버지니아 울프: 여성적 정체성과 제국

Virginia Woolf: Female Identity and Empire

This article examines the female identity in the context of British imperialism, focusing on Woolfs two representative works-Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. The ideological connection between imperialism and white women's role in maintaining the bourgeois family underlies Woolfs depiction of her heroines. The ideology of motherhood and family is infused with the imperialist fervor of the day. But Woolfs texts disperse the unified female self. Both heroines cannot completely conform to the identity which the imperialist society imposes on women. Mrs. Dalloway cannot evade her almost existential anguish while performing her role as a perfect hostess of high society; she even momentarily identifies herself with Septimus, a representative victim of an imperialist ideology. The heroine of To the Lighthouse appears to be a model of maternal equilibrium as well as an advocate of marriage itself. But the scene of identifying herself with light shows that she is anything but 'composed' except in the sense of being put together from disparate parts. Furthermore in 'Time Passes', she and the imperialist late Victorian order is eroded by a persistent and devastating assault. Futhermore multiple sinkings-home(lands), islands, ships-represent pervasive anxiety about sinking British Empire. Two heroines of Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse remain on the border. They are de-centered subjects as well as composed hostesses of evening party. By showing the rupture within the female identity, Woolf reveals the limitation of the imperialist ideology, though she does not directly criticize the working of British Empire.