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"Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being 'like this'. Examine for a moment an

ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind reeives a myriad im!ressions - trivial,

fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel . rom all sides theyome, an inessant shower of innumerable atoms# and as they fall, as they sha!e themselves

into the life of $onday or Tuesday, the aent falls on differently from of old# the moment

of im!ortane ame not here but there...

Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a

semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the

end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and

uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little

mixture of the alien and external as possible% &()*+-from $odern "ition by irginia 

oolf 

/ 0oom of 1ne's 1wn introdued the one!t of "the androgynous mind" as a model for

the artist. /ttributing the idea to 2amuel Taylor 3oleridge &45, oolf desribes the

androgynous mind as "resonant and porous; . . . it transmits emotion without

impediment; . . . it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided" !#. $ndrogyny

is necessary because "it is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be

woman-manly or man-womanly" &)*6.

%econstruction&s attack on the 'estern idea of the unified self.

 oolf states at the beginning of 0oom  that she will be "making use of all the liberties and

lienses of a novelist" in her letures and that the &I& is only a convenient term for

somebody who has no real being" (#. )he notes "a straight, dark bar, a shadowshaped something like the letter &I&," which makes it hard "to catch a glimpse of the

landscape behind it" !!#, and she ontinues, "*ne began to be tired of &I.& +ot but

what this &I& was a most respectable &I&; honest and logical; as hard as a nut, and

polished for centuries by good teaching and good feeding. . . . ut . . . the worst of

it is that in the shadow of the letter &I& all is shapeless as mist" &)**.

7othing need be said# nothing ould be said. There it was, all round them. 8t !artook, she

felt, arefully hel!ing $r. 9ankes to a s!eially tender piece, of eternity# as she had

already felt about something different one before that afternoon# there is a coherence

in things, a stability# something, she meant, is immune from change, and shines out  &she

glaned at the window with its ri!!le of refleted lights in the face of the flowing, thefleeting, the spectral, like a ruby# so that again tonight she had the feeling she had had

one today, already, of peace, of rest. 1f suh moments, she thought, the thing is made

that endures.

The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye, that o!ened

suddenly, and softly in the evening. 7ow:;ames looked at the Lighthouse. He ould see the

white-washed roks# the tower, stark and straight# he ould see that it was barred with

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blak and white# he ould see windows in it# he ould even see washing s!read on the roks

to dry. 2o that was the Lighthouse, was it% 7o, the other was also the Lighthouse. *

+*/0I+1 '$) )I23L4 *+5 /0I+1. The other Lighthouse was true too. &To the

Lighthouse

The grou!, whih inluded oolf, ;oye, and <eats, began to develo! a theory ofsu!!lemental "selves" that !oints toward a elebration of diversity as antidote to individual

limitation. 8n $rs. =alloway, oolf has 3larissa !ro!ose a theory that she is many things and

many !eo!le, "so that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the !eo!le who om!leted

them" &)4>, re!rint, )45), >->?. <eats worked out an analogous idea in his theory of the

anti-self in "@er /mia 2ilentia Lunae" &)4)A, a notion that eah individual is im!liit in his

or her o!!osite, whih eventuated in the om!lex theory of interloking !ersonality ty!es

outlined in / ision  &)4>, rev. ed., )4?A. 8n Blysses   &)4, ;oye also !ursues the idea

that the self is luxuriously heterogeneous, a heterogeneity brought to the surfae by

multi!le enounters with differene. He makes his hero an a!ostate ;ew who is defined on

either extreme by a "s!oiled !riest" and an adulterous woman, and in these sli!!ages

between limited individuals he elebrates suh limits, suh insuffiienies, as onditions ofommunal !ossibility. /s 2te!hen =edalus ex!lains in the library, the varied world

re!resents the !otential so!e of a disunited selfdom( "5very life is many days, day after

day. 'e walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men,

wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves" &Blysses, )4, ed. Hans

alter Cabler, )456, ha!. 4, ll. )*66-6+.