Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Wallace, Miriam

Keywords

Woolf, Virginia, Mrs.Dalloway, Kew Gardens, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, Lesbian

Area of Concentration

British and American Literature

Abstract

This thesis analyzes what I argue is encoded lesbian eroticism in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Kew Gardens (1919), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1929). Sometimes lesbian desire is encoded; at others times such desire is overt but its significance is encoded. These multiple depictions form a veiled communication with the queer-identified reader that serves one of two aims: either Woolf presents lesbian characters and their passion as natural, even liberating, or Woolf's depictions call for liberation from damaging repression and sublimation. Ultimately two questions drive this examination: first, why is it important to see lesbian eroticism as central to these works? And secondly, how did Woolf portray lesbian desire to avoid censorship? Together these questions raise another issue—what is the queer-identified reader’s role in deciphering Woolf’s encodings and discovering her meaning, a meaning that is addressed to specifically to such readers.

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