친밀감과 거리감의 위태로운 공존: 버지니아 울프 작품에 나타난 사랑의 윤리

Abstract

Virginia Woolf's prioritization of a space or gap over absolute fusion in love prepares the ground for an ethical relationship between human beings. Indeed, Woolf's stance on love risks a total absorption of love into morality. However, in spite of her critique of the romantic notion of an absolute union between the lovers in traditional love, Woolf is not entirely cynical about love itself. Nor does she reduce love merely to a moral obligation, as we can witness the relationships between Peter Walsh and Clarissa Dalloway and between Richard Dalloway and Clarissa in Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf's description of the love and companionship of fellow humans is invested with emotional and physical rapture. Not only in her descriptions of the relationship between married couples (Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, Orlando and Shelmerdine), but also between strangers (Septimus and Clarissa, Ruth Anning and Roderick Serle), we can find Woolf's non-violent and sensuous language of love that allows the lovers freedom and individuality. In the space between a dubious closeness and a dangerous separation, an ethics of love remains for Woolf.