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ARE ANDROGYNOUS AND EUNUCH SAME ?


"male/female face" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by sirexkat

ANDROGYNY

Androgyny is the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics.

                            Ander Gyne
                                                +
                             Man Woman

NOVELISTS WRITTEN ON ANDROGYNOUS THEME

There are so many novelists who have written their novels on the theme of Androgyny. Like example, Nancy Garden's – Annie on My Mind, Julie Anne Peters – Keeping You a Secret, Jeanette Winterson's – Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Alice Walker's – The Color Purple, Michael Cunningham's – The Hours, Virginia Woolf's – Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando.


HATERS AND SUPPORTERS OF THE CONCEPT ON ANDROGYNY 

Woolf initially introduced her theory of androgynous mind in A Room of One's Own and this new concept was quite debatable and unacceptable for the readers. People started hating her after they met this new concept of Androgyny. There are many who love and supports her theory and others who have not entertained her in this respect.

There were various supporters and rivals of this new theory. Carolyn Heilbrun a prolific feminist author and Nancy Topping Bazin, who was a professor of literature and women studies, read androgyny as a balance and union between opposites which gives a satisfying pattern to life. They blindly supported this new theory and entertained Woolf's new concept of androgyny in her novel.

I went on amateurishly to sketch a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female; and in the man's brain the main predominates over the woman, and in the woman's brain the women predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating.

 (Transue 77)

The above lines have been taken from Woolf's A Room of One's Own in which she seems to be repeating her scientist cousins: For modern thinkers the definition of androgyny has proven to be a more of a problem than for the scientists of Victorian patriarchy. Despite of various problematic issues such as Mary Daly to believe it to be a "Semantic abomination," for Woolf and various feminists, androgyny is a way of liberating women from the negative forces placed by patriarchy on their sex. (Wright 4)

ANDROGYNY IN MRS DALLOWAY

Many critics and biographers believes that there was a lack of emotional touch in Woolf's life from female side because of her mother's early death. When Woolf was only thirteen she was sexually abused by her half brother. A dead sister and a stern maiden aunt, the father's sister this lack of female energy distract her mind to opt the path of androgyny. She believes that whether she has lost in a form of her mother's death, her affection, her love, that all lost memories she will get with her friend or say girl friend, Vita Sack Ville West. She believes that before meeting Vita something was there in her life which was making her cold and virginal and this was the reason why she never responds Peter Walsh's kiss with a kiss in a novel Mrs. Dalloway.

Although Mrs. Dalloway was perfect, she did not lack beauty: She did not lack brains but something or other she lacked, which made her so frigid and cold. She was always comfortable with the women folks and usually gets attracted towards them or it can be said that she was more responsive to charms of women, women confessing as they often did, to her some act of folly. At that moment she felt for women, what men felt for them. Although such moments were brief but they were moments of sudden inner illumination. They would soon be over, and then she would again be back to her spiritual loneliness, "her attic room" (Woolf 36)


"Clarissa's memory by contrast, focuses more exclusively on the general ambience of Bourton, the home of her adolescent years, and on her love for Sally Seton." (Abel 30)


Mrs. Dalloway always used to think about the love which she had with her girlfriend, Sally Seton. Their friendship was more than love; Sally Seton was a queer girl. Mrs. Dalloway always used to think about her. She always remembers those pictures when Sally used to sit on the floor, with her arms round her knees, and smokes cigarette. Sally was extraordinarily beautiful with dark, large eyes and a sort of adornment which she herself lacked. During her first introduction with Sally she could not take her eyes off her. Although during summers they both used to spend time together in Bourton, but once they quarreled at home and ran to them at great anger. Although she was an intelligent, knew much about the world and very soon they became close friends. They discussed for long hours the way and means of reforming the world.


THREAT TOWARDS MEN SUPPORTS ANDROGYNY

Sally's personality was amazing she had a charming way of handling flowers, and once she did run naked  along the passage to get her sponge, and this shocked the other members of the family especially her aunt Helena Dalloway could not help liking this strange, but clever girl the spoke of marriage as a catastrophe which would part them. But somewhere Dalloway feels protective with Sally's company, some where she (Clarissa Dalloway) has a threat in her mind that ‘man will not be with us always’. But Sally will remain with her till her last breath. They both say that they will change the world. Her Charm was over powering and even though she smoked and bicycled round the parapet, Mrs. Dalloway could not help liking her :

"Then came the most exquisite moment of her own life; passing a stone urn with flowers in it, Sally stopped; picked a flower; presented it to her, and kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down." (Woolf 40-41)

The above quote shows a very particular theme that is repeated many times in the novel, although this passage is itself a climax, the embodiment of a young love and silliness. Flowers throughout the book show the symbol of youth and its morality, because in their prime they are beautiful, but eventually exhausted. Sally Seton picks a flower before she kisses Clarissa. The above statement serves to say that Mrs. Dalloway could nerve have another moment like this one, never another kiss like this; this was the pure love between them, love which is not possessive but protective, conspirational against the world of fraud and pretense. It was a moment of sudden illumination nerve to be forgotten.

Sally replaces Clarissa's dead mother and sister, her name even echoing the sister's name, Sylvia. She nurtures Clarissa's intellect and passions, introducing her to the work of William Morris; Shelly and Plato and inspiring a love equal to Othello's 'If it were now to die, ‘Twere now to be most happy’. (Abel 31)

In the novel it was shown that Clarissa's life lacks the female support as mentioned earlier, the loss of female energy, consequently in the barren atmosphere of Clarissa's heart and emotions which has suffered throughout her childhood when came into the existence of Sally's immense love, warmth and sensuality spark love in eighteen year old Clarissa.

"Clarissa has such a mind, and although people say that she gives parties in the name of Richard, but she has none of these motives. She simply enjoyed giving parities It was her nature to enjoy."

(Verma)

She always need people around her there is a word in a novel 'being alive to things' and that's what Mrs. Dalloway tried throughout her life.

Bibliography:

  • Abel, Elizabeth. Virginia Woolf and the Fiction of Psychoanalysis. London: University of Chicago Press, 1989.31.Print.
  • Transue, Pamela J. Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Style. New York:  SUNY Press, 1986. 77. Print.
  • Verma, Satdev. "Androgyny in the Novels of Virginia Woolf: A Study of Mrs. Dalloway and To the Light House." International Referred Research Journal 3.29. 2012 Web. 26          Mar. 2015.
  • Wright, Elizabeth. Re- Evaluating Woolf's Androgynous Mind. University of St. Andrews, 26        Mar. 2015. PDF.
  • Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway. New Delhi: Peacock Books, 2011. Print.
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