Reading Questions for Virginia Woolf, "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" and Monique Wittig, "One is Not Born a Woman"

1. Look at how Virginia Woolf begins her lecture. Why is it significant that Mrs. Brown first appears as a "demon" whispering in Woolf's ear urging her to her "doom"? How is this characterization of Brown different from the other ones in the opening paragraphs: "a little figure," a "will-o'-the-wisp," a "phantom"?

2. What Lacanian constitutive role of the signifier is Woolf anticipating when she writes, "most have to be content with a scrap of her dress or a wisp of her hair"? How is the implied signified "Mrs. Brown" constituted according to these signifiers?

3. For What is Woolf's train ride a metaphor? How do you know?

4. How is accounting for fellow passengers (94) like supporting them (93)? How is Woolf's potential support different from the power that Mr. Smith exerts disagreeably?

5. What does Woolf mean when she surmises that Mrs. Brown is "in Mr. Smith's hands"? Who is Mr. Smith? What is his position among the "judges of reality" (97)?

6. What is the difference between "real" and "lifelike" (98)? How does Woolf's distinguishing of these concepts place here in relation to thinkers like Nietzsche or Wilde?

7. Why is Mrs. Brown invisible to Mr. Bennett (103)? Can you apply Shklovsky's notion of defamiliarization to this question?

8. What is "death" (104)? On the basis of that definition, what can you conclude is "life"?

9. To what literary movement does Woolf assign the phrase "the smashing and the crashing" (107)? What are its adherent trying to accomplish?

10. In what ways has Mrs. Brown emerged from the grasp of Mr. Smith's hands at the time of Woolf's writing?

11. What function does imagining "the woman" play for Woolf? What sorts of philosophical assumptions does it help us to see?

12. How is the idea that women are a "natural" group affected by lesbian society (9)?

13. Why does Wittig reject the biological explanation of the division of the sexes (10, 13-14)?

14. What is the "imaginary formation," and what does it have to do with signification (11-12)?

15. Why is there no nature in society?

16. Where does the term "feminist" come from? Why is this provenance important?

17. Why is the difference between "woman" and "women" crucial?