ABSTRACT
Virginia Woolf's swerving, dancing, fleeing sets of maneuvers between homosexuality and heterosexuality prefigure three centers of gravity in feminist criticism. The first is women's interests. The second center is heterosexual interests. The third center is male dominance. Serving actual women and visions of new sexualities, feminist criticism refuses to serve male domination. At its worthiest, feminist criticism analyzes sexism, not as an isolated system, but as a synecdoche for other hierarchies. Despite Woolf's influence, some academic feminists, like many radical feminists outside of the academy, believe that if women were to speak, they would speak beautifully and truthfully. In cultural criticism, in psychosexual practice, Woolf stands simultaneously outside, beside, and inside the borders of heterosexuality and of her sex. Woolf uses the darts of style to project a theory that must stimulate, appeal to, and justify discontent.
