Stalking the Subject, Facing the Animal: Virginia Woolf and the Anomalous Narrator

In the second decade of the twentieth century, when Woolf was openly experimenting with narrative techniques of shifting points of view and was theorizing about an "eyeless writing", the animal question entered the agenda of artists and philosophers who were exploring perceptual constructions and the ways of being in the world. As a subject of difference- other than human-the animal exerted a special fascination. Processed by scientific and philosophical discourse, the animal could pose daring questions. Looked at through the lenses of literature and art, the animal gave back its alien gaze challenging the human ways to the world. Involving her writing in "the art of trespassing"(Susan Dick), boundaries of time and space, of gender and genres, Woolf eventually encounters in the animal a mirror of an alter-ego,hidden and voiceless: for her a new narrative challenge.