body: flying in the face of facts

In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf beautifully illustrates the tension inherent in the Cartesian dualism of mind/body and its "tyrannical" inscription on the man/woman dichotomy. From a "female" perspective, the "male" virtue of rationality, when pursued for its own sake, as done by Mr. Ramsay, is nothing short of tyranny with a cool explanation.


"The extraordinary irrationality of her remark, the folly of women's minds enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered and shivered; and now she flew in the face of facts, made his children hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told lies. He stamped his foot on the stone step. 'Damn you,' he said. But what had she said? Simply that it might be fine to-morrow. So it might.

Not with the barometer falling and the wind due west.

To pursue truth with such astonishing lack for consideration for other people's feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There was nothing to be said."