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The Entanglement of Thing and Subject in Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting: A London Adventure”
QIU Lin
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2024.08.003
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Virginia Woolf’s essay “Street Haunting: A London Adventure” highlights the complex relationships between things and the subject. On the individual’s level, indoor things construct and limit the subject’s identity, while outdoor things allow fluid identities; these things reveal Woolf’s dual identity as both a rebel against and a ruler of the hierarchical system. On the intersubjective level, subjects are linked through common aesthetic experience mediated by things, which enjoys a high degree of arbitrariness. With the help of things, subjects form an “imagined community”. Concerning the relationship between things and the mind, things also endow order in the fragmented reality, yet in this sense they are abstract, metaphysical and universal rather than specific in Virginia Woolf’s thoughts. They are the withdrawn things expressed by sensual qualities. These sensual aspects, however, are tools to reveal the essence and meaning of life, secondary to the mind.
thing, subject, identity, community, mind
Journal of Literature and Art Studies, August 2024, Vol. 14, No. 8, 669-678
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