While I found Helene Cixous' writing to be both compelling and beautiful, I have to disagree with her overall argument. My largest problem resides with her introduction to the entire essay.
"Woman must write herself: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies...Woman must put herself into the text--as into the world and into history--by her own movement."
It is my personal opinion that this very statement is deconstructive and contradictory. The language used by Cixous undermines her very objective. To say that a woman must do anything is to place her in fetters yet again. Yes, if a woman were to write about women she would certainly "bring women to writing," however, I feel that no woman should be forced to do anything. Also, if all women are supposed to put themselves into the texts, this will only set them further apart in the world of writing, "from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies." for a woman to make herself not only a writer, but rather a "woman writer" is to simply make another category. A writer who strives only to be a "woman writer" will only make it as far as the outskirts of the literary world. A woman should not have to hide her womanhood in order to become a great and acknowledged writer, nor should she have to flaunt it.
I could not really tell if Cixous was calling for equality or not and this is what I struggled with during my reading of her essay. If her call was in fact, one for equality, then I think she may perhaps have missed her mark. To differentiate women writers from the rest of the writing world is to place them in a box, set them apart, almost negate their very existence. Perhaps my feelings about this are too strong, though I cannot help but wonder why on earth a woman would strive to be defined by her gender. Shouldn't the ultimate goal be indifference to gender and for that matter ethnicity. It can or can't matter. I am simply arguing that it is unfair to assert that it should matter.
A woman is a woman, but a writer, well, should we define writer by gender conventions? Perhaps this is a situational concern, but I feel a pull to say no.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Androgyny
While I find Virginia Woolf's conjectures about the androgyny of the mind and creativity to be very fascinating, I am not quite so sure that I buy into them. It seems strange to think of the mind as purely masculine or purely feminine, considering the mind is rarely looked at as gender specific. What is even more fascinating though, is how Woolf asserts that perhaps the wholly masculine mind cannot create, and so likewise the wholly feminine mind cannot create. It is only with a fusion of the two that creation can occur.
Lately in Romantic Literature we have been discussing the concept of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. All of which ultimately unite to form a new thesis and the process begins anew. In the case of Woolf I can see that the masculine mind is the thesis, the feminine mind the antithesis and the androgynous mind is the synthesis of the two. Through the androgynous mind the dichotomy of the thesis and antithesis is resolved.
When Woolf begins her discussion of her delight at reading Mr. A's reading I began to have more questions immediately. Is a man's writing truly more direct and straightforward than the writing of women? This started me thinking about everything I had ever read, wracking my brain trying to disprove her point. There are two male author's in particular who come to mind in this case. Oscar Wilde and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Both men, but neither one very direct and straightforward. Hawthorne uses superfluous language that borders on tiresome, and Wilde's exquisite attention to detail is a marked quality of his authorship. These are male authors who thrive on details, on extras, on beauty. There are certainly elements of direct and straightforwardness in both author's work, but I highly doubt that any reader, when asked to come up with direct and straightforward writers, would come up with Wilde and Hawthorne. Likewise, on the opposite end of the spectrum, George Eliot, though the pseudonym may be slightly misleading, is a woman writer with a knack for the straightforward and direct. Her prose often nears the realm of biting and trite. Her social commentary in Middlemarch could not be more clear or direct. The only problem with this argument resides in norms. By this I simply mean that these three authors lie somewhat on the outskirts. They are absolutely individuals, and so perhaps it is not fair to judge them in comparison to other authors. Perhaps these three authors are simply deviants rather than a part of the norm. We can never really know though, so Woolf's question remains alive and well.
Lately in Romantic Literature we have been discussing the concept of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. All of which ultimately unite to form a new thesis and the process begins anew. In the case of Woolf I can see that the masculine mind is the thesis, the feminine mind the antithesis and the androgynous mind is the synthesis of the two. Through the androgynous mind the dichotomy of the thesis and antithesis is resolved.
When Woolf begins her discussion of her delight at reading Mr. A's reading I began to have more questions immediately. Is a man's writing truly more direct and straightforward than the writing of women? This started me thinking about everything I had ever read, wracking my brain trying to disprove her point. There are two male author's in particular who come to mind in this case. Oscar Wilde and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Both men, but neither one very direct and straightforward. Hawthorne uses superfluous language that borders on tiresome, and Wilde's exquisite attention to detail is a marked quality of his authorship. These are male authors who thrive on details, on extras, on beauty. There are certainly elements of direct and straightforwardness in both author's work, but I highly doubt that any reader, when asked to come up with direct and straightforward writers, would come up with Wilde and Hawthorne. Likewise, on the opposite end of the spectrum, George Eliot, though the pseudonym may be slightly misleading, is a woman writer with a knack for the straightforward and direct. Her prose often nears the realm of biting and trite. Her social commentary in Middlemarch could not be more clear or direct. The only problem with this argument resides in norms. By this I simply mean that these three authors lie somewhat on the outskirts. They are absolutely individuals, and so perhaps it is not fair to judge them in comparison to other authors. Perhaps these three authors are simply deviants rather than a part of the norm. We can never really know though, so Woolf's question remains alive and well.
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