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- Title
My Poor Intimate: Virginia Woolf and Violet Dickinson.
- Authors
Clarke, Matthew
- Abstract
In the years since the publication of Virginia Woolf's letters to Violet Dickinson in 1975, their bond has often been described as the ideal of "romantic friendship," defined by equality and reciprocity. This essay proposes a revision of these accounts. It identifies in Woolf's letters to Dickinson evidence of a different kind of intimacy--one that finds consensus in the very terms of its inequality. It is true that Woolf was aware of the conventions of romantic friendship, and often wrote to Violet about the need for confidence and exchange in their letters. She regularly indicts Dickinson for her failure to meet these standards, noting that her letters were almost always infrequent, short, and unemotional. Yet these complaints were never entirely serious. For Violet's silence was also her most important gift to Woolf, enabling her to think and write about herself at great length. Drawing on queer contributions to the scholarship on romantic friendship, I argue that the relationship between Woolf and Dickinson was defined not by mutual support, but by "egoism" and "selfishness." While this reflects a failure of social convention, it is one that the young Virginia Stephen found pleasurable and enabling. Reframing the correspondence in this way also brings into focus the erotic structure of the archive, highlighting the autoerotic pleasures that converge for Woolf around writing as an act of self-absorption. Woolf's ability to both acknowledge and obscure this dynamic in her letters reflects a unique experiment in intimacy--one that sought to establish more complex, "composite" forms of female sociability.
- Subjects
WOOLF, Virginia, 1882-1941; DICKINSON, Violet; ROMANTIC friendship
- Publication
Woolf Studies Annual, 2022, Vol 28, p5
- ISSN
1080-9317
- Publication type
Article