Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes and delves into the gender aspects of Virginia Woolf's "The Voyage Out." The paper focuses on Woolf's masterful symbolism in chronicling twenty-four-year-old Rachel Vinrace's transformation from "person" to "woman." The paper follows and analyzes her gradual changes, most of which are negative and prompted by association with the opposite sex. After Rachel's life ends tragically, the paper opines that the truncation in Evelyn's speech as she laments Rachel's death is the final argument in Woolf's case against gender inequality.

From the Paper:

"The transience of Rachel's being towards womanhood is, as manifest necessity, driven by Terence Hewet, the 'man' in view. In the first place, the burden of change is placed on the female. Letting 'man' be a silent, stable spectator, Woolf pities the woman's position and lack of fixture. Explaining things on Rachel's behalf, the author appeals to the experience of emotions that set her on the track of transformation. Of Rachel we read, 'She had always found that the ordinary person had so little emotions in his life that the scent of it in the lives of others was like the scent of blood in the nostrils of a bloodhound.' The slant in this bit of information about Rachel's character is not invisible. In showing plasticity of the female, Woolf resents the case that she be the one to step out of (or into) herself merely to experience her emotions that she servilely associated with man. Rachel knows the power of emotions and has kept herself distant from them by remaining a 'person'. Now, at the sight of Terence, she is ready to compromise her sense and step into the slavish rank of womanhood."

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