Daria Acri
Lauren Hunter
Rosalia Macaluso
Kenzie Puelston
Kaylie Tripp
Early and mid 20th century England was a time period defined by social, political, and economic changes. In this era, between the world wars, a prolific feminist writer, Virginia Woolf, emerges. An early feminist writer through her unique writing techniques like stream of consciousness, fragmented storytelling, and shifting perspectives, Woolf captured the complexities of sexuality and gender while combating constraints imposed by patriarchal society. Many characters in her works have been studied by scholars such as Knopp in the 1980s, Kennard in the 1990s, Ryan and Sanyal in the 2010s. These selected scholars note the complexity of her characters through their sexuality and explore themes of androgyny, homosexuality, and queerness in the mid 20th century. Other significant scholars such as Hanson in the 1990s, De Gay and Ronchetti in the 2000s, and Garcia-Madrid and Montashery in the 2010s; take interest in her ideology around gender roles and the restraints imposed by societal pressure. Virginia Woolf’s major works such as Orlando, Mrs. Dalloway, and A Room of One's Own each dissect the roles that gender and sexuality play in fiction and society during the mid 20th century. In many of her works she examines the societal constraints and expectations that Gender and Sexuality 2 were placed on women at that time. Her work broke down barriers bringing topics into conversations that were not widely discussed or accepted at the time. Virginia Woolf's work has been studied by many scholars because of her unique and experimental approach to redefining women's place in literature and exploring complex themes of sexuality and gender.