Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Jennifer Toole Humanities

Three Selves: Sexuality, Self-Censorship, and Self-Publication in the works of Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein

Jennifer plans to write an English honors thesis that will comparatively analyze Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein. She is interested in how these two writers censored sexuality in their writing even though their substantial income gave them the option of self-publication. Jennifer will explore what combination of social pressures and inward conflicts led to this. By combining historical contextualization with an intense critical analysis of the published texts as well as the drafts, manuscripts, and personal correspondences drawn from archives at Yale and the University of Sussex, she hopes to reveal how Woolf and Stein internally and externally struggled when describing the body’s experience.

Profile image of Jennifer Toole
Major: English
Mentor: Mentor: Professor Alex Zwerdling, English
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