Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University

Killing the Angel in the House
complexity of the problem it commenced with: that killing the Angel in the House did
not solve the problem of telling the truth about experiences of the body for either Woolf
or Lawrence. Or rather that their rejection of the essentialism seemingly embodied by
the Angel in the House did not suppress a desire for disembodiment also inherent in the
Angel ideal. Th is is perhaps unsurprising given a similar tension in the contested fi eld of
gender and sexuality which continues to perplex us today. And yet, what does emerge
from texts by Woolf and Lawrence is a resistance to polarity or fi xity: a possibility of multiple
selves as an alternative to the rigidly individualized subject and the pleasure/terror of
a merged subject.
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