The Criticism of Virginia Woolf's Androgyny

At the end of the 1920s, Virginia Woolf as the forerunner of British feminist literary criticism introduced androgyny into the feminist discourse. Since then, androgyny has evolved into a key term in Western feminist literary theory. However, since the 1970s, within the various theoretical camps of Western feminism, there always existed heated debates upon Woolf’s androgyny, with Elaine Showalter and Toi Moi’s criticism as the representatives. Overall, feminists’ interpretations of Woolf’s androgyny cannot be confined to a single mode. As a protean concept, androgyny is only their utopian reflection about the issue of women’s writing.