Childhood in Virginia Woolf’s and Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu’s novels
This paper focusses on the manner of expressing femininity from early childhood, with the female characters in the novels of Virginia Woolf and Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu.
One could easily notice the presence – even from infancy – of similar definite traces of explicit feminine behaviour, which are to be found throughout the entire lives of female characters with both authors.
The distinctions observed are to be mentioned in terms of positive versus negative connotations attached to infancy and childhood: the little baby-girls who are characters in Virginia Woolf ’s novels unveil a morality and breeding shaped by the strict patriarchal Victorian rules of education, whereas most of the little girls in Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu’s novels prove a rather lax, less articulated morality, due to the inconsistency and instability of social structures in the midst of which the young characters were bred and educated.
Keywords: Childhood, morality and breeding, feminine behaviour, patriarchal Victorian society, inconsistancy in education, social structures
