WOOLF,VIRGINIA IN THE HOUSE OF LOVE - COMPULSORY HETEROSEXUALITY IN THE YEARS

This paper argues for a re-reading of one of Woolf's most neglected no vels, The Years, in the light of recent theoretical work on the perfor mance of gender. It is suggested that in The Years, Woolf offers a pow erful analysis and critique of the production of gender identity withi n the matrix of family life. Using Sophocles' Antigone (itself a medit ation on the relationship between the individual and the polls) as an intertext, Woolf dramatises what Judith Butler has described as the me lancholy rite of passage whereby (hetero)sexual gender identity is con structed through a mapping onto the body of an 'other' whose existence is in a sense disavowed. This identity can only be subverted by parod ic repetition of dominant discourse, sea in The Years in the speech of Sara Pargiter.