Abstract: Since the 1990s, feminist geography has offered new theoretical perspectives for re-examining the relationship between gender and space in literary texts. With Doreen Massey’s “power-geometry” and Gillian Rose’s “paradoxical space” as twin theoretical anchors, this article constructs a threefold framework-the rural, the urban, the unplaceable-to examine how gendered spaces in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves constitute and constrain the modern female subject. The study finds that Susan’s rural space constitutes a contradictory field in which female empowerment and patriarchal constraint coexist; Jinny’s urban space serves as a stage for bodily performance and the disciplining of desire; and Rhoda’s “unplaceable” space exposes the violent exclusion that existing spatial orders inflict upon subjects who resist easy categorization. Through the spatial fates of the three female characters, Woolf critiques gendered space, showing that rural space, urban space and the unplaceable space between them together create both the possibilities and the inherent difficulties of becoming a modern female subject.

Key words: feminist geography, power-geometry, paradoxical space, the unplaceable, The Waves