Virginia Woolf and Christa Woolf: Transitions in Epistemology

In their essays and fiction, both Virginia Woolf and Christa
Wolf address epistemological limitations inherent in
patriarchy. In A Room of One's Own, Woolf investigates the
gendered roles of author and character in Western literature
and literary tradition. In Voraussetzungen einer
Erzaehlung: Kassandra, Wolf analyzes the history and
repercussions of Western patriarchal social structures in
aesthetics and politics. Woolf's Between the Acts and
Wolf's Nachdenken ueber Christa T. and Kassandra enact
literary transitions past a prescriptive epistemology, which
categorizes all experience according to gendered
preconceptions of reality, to a unified view of aesthetic
experience. Moreover, critical response to their writing
reflects an historically grounded shift in interpretation.
Woolf's contemporaries were interested in stylistic and
technical innovations. Critics writing after 1970 have
focused chiefly on the epistemological implications in the
works of both authors.