Abstract
This chapter explores the shifting relationship between Woolf’s lesbian subjects and religious discourse. It examines The Waves’ Rhoda and Between the Acts’ Miss La Trobe, both of whom function as prophetic, visionary figures, yet whose stories end in significantly different ways. While Rhoda dies, mysteriously removed from the text in a suicide that Woolf chooses not to write, Miss La Trobe, at the end of her story, is associated with mythic, primeval forces. Analyzing the continuum that links these two characters, as well as the narrative events that lead to their vastly differing outcomes, this essay locates an important space for religious discourse in Woolf’s construction of the lesbian subject.
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Notes
- 1.
See Weil (1997, 241) for commentary on La Trobe as “the only ‘out’ lesbian in Woolf’s fictional repertoire.”
- 2.
- 3.
For a discussion of Elvedon, Biblical references, and Rhoda’s soliloquy in a different context, see Sullivan (2011).
- 4.
Also relevant is Augustine of Hippo’s idea, in On the Good of Marriage, that procreation is the highest good in marriage, which is referenced in Pope Pius XI’s encyclical, Casti Connubii, and Thomas Aquinas’s similar proclamation: “marriage is chiefly directed to the begetting of offspring.” See Augustine of Hippo (1955), Pius XI (1930) and Aquinas (1922).
- 5.
See Bennett (1993).
- 6.
Andrea Harris and Meg Jensen present convincing readings of Rhoda’s reappearance in Bernard’s final soliloquy. See Harris (2000) and Jensen (2007). Jensen has noted the similarity between Rhoda’s assertion that “my spine melts like soft wax” and Bernard’s “the wax that coats the spine melted” (2007, 122).
- 7.
- 8.
See Bernard’s remark: “how impossible to order them rightly” (256).
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
In a dynamic related to the “we” that separates La Trobe from the villagers, Between the Acts contains numerous references to a similarly divisive “them.” For two examples, see pages 74–78 and 81–82.
- 13.
- 14.
Woolf’s phrase “from the bushes” calls up Exodus 3:4, and God’s voice that called to Moses “out of the bush” (NRSV).
- 15.
See Mark Hussey’s discussion of Biblical allusions in Streatfield’s address (Woolf 2008, note 130).
- 16.
See Loughlin (2007), especially pages 118 and following, for commentary on gendering in the Creation story.
- 17.
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Sullivan, M. (2019). “She heard the first words”: Lesbian Subjectivity and Prophetic Discourse in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves and Between the Acts. In: Groover, K. (eds) Religion, Secularism, and the Spiritual Paths of Virginia Woolf. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32568-8_10
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