Gifts, Markets and Economies of Desire in Virginia Woolf

This book brings a new dimension to the critical debate about the complex relationship of Woolf to the marketplace and commodity culture through a focus on the gift economy at work in Woolf's writing, exploring the political subversiveness of the gift and its significance in her modernist aesthetics. Drawing on a diverse range of ideas about gift and market economies, this fascinating study opens up a new avenue for exploring Woolf's ambivalent relationship to the literary marketplace and commodity culture. With a sustained attention to gifts and gift economies in Woolf2s writing, it proposes a new lens through which to interpret Woolf's work in relation to the sexual and class politics of her writing, to her own practice of publication, and to her sense of herself as a woman and a modernist writer. Highlighting issues of gender, sexuality, creativity, and, in particular, the homoerotic significance of the gift in much of Woolf's writing, Simpson offers a detailed, insightful and wide-ranging analysis, informed by feminist and queer theory, as well as by anthropological and sociological debates about the gift and gift economies. Twenty-five years after the publication of Lewis Hyde's groundbreaking exploration of the significance of gift economies for literary study, The Gift : Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, this is the first full-length study to focus on the relevance of gift theory for literary analysis. With its unique focus on the interrelation of market, gift and libidinal economies it offers original readings of Woolf2s work and paves the way for further explorations in the literary sphere and beyond--Résumé de l'éditeur Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-11 The Business of Writing: Economies in Woolf’s Essays....Pages 12-49 Queering the Market: ‘Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street’, Mrs Dalloway and ‘The Hours’....Pages 50-84 A Gift of Vision: To the Lighthouse, Orlando and Between the Acts....Pages 85-127 Moments of Giving: Generosity and Desire in Woolf’s Short Fictions....Pages 128-162 Conclusion....Pages 163-164 Back Matter....Pages 165-200