The androgynous mind

I've played soccer for years, and the mindset when playing is neither male nor female. I'd have to say its almost animalistic, running for a ball or going in for a tackle is instinct. So I'm used to switching off the girly mindset and tuning in with what comes most natural to me, when I'm out on that field. I found it very interesting when Virginia Woolf started talking about the androgynous mind and how the best writers have this mindset. At first I wasn't sure what she meant, but as I continued to read I realized how basic the concept was. As she says on page 98 "In each of us two powers preside, one male, one female; and i the man's brain, the man predominates over the woman, and in the woman's brain. the woman predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating."

"It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilised and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine" (98) I agree with Woolf here, it would be impossible for me not to. When we think about eachother not as man or woman but as people we see what is truely important and can deal with others emotions and problems. I work at a homeless shelter here in South Bend, and in order to really connect with them I have to forget about the life i know, and try and put myself into their own life. This can be difficult, but no matter man or woman its possible. Woolf connects the androgynous mind to writers, saying the best ones must have this mindset. They are able to connect with the male and female parts of their brain.

Woolf also brings up an interesting point in how rare this quality is, and was especially in early times. "And if it be true that it is one of the tokens of the fully developed mind that it does not think specially or seperately of sex, how much harder it is to attain that condition now than ever before...No age can ever have been as stridently sex-concious as our own; those innumerable books by men and women in the British Museum are a proof of it" (99) She also says later that the womens sufferage campaign must be to blame. Because by challenging a mans superiority women have, in essence, created a monster. Now men have to prove themselves superior to women. "The suffrage campaign was no doubt to blame. It must have roused in men an extraordinary desire for self-assertion; it must have made them lay an emphasis upon their own sex and its characteristics which they would not have troubled to think about had they not been challenged. When one is challenged, even by a few women in black bonnets, one retaliates."

So Woolf ends with this puzzling question, 'do women have a harder time writing than men because men feel threatened by women.' If the answer is yes than is it due to their lack of ability to seperate male and female mindsets. Do all the great writers write with an androgynous mind? Is that why the greatest novels can be read by men and women everywhere and be enjoyed equally by both sexes? If so than is this the key Woolf and all the other writers we've read so far, is this what they've been searching for. Do they really need a room of their own, or do they simply need to get inside their own minds and open the doors to this way of thinking in order to write easier and be recognized.