The Need to Restructure Gender Identies

In her novel To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf explores love as a construct of gender systems. Being good to someone, a simple, basic definition of love, has a destructive effect on both the giver and receiver of the love. These destructive tendencies of love are shaped by gender identities, which Woolf establishes early in the novel; Mr. Ramsay is fixed as hard and logical and Mrs. Ramsay as soft and emotional. In the novel Mr. …

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