Gender and Sexuality Studies

Abstract

Gender and sexuality are complex concepts that are constantly evolving in a non-linear pattern. Due to their intricate epistemological and philosophical nature, they remain highly controversial. Despite being used extensively in diverse research fields, they are still enigmatic and continue to trigger scholars’ minds. This paper aims to investigate the rhetoric surrounding gender and sexuality in both literature and society. While Western cultures have enforced the belief that women should renounce their bodily autonomy to conform to established gender norms, women authors, such as Victorian Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte, and Emily Bronte, mapped Virginia Woolf’s mindset to challenge the dominant discourse of cultural standards across various genres to enforce conceptual flexibility. This study argues that the dominant gender ideals are often hidden which can lead to moral hypocrisy. This argument is corroborated by Virginia Woolf's concept of androgyny in A Room of One's Own, which is applied to her novel Orlando: A Biography (1928). Through the creative construction of the transgendered character, Orlando, i.e., the male/female persona, Woolf’s radical thoughts are in affinity with the liberal ideas of the Bloomsbury Group. Woolf’s feminine power underlines the mental and physical enactment/ performance of androgynous gender and sexuality in a credibly pungent outline of the narrative. The main finding of this paper is the intersection between fiction, society, gender and sexed bodies, which is supported by transgender statistics. 

Keywords: Bloomsbury Group, Gender Performativity, Transgender Theory, Virginia Wool

Biography

Monia Chouari, holder of a Joint-PhD Degree in Literature and Gender from Burgundy University. Permanent Assistant Professor, University of Sousse. Dr Chouari is a teacher, researcher, and supervisor of Pedagogy and Applied Theories of Feminism and Gender MA theses. Dr. Chouari is an evaluator of LMD English projects in the National Sectoral Committee of the Ministry of Higher Education, Tunisia. She is a trainer in the Gender and Pedagogy Offices. She is a published doctor who organised Study Days, Workshops and International Conferences. She is active in civil society associations/ projects for women’s protection against violence.

https://sharing2empower.org/ ;

https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol24/iss3/1 ;

https://fdsps.academia.edu/MoniaChouariJerfel ;

ORCID: 0000-0002-4356-2738.