The role of androgyny and performativity in the novels of Virginia Woolf: Orlando & Mrs. Dalloway

Abstract

The social roles of male and female are constituted through gender. The body always creates the values and meanings by the performance of social acts. Thus gender is not a fixed phenomenon. It is constantly changing, altering and creating new formations. The notion of androgyny is used to question gender classification. It blends female and male traits and makes a unification of both genders. By creating androgynous minds in her novels, Virginia Woolf questions the social classification of gender and the discrimination between men and women . Her androgynous characters create their social identity through the social performance which resembles Butler’s concept of performativity where gender is formed on the surface of the body . The thesis explores these concepts through a reading of Virginia Woolf’s novels Orlando (1928) and Mrs Dalloway (1925).