The idea of a feminist aesthetic, defined as a femaleinflected style of .discourse in literary studies, has been the subject of debate in feminist literary circles. Some critics tie women's lack of voice and representation in literature to the lack of the aesthetic. The French feminist critics Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous in particular champion the notion that for women to gain representation, they must write themselves into their texts, thereby inscribing feminine sexuality into their

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... ry production. However, other critics oppose this particular method of liberation of language, critiquing the theories for their reductive, limiting essentialism. Mary Daly and Elaine Showalter, Anglo-American literary critics, deny the validity of 1'ecriture feminine. This thesis illuminates the ways that feminist criticism(s) interpret text, particularly Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. which serves as a textual grounding for the theoretical concepts discussed. iv A Voice of One's Own: Virginia Woolf, the Problem of Language, and Feminist Aesthetics No one lives in this room without confronting the whiteness of the wall behind the poems, planks of books photographs of dead heroines. Without contemplating last and late the true nature of poetry. The drive to connect. The dream of a common language. -from "Origins and History of Consciousness" by Adrienne Rich Feminist criticism is divided into disciplines: textual criticism and theoretical criticism. The first entails a critical examination of the portrayal and treatment of women through the texts produced in a patriarchal society. This focuses on culturally-determined gender differences, and ultimately on male domination and oppression. Feminist cultural history as such examines how culture has operated on behalf of those dominant within the culture, namely the males of the society. This idea is commonly termed "phallocentrism," defined as "the order of the masculine and the symbolic, where masculine sexuality is both privileged and reproduced by a belief in the phallus as primary signifier.