Thinking back through her mother

Virginia Woolf on Jane Austen

Résumé

Virginia Woolf in her essay A Room of One’s Own (2014) claims that a woman thinks back through her mother, emphasizing the importance of women writers in the literary tradition. On male literary tradition, Harold Bloom (2000) wrote about their anxiety in relation to their literary fathers, in that case, Shakespeare. While problematizing this male tradition, Woolf creates her fictional character Judith Shakespeare, a sister who had the same upbringing, but not the same opportunities. Gilbert e Gubar (2020), following Woolf, investigate female anxiety and try to create a female literary tradition. Ellen Moers also on the same track, thinks about the absence of women in literature and Elaine Showalter perceives that women inevitably think about their fathers in literature, because only men can silence their mothers. This paper discusses how Virginia Woolf thinks back through her literary mothers and the female literary tradition; how Woolf and Austen deal with history; the living room and the tea table training, and finally, the female sentence.