The Phenomenology Of Anger, By Virginia Woolf

“The freedom of the wholly mad

To smear & play with her madness

Write her fingers dipped in it

The length of a room…”

Adrienne Rich, “The Phenomenology of Anger”

I. Introduction: What does it mean to be without anger? Women are simply not allowed to be mad. We are socialized from the earliest impressionable age that anger is just not a grace we are gifted with as a member of the ‘gentler sex’. It is considered the most negative, the crassest, of emotions, one often realized through an all-too-easy grasp at violence, leaving its users painted red in tooth and claw. Anger is far too uncivilized for women to embrace, let alone wield (unless, like serving in the military, it is state-sanctioned and therefore carefully controlled by

To do so willing, publicly, from under the panoptical male gaze, is to risk censure and push-back (or worse). As second-class citizens in a patriarchy, women know this. We must speak softly of our dissatisfaction, tread lightly on the written page, to the point where even the venerable Virginia Woolf, long considered part of any Feminist canon, was read in A Room of Her Own to be only “almost in touch with her anger…determined not to appear angry…willing herself to be calm, detached, and even charming in a roomful of men where things have been said which are attacks on her very integrity” (Rich 1979 37). Patriarchy-approved gender roles for women do not fit well with loud protestations. They tend to bulge instead of flutter, tearing at the seams instead of tightly holding onto their

The capacity to witness is only effective when supplemented by testimony, the act to publicly speak of one’s experience, whether it describes external involvements or internal knowledge. The only way testimony gives the subject any agency is through voice. It is no coincidence then that the most favored gender roles for women are those which are docile, subservient, and obediently silent. The dominant class is well aware that into the vacuum of protest can be poured any prejudices and ideologies without fear of reprisal. The more one is not allowed to speak freely (especially against the harms fostered against her by stereotypical norms) the greater the likelihood their silence can and will be interpreted as supplication and acquiescence. By enforcing those gender roles which stifle those who occupy them, the patriarchal discourse strips away this important social function away from women, keeping them from the public podium while undermining their demonstrations, holding them as suspect by