Virginia woolf : the search for identity as a woman

Abstract EN

The present paper tries to make a reading of Virginia Woolf as an axis of the search for the identity of a woman and its relation with her writing.

The twentieth century presents a strong scenario of aesthetic and critical reflections through the relationships between the authors over the years are strengthened more than ever, which are not only presented in the literary texts but also appear as an object of theoretical analysis in many essays of the time.

The emphasis on intertextualities may be due, in part, to the identity crisis that the period is going through.

There is a strong fragmentation of the perception of the world, a fragmentation of identity because of different phenomena among which are the emergence of psychoanalysis, with its proposal of being provided with a level of consciousness and another of unconsciousness; and the First World War that generates a strong loss of illusions, especially to the modern man.

Thus, the century reigns a strong wave of bewilderment.

Woolf tries to solve her identity problem through imitation (turning his missing identity on the writer chosen as "father"), detraction or parody which will include both processes.

The strong presence of the "I" that characterized the romantic point of view is replaced by impersonality by which Woolf as the writer who seeks an emptying of the self that allows him to be everything else, trying to find there the identity that feels fugitive.