Killing the Angel in the House is an extended song cycle for soprano, percussion, piano, cello, and alto flute. The work is a personal exploration of the struggle of woman against the bonds of gender construction, in its many changing forms, throughout Western history. Virginia Woolf's image of killing the “Angel in the House,” an image that encapsulates woman's battle with gender construction, is the inspiration and central premise of the cycle. Woolf's description is as follows:
“You may not know what I mean by the Angel in the House. I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed daily . . . she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all-I need not say it-she was pure. . . . It was she who used to come between me and my paper when I was writing reviews. It was she who bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her.”