The Garden as a Place of Rapture: Reading Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and Clarice Lispector

This paper investigates four moments in modernist literature where female characters encounter non-human spaces, which can be read as a reimagining of the patriarchal narrative of origin in the Book of Genesis. In two of Virginia Woolf’s novels, To the Lighthouse (1927) and Between the Acts (1941), as well as in Katherine Mansfield’s short story “Bliss” (1920), the characters face a pear tree, while in the short story “Love” (1960), by Brazilian author Clarice Lispector, a moment of surprise takes the main character to the Botanical Garden. These experiences of rapture lead to a displacement in their lives and a creative opening to the reader through art.