‘What Was There Behind it - Her Beauty, Her Splendour?’: Femininity and Masquerade in Psychoanalysis and To the Lighthouse

Abstract

This essay explores the correlation between femininity and absence through Mrs Ramsay in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse alongside analyses of femininity in psychoanalysis. For Freud and Klein, femininity is built upon the absence of masculinity; the transition from girl to woman is catalysed by the castration complex. In ‘Womanliness as a Masquerade’, Joan Riviere suggests that the true nature of femininity is a mystery by insisting that there is no difference between genuine womanliness and femininity as masquerade. I use my analysis of Mrs Ramsay to emphasise how Freud and Klein fail to construct a well-rounded definition of femininity by equating it with absence. Much of the scholarship on Woolf’s novel suggests that Mrs Ramsay performs her role as the archetypal woman and mother; however, our knowledge of Mrs Ramsay derives from other characters’ perceptions of her. I reverse the notion that Mrs Ramsay performs her femininity by proposing that womanliness is projected onto her, obscuring her true character. Woolf problematises the notion that femininity is founded upon the absence of masculinity by refusing to reveal Mrs Ramsay’s true character. Thus, she challenges us to dismantle the structures that efface woman’s subjectivity to construct a more accurate understanding of femininity.