My Difficult Relationship with Virginia Woolf

I love Virginia Woolf. I've spent a lot of time with her: I've read almost everything she's written, and she was the topic of my master's thesis. I admire her style, her honesty, her rejection of tradition--both in writing and her personal life.

But should she be held up as the epitome of feminism? Of feminist authors? The Huffington Post's Maddie Crum recently wrote an article titled Why Virginia Woolf Should Be Your Feminist Role Model", giving several reasons why Woolf should hold that title. And while I do agree with a lot of what she says (although mentioning fluid gender roles without mentioning Orlando seems rather short-sighted), I also have some serious reservations.

For all of her wonderful, progressive points, Woolf was very much a product of her time. As adamant as she was that women needed space and money to pursue their creative lives, she really was only speaking of a certain economic class of women. White women. And Christian. Woolf, unfortunately, expressed very classist, racist, and anti-Semitic views while also advocating for women's autonomy and creative freedom.

These are difficult contradictions to reconcile, especially when women of color and women in lower economic situations have felt ostracized by mainstream feminism. It hasn't always been inclusive; it isn't always inclusive today. If we truly believe that feminism is equality, it has to mean equality in all realms. It has to also include income equality, education, reproductive justice, racial and LGBTQ rights. Feminism can, and should, be something everyone is proud of and works toward, not something that continues to make certain segments of society feel ostracized.

If we just look at Virginia Woolf as an advocate for advancing women's positions in life and giving them opportunities to express themselves creatively, then I think, yes, she is a good role model. Alice Walker (who is one of my favorite authors) references Woolf in her essay, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. In that essay, Walker mentions that for far too long women, especially women of color, had to find subversive ways to express themselves--in quilts, flower gardens and the walls of their homes. They were as anonymous as Woolf's Shakespearean sister, doomed to a life of obscurity because of their gender and race. It is our duty to resurrect those lives as best we can, as Woolf did for the fictional sister of Shakespeare and Walker did for Zora Neale Hurston, to more fully embrace our heritage.

Perhaps we don't have to expect everything from our role models. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes, try to learn from them, and move on. Roxane Gay would call that being a "bad feminist." No one is a perfect feminist--most days we can't even completely agree on what that means. We attempt to live our lives as best we can, but we're going to fail. Because at the end of the day, we're all human.

I'd like to think that if Woolf lived today, she would be more open to helping her sisters of all stripes. Even so, for all of her faults, she does have important words for us all as we strive toward a more equal world for all women.