To “write as a woman who has forgotten that she is a woman”
Virginia Woolf’s embodied feminine aesthetics in A Room of One’s Own
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22157107 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jenessa Kenway (0000-0002-0105-2596, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-23 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-02 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Feminist Modernist Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2469-2921 • E-ISSN: 2469-293X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/24692921.2024.2411672 |
| OpenAlex | W4403633209 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
Virginia Woolf's exploration of feminine aesthetics in A Room of One’s Own (1929) involves understanding the role of the female body and embodied cognitive processes. I argue that Woolf’s aesthetic moments are activated and shaped by the body’s embodied cognitive processing, which reveals nonconscious feelings of sexual difference. Through embodied cognitive aesthetics, Woolf creates spaces that reveal nonconscious feminine moments of being. Far from a universal feminine ideal, A Room offers methods for examining aesthetics through embodiment, which means the aesthetics change based upon the body having the experience; furthermore, through somatic and kinesthetic imagination, those experiences may be (partially) shared with other bodies. The link between movement and imagination allows writers to express embodied image schemas, which can be experienced by the reader as well. Through embodied cognitive aesthetics, Woolf bypasses linear thinking, repairs mind/body division, and recuperates feminine sexual differences, facilitating the expression and sharing of diverse experiences
Aesthetics · Art · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Visual arts · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Modernist Literature and Criticism · Philosophy · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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