가부장제와 양성의 조화:『밤과 낮』을 중심으로

When Virginia Woolf published Night and Day in 1919, the longest of her nine novels, some critics disapproved of her work on that she followed the paradigm of 19th century traditional novel, contrary to short fictions such as “Kew Gardens”, “The Mark on the Wall”, and “An Unwritten Novel” published in those almost same years. This novel did not meet their expectations of her as one of the representative modernists.

However, the negative criticism resulted from the disparity between form and content, that is, from the evaluation focused on the traditional narrative form and common subject matter of this novel, rather disregarding its thematic character. As suggested in the title of Night and Day, there are many contradictory and antithetical elements in elusive and indefinable life, which are complements each of the other and so should be respected as an independent being, such as nature and reason, intuition and intellect, thought and act, freedom and duty, and femininity and masculinity.

This paper is to study the harmonious relations of male and female individuality in Night and Day, which is a psychological novel on the quest for love and marriage developed from the ideal friendship between Katherine who is prisoned in her family life with the duty as an obedient daughter to the fathers but seeks independence from the patriarchs and Ralph who bears the burden of family support as an unconventional lawyer. They, together with their mutual respect and understanding, will lead an ideal marriage life enjoying their individual privacy symbolized as night as well as sharing their spiritual communion, different from those of the future Rodneys or the Hilberys.

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