themes of profession, war, marriage, education and the response of the writer towards these heads firstly from the perspective of male hegemonic ideology and subsequently moans the discussion towards the female perception. Virginia Woolf considers both the sexes and emphasizes the differences in the manner in which a male, from a patriarchal social order looks at war and a female of the same strata perceive it. She confers the freedom of an educated man’s son with the limitation imposed on the daughter of the same educated class man. The writing done by the female writer, on topics, usually associated with the male sex, (on the basis of the hegemonic ideology) creates a new type of ideology that comment on the attributes attached to a body and in what sense the stereotypical notions of prevalent ideology put limits on that body to follow certain set of attributes. The paper explores the distinct perspective of female writer who is trying to present the differences and similarities of both the sexes by comparing their current role in different spheres of social and political framework. The paper seeks for the need of freeing the body of female from the fixed roles attached to it and thus shatters the phallocentric limitations imposed on female sex in context to war, education, marriage and profession.