"Laurence's groundbreaking study teaches us how to read Virginia Woolf's psychological, social, historical, philosophical, rhythmic, and structural silences as it weaves multi-colored threads into a shimmering whole: Woolf's novels; the major works in Woolf criticism; the English literary tradition, male and female; surrealist painting and contemporary music; philosophy, psychoanalysis, and linguistics; and structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, reader response, and feminism. It suggests new directions for Woolf criticism. . . . Lawrence's writing style is remarkably readable, clear, and careful."—English Language Notes
“Using a wide range of thinkers from Kierkegaard to Kristeva and Derrida, Laurence demonstrates convincingly that Woolf was the ¹rst modern woman novelist to practice silence in her writing and that, in so doing, she created a new language of the mind . . . and changed the metaphor of silence from one of absence or oppression to one of presence and strength."—Belles Lettres