Mapping the Epistemic Terrain in Virginia Woolf's Fiction

Virginia Woolf articulates a sustained feminist theory of knowledge that reveals the grave consequences of deprivation of educational opportunities for women of her time. She also formulates possibilities for feminist resistance and revision. Through critical readings of five novels—The Voyage Out, Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Years—we see that Woolf anticipates more contemporary feminist philosophers in connecting the treatment of women in the home and family with international politics, in replacing the ideal of an isolated human knower with a portrayal of communities of knowers, and in revising the legitimating processes and categories of knowledge.