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Honestly, I will be the first person to immediately roll my eyes at sensational sexual readings of texts in my courses--but this but abt Virginia Woolf has me thinking about whether I just don't find them sensual bc they have all been male authors' understanding of The Sensual?
Additionally, I think I'm ten times more likely to read texts as sexual if it's an interaction between women--I don't have the same primer for heterosexual undercurrents, and indeed, I do think there's a difference in how/ through what--sensuality is rendered?
So, in general, perhaps it's quite interesting that I'm constantly rolling my eyes at people's obsession with sexual readings. I think, also, that I'm annoyed by the understanding of them as like? repressed and secretive and DISPLACED?
At least to me, so much of VW's sensual passages are specifically THROUGH the physical sensations & mental experiences of sudden shifts in mood, or of contentment, of TIME, of the ocean or the wind or anything that moves--that pushes & pulls--but particularly emotions themselves?
& to me, it isn't really abt displacement & repression (which, imo, is where some of the sensationality comes from), but that those mental & physical experiences are literally sensual to her in some way? & that she deeply associates them in her mind/ her experience of the world.
Also, a sensuality in just observing people and things? And also of being in the midst of people--London, for instance.
Really though, I'm starting to suspect that the whole of VW's writing style is just inherently sensual for me l o l o l w h o o p s.
Really though, I'm starting to suspect that the whole of VW's writing style is just inherently sensual for me l o l o l w h o o p s.
But anyway--also interesting is Hermione Lee's discussion of VW's expressions of sensuality as demands for comfort and petting and admiration in her real life.
