A Golden State of Mind – A Personal Response
In Virginia Woolf’s essay, A Room of One’s Own, she describes an equilibrium of gender within the mind, stating that: “If one is a man, still the woman part of the brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her” (pg. 89). In this quote, Virginia describes the perfect state of consciousness one has to experience in order to write high quality fiction; where one is able to transmit their ideas without having external influences deteriorate them. As she previously mentioned, the talents of many female authors in the sixteenth century were often impeded by the mockery of society. The result would be that their built up rage and insanity would flow into their writing, limiting their potential skill by always attempting to demonstrate the oppression of their gender. What I deciphered from Coleridge’s statement about the androgynous mind was that both women and men authors ought to embrace both sexes when writing; a sort of stability. It would have cured the previous female authors of their passionate feminist views, and incorporated a masculine aspect in their works as well, removing the strong bias of their thoughts. I thought that only by doing so, we unlock that mysterious mentality in our minds; it is only through this process that we can hope to write truly pure material compared to that of Jane Austen and Shakespeare.
Virginia Woolf describes it as having intercourse with the man inside the woman, which is an interesting choice of words. Intercourse can either mean the interaction between two parties, or the sexual interaction; and judging the way Woolf incorporated both genders into the sentence, I interpreted her diction to imply fornication. Sexual reproduction is seen as part of basic human nature; and Virginia seems to dictate that creating and accessing this androgynous mentality within us is also considered part of human nature, as if evolution expected us to achieve this golden state of mind. It’s almost as if nature intended for genders to cross paths not physically, but spiritually. Therefore Woolf states that if women ever hope to write fiction of high caliber, they must mentally embrace the man who dwells within. He is the key to the door of wisdom, the pathway that leads to enlightenment and self-knowledge. He is the husband to female writers, similar to the wife that dwells within the brains of male authors, including myself.
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