Virginia Woolf and the Comic Quality of Bloomsbury
From Racist Jokes Against the Empire to the Androgyny of Freshwater: A Comedy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35699/2317-2096.2025.54788Keywords:
Virginia Woolf, Freshwater, Comedy, Bloomsbury, Androgyny, Racist ExperimentsAbstract
This article examines how Virginia Woolf, in dialogue with the debates of the Bloomsbury Group, intertwines the aesthetic and the political, challenging Western categories of gender, class, and race (Goldman, 2004; Pinho, 2015; Oliveira, 2017; Jones, 2023). The focus is on her performances, racist jokes, and her theatrical writing, especially the play Freshwater: A Comedy (1923/1935). The study argues that Woolf, in collaboration with her fellow artists, participated ambiguously in Bloomsbury debates, simultaneously using racist jokes against the Empire and contributing to feminist discussions. “Androgyny,” coined in A Room of One’s Own (2021) and dramatised in Freshwater, is analysed as part of her effort to destabilise Western gender binaries. The article concludes that Woolf’s avant-garde writing, through provocative theatrical experiments, opened new paths in Bloomsbury’s debates, fostering a feminist and anti-imperialist aesthetic-political thought.
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