KILLING THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE
Liberating the Mind: Killing the Angel in the House
In her evocative speech "Professions for Women," Virginia Woolf describes a phantom that every female writer must confront: The Angel in the House. This "Angel" represents the stifling Victorian ideal of womanhood—intensely sympathetic, immensely charming, and utterly unselfish. To write truthfully, Woolf argues, one must commit a necessary act of violence against this shadow.
1. The Phantom of Perfection: The Angel constantly whispers to the writer to be gentle, to flatter, and to never let anyone guess that she has a mind of her own. Woolf realized that as long as this phantom remained, she could never tell the truth about her own experiences.
2. The Act of Rebellion: Killing the Angel is not about external revolution, but internal liberation. It is the refusal to be the "moral mirror" for others at the expense of one's own creative integrity and voice.
3. The Truth of the Body: Woolf speaks of the difficulty of "telling the truth about my own experiences as a body," noting how the Angel's modesty prevents women from exploring the depths of human passion and physical reality in literature.
| The Angel's Traits | The Writer's Necessity |
|---|---|
| Sacrifice | Autonomy and self-expression. |
| Purity | Intellectual honesty and raw truth. |
| Silence | The courage to occupy space and speak. |
Woolf’s legacy is a call to arms for all who seek to create. She reminds us that the room of one’s own is not just a physical space, but a mental one, cleared of the ghosts of societal expectations.