Realms of Resemblance: Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir and Maï Zetterling

Maggie Humm uses the notion that ‘Virginia Woolf is an experimental writer is now a truism’ to broaden the significance of Woolf at an oblique angle, in tracing an alternative women’s tradition of reading and identifying ‘the historical ties and resemblances’ between Woolf and two women not usually directly associated with her, Simone de Beauvoir and Mai Zetterling. In tracing the connections between the three women and in identifying ‘realms of resemblance’ between them she argues that recognising an unacknowledged history of women’s reading can enhance and enlarge our understanding of Woolf’s legacy: the work of feminist critics is thus archaeological and compensatory in unearthing new connections and possibilities between women writers we think we know well.