Virginia Woolf and Motherhood

by Charlotte Taylor Suppé

Overview

Motherhood is a recurrent theme in Virginia Woolf’s writing yet Woolf scholarship has often overlooked this dynamic subject. Exploring how Woolf engaged with themes of motherhood as a socially and politically motivated writer and a woman, this book grounds her work in the maternal discourses of her time. By reading Woolf’s texts in dialogue with contemporary writing, socio-political events and medical and scientific advances, Virginia Woolf and Motherhood establishes the significance of maternity across Woolf’s oeuvre and exposes how public and personal matters of motherhood informed the links she drew between maternity, femininity, self-worth and artistry. With novel analysis of Woolf’s writing on war, eugenics, food and psychoanalysis, Charlotte Taylor Suppé demonstrates the substantive influence maternal discourses had on shaping Woolf’s feminism, political beliefs and creative practices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399520911
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	11/30/2024
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Charlotte Taylor Suppé’s last teaching post was as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at King’s College, London. She is the author of articles on Virginia Woolf in Women: A Cultural Review and in Virginia Woolf and Capitalism, ed., Clara Jones.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Motherhood and the Great War
2. Motherhood and Eugenics
3. Motherhood and Food
4. Motherhood and Psychoanalysis
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

This expert and engaging book provides a long overdue study of motherhood across Woolf’s works. Charlotte Taylor Suppé’s rigorous research and provocative readings consider Woolf’s portrayals of maternity in light of contemporary social and political contexts and open up exciting new perspectives on well-known texts.

Alice Wood