Mansfield and Woolf: Catfight in Modernist Literature

The fluctuating rivalry-respect and backbiting-friendship between Mansfield and Woolf disturbs me. It is something that I notice now between women. In college, especially at HBCU’s, the competitive nature among women is obvious in the attire. It seems that there is this ongoing struggle for male attention and slight antagonism towards other competitors/females. Tyra Banks has been campaigning against this Naomi Campbell type mentality—which views other females in her field strictly as a threat and aims to destroy their careers—for years. There is something about this society that makes it easy for women to view other women as competitors and for two women who are successful in the same profession and rare in some way to duke it out with each other.

The same is true during the Feminist and Civil Rights Movement. According to some accounts I’ve read of women who were involved in both simultaneously, there was always a prompting to prove one’s value. In organizations like SNCC, SCLC, etc., there was a necessity for women to ban together against sexist men who held front seats in the Civil Rights Movement for other men. Then when these women would attend meetings regarding the Feminist Movement, the men there would prod them for theoretical arguments about the state of women and the female attendees would be drawn into competition with each other. Even if only at times, Mansfield and Woolf bought into this verbal mud wrestling match. In the same way that many men enjoy seeing a “catfight,” I suggest that certain men enjoyed seeing Mansfield and Woolf in a word-fight, simply because as Mansfield and Woolf continued to devalue each other, it decreases both of their chances for lasting success.

Both were, as successful women writers, rarities in their field. They were kindred spirits when they were together. Their work contains very similar ideas. However, for some reason they never really gained each others loyalty. They never tried to help each other develop new Modernist writing techniques: they just kept a constant fluctuation between colleagues and enemies. Why does this fluctuation persist, even after the intimate conversations they have?

The men in their lives could very well be a prime factor in the discordance between Mansfield and Woolf. Near the beginning of their relationship, Clive and Maynard instigate derision between Mansfield and Woolf: “Virginia was accused by Clive of ‘having come inimitable up to sample’ by repeating some spiteful Garsington gossip of his and Maynard’s to Katherine” (384). There is also “Kot—who told Virginia that Katherine’s ‘lies & poses’ had proved too much for him” (384). Needless to say, this led to Virginia calling Garsington the “underworld” and Katherine renaming Virginia and her friends “the Bloomsbury tangi” (385).

There is a constant evolution and de-evolution in their friendship, especially on the part of Mansfield. Sometimes Woolf is “immensely important” (388) in Mansfield’s life and other times Katherine pretends she loves one of Virginia’s fiction pieces when speaking with her but berates it to others (385). Virginia seems to have been able to control her jealousy by allowing it to manifest only with Vanessa (388), but Katherine took to public critical disparaging of Virginia’s work, despite the similarities in intention and themes between the two writers. So I guess my question is why is competition necessary among women, especially when there aren’t many women succeeding in a given field in the early twentieth century?