Abstract

This essay argues that feminist theory has focused, in the main and for too long, on theories of the body, in a legitimate reaction to a Western masculine coupling of beauty with a female or idealized maternal body and the sublime with male creativity. In consequence, there are few productive feminist accounts of female or maternal beauty. However, Virginia Woolf’s writings about beauty, mothers and the body, if read through the lens of post-Lacanian theory - particularly the work of Luce Irigaray and Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger - do offer a moving and positive feminist account of women and beauty. The essay analyses Woolf’s ideas about beauty in general, before focusing on To the Lighthouse and The Voyage Out in relation to the writings of Woolf’s mother Julia Stephen.