Virginia Woolf as equilibrist : the moment of vision and the androgynous mind

Current assessments based more upon Virginia Woolf's feminism than upon her novels as literature threaten to make of her a cult-heroine, whose image is now printed upon t-shirts and tote bags. This study asserts, however, that Virginia Woolf's novels reflect her fictive search for a balance between what she called the masculine and the feminine sides of the brain. To the masculine side, she ascribed qualities that are rational, factual, prosaic, practical, and analytical; to the feminine side, the more intuitive, imaginative, poetic, sensitive, and creative characteristics. More important, minds reflecting equilibrium between these opposing forces are called androgynous, and through characters whose minds reflect such balance and wholeness, Virginia Woolf conveys the experience of the moment of vision.