Dr. Elizabeth Rambo, a professor of English at Campbell University, teaches English by examining themes in pop culture hits like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Angel”, “Harry Potter” and “The Matrix”. She recently wrote a paper titled, “’Queen C’ Goes to Boys’ Town, or, Killing the Angel in Angel’s House”. In this paper, she uses Virginia Woolf’s famous trope, “Killing the Angel in the House”, in Woolf’s essay, “Professions for Women“, as a lens through which to examine the character, Cordelia, in “Angel”.

Basing her research on 19th century poet Coventry Patmore’s poem, “The Angel in the House,” and an essay by author and feminist, Virginia Woolf, “Professions for Women,” Rambo finds correlations between the series character, Cordelia, and both Patmore’s and Woolf’s ideas on womanhood as Cordelia moves from independent girl with power to a failed acting career, to three aborted impregnations by demonic powers, to receiving the gift of prophetic vision and finally to lapsing into a coma after giving birth, to awaken as an angelic vision who is really dead.

“It’s a familiar pattern,” Rambo said. “Patmore’s poem, ‘The Angel in the House,’ inspired by his wife Emily Augusta whom Patmore describes as the perfect wife—supportive, angelic, virtuous and almost supernaturally able to inspire him—would give Virginia Woolf the model of exactly what she could not be, if she were going to succeed in her chosen profession. In Angel’s town, the independent ‘queen,’ Cordelia, is progressively reduced to a conventionally supportive woman, the angel in ‘The Angel in the House.’ Naturally, she must be killed, but not before she has sacrificed herself completely.”