A Foucaultian Study of Misrecognized Female Subjectivity in William Morris’s The Wood Beyond the World

Abstract

Regarding how William Morris handled women, academics are split. The Wood Beyond the World, his prose romance written from a female perspective, is instrumental in unraveling this problem. This paper utilizes Foucault’s theory of power to examine the topic of female subjectivity from the perspective of subjectivity as an entry point. Furthermore, it contends that the establishment of female subjectivity in the work is dependent on the sexes’ relationship and the presence of the male gaze, and that, as a result, women should not compare themselves unfavorably to men when doing so, but rather use themselves as a point of reference and work to cement their place in the evolution of human thought and culture.