Queer love in Woolf`s Orlando and Chu`s Notes of a Desolate Man

Abstract

In her article "Queer Love in Woolf`s Orlando and Chu`s Notes of a Desolate Man" Pei-Wen Clio Kao analyses Virginia Woolf and T`ien-Wen Chu`s novels in the context of gender studies. Kao`s reading of Orlando and Notes of a Desolate Man is an elaboration on homosexual sensibilities of both men and women based on the concept of écriture féminine in the context of patriarchy and the former`s power of subversion and change. Kao`s analysis results in the finding that while Woolf`s Orlando is more attuned to the feminist discourse based on an extended Western project in its period and movement to destabilize patriarchal ideology, Chu`s Desolate Man can be read as the positive force of self-examination and self-transformation empowered by feminist awareness and by concerns about (homo)sexual equality. © Purdue University.