women writers, characters, and strategies of interpretation

[truepenny]

Peter Rabinowitz has some really useful and interesting things to say about this problem that papersky and I keep coming back to, like dogs to a over-gnawed bone, viz., why women's traditional activities are seen as unsuitable material for novels.


He's talking about canonization and why books like The Great Gatsby are hailed as literature while Margaret Ayer Barnes' novel Edna His Wife (1935) is almost entirely forgotten--and sneered at when mentioned at all. His thesis throughout the book (Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation) is that conventions are just as much rules for interpretations that readers bring to the text as they are elements put into play by the text. Thus he observes:

this failure to employ certain traditional rules of notice [in this case specifically what Rabinowitz calls the "intertextual grid" of allusions to, and themes common to, other works in the canon such as Heart of Darkness, The Waste Land, and "Daisy Miller"] does not mean that other kinds of notice have not taken their place. In a novel based on different rules, however, crucial details may well be invisible to the reader without the proper key. ... there is a great deal to notice in Barnes' book ... but only if you are prepared to pay attention to the way Edna dresses or--even more important--to the fate of particular pieces of furniture amid the shifting interior decors as Edna moves socially. But men, at least--and canons are still formed primarily by men--are trained to prick up their ears at an echo of T. S. Eliot in a way they are not trained to notice dining room tables.
(Rabinowitz 218)

And later, having remarked that male critics (especially New Critics) privilege symbolic systems of signification over "works that deal more directly with the concrete aspects of our existence" (Rabinowitz 221), he argues:

even the signification that women's novels do possess is apt to be missed by academic critics. We have been taught, as Nina Baym puts it, that whaling ships are a better "symbol of the human community" than the sewing circle, just as we have been taught simply not to notice the symbolic richness of women's worlds. ... In part, that is because we have grown up in a culture where the phallus is the privileged signifier. ... we already have a well-developed arsenal of techniques for drawing out symbolism latent in male experiences and the objects of male interest. No college student has trouble writing a paper that takes off from the implications of guns, bootleggers, or a gambler who fixes the World Series. Gatsby has thus been a gold mine for critics predisposed to privilege its equation of woman as bitch ... Writing an essay on the implications of such female experiences as child raising and homemaking ... experiences and activities that form a crucial part of Edna[,] is more difficult for a reader trained in normalized techniques.
(Rabinowitz 221-23)

He also cites, in a footnote, Paul Lauter's argument (from the introduction to Reconstructing American Literature: Courses, Syllabi, Issues) that "Some of the most popular texts in United States literature present hunting--a whale or a bear--as paradigms for 'human' exploration and coming of age, whereas menstruation, pregnancy, and birthing somehow do not serve as such prototypes" (Lautner xvi, qtd. in Rabinowitz, 221). I love this quote and am thinking about framing it on my wall.

Rabinowitz then moves on to what he calls configuration, which is loosely synonymous with "plot structure." He observes, to begin with, that:

The canonical, we are often told, transcends the temporary and eccentric, revealing instead what is universal to "mankind." Once we accept this view, the patterns articulated by our traditional genres--tragedy, detective story, Bildungsroman--turn out to be more than merely formal. Since those canonical forms encapsulate the essence of being human, they imply what kind of life is worth telling about, and hence what kind life is most worth living.
(Rabinowitz 224)

Taking this idea, he points out that the canon's preference for "well-rounded" stories (stories in which characters reappear and relationships develop):

"privileges a certain kind of life and makes other kinds of social reality all but impossible to portray without departing from "good" structure. ... From a traditional aesthetic perspective, therefore, not only is a novel like Harriet Wilson's Our Nig episodic; in making that apparently formal judgment, the very life portrayed in that novel--especially its final chapter--is implicitly devalued in favor of a bourgeois story where relationships grow and develop.
(Rabinowitz 224)

Circling back around to the question of women's experience and narrative form:

This coincidence between plot structure and implied social value means, among other things, that the actions of those with access to power (with its corollary, violence) lend themselves to sharply outlined patterns of the sort we have been taught to seek in literary texts. It is easier, that is, to write a traditionally well-formed story about a businessman or a cop than it is to write one about a housewife who doesn't seem to do anything. Such a domestic story, because it will not fit the norms of the adventure story or the tragedy, is apt to appear shapeless and diffuse ... It is not exactly that women's lives are inappropriate to narrative fiction. We have canonical plot structures that deal with women who ruin themselves in adultery (Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina) or who remain self-sacrificially steadfast even under extreme adversity (Southworth's Changed Brides/The Bride's Fate). But the potential roles for women in such plots are restricted. ... In other words, traditional patternings, even though they may vary by genre and nationality, make it difficult to write about particular kinds of women.
(Rabinowitz 225)

And, finally, the question of thematic coherence, and the reasons why even well-disposed readers will have more trouble with Edna than with Gatsby:

First, coherence, like notice, is often a function of the intertextual grid on which a text is placed; books that are like other canonized texts are deemed coherent by similarity, almost as if they shared a club membership. ... And as I have tried to show, we are more familiar with the male literary tradition. Second, and even more important, one way of finding coherence in a text is to apply rules of naming, specifically to find a universal theme--a central metaphor--that holds it together. ... And if your stock of themes consists primarily of such goods as "The American Dream," "The Earth Mother," "The Grail," or "The Homecoming"--whether or not these themes are seen ironically, as many of them are in analyses of Gatsby--male-centered texts will almost automatically seem more coherent, since these themes are more appropriate to male experiences.
(Rabinowitz 227-28)

We aren't trained to think of women's experiences as NARRATIVE symbols. As deeply symbolic, sure (although finding phallic symbols is still more likely), but not in the way that quests or journeys to the underworld can be used to pattern our understanding of how stories should be put together. No wonder it's an uphill battle to write about women protagonists who haven't simply been substituted in to a male narrative structure.

---
WORKS CITED
Rabinowitz, Peter J. Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Comments

[redbird]

Le Guin (unsurprisingly) has said quite a bit about this, including in "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction" and in--damn it, I can't find The Language of the Night--the essay where she suggests an old woman, any old woman who lives in Africa and works behind a counter somewhere, as a suitable representative of humanity for the well-meaning aliens. Among other things, she points out there that pregnancy is not only a profoundly creative experience, but that giving birth means facing death, even now and much moreso in earlier times. Somehow, the patriarchal critics manage (and I use that word deliberately) to treat motherhood as neither adventurous, creative, nor heroic.

What neither Le Guin nor Rabinowitz offers, as far as I can see, is an easy way to break down those walls and preconceptions when they're being defended.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

What neither Le Guin nor Rabinowitz offers, as far as I can see, is an easy way to break down those walls and preconceptions when they're being defended.

Sadly, I don't think there is one. Rabinowitz's project is to make people (specifically literary critics) aware of the political ramifications of the act of reading and interpreting, which, if successful, would in fact have the desired effect. But how one puts it into play is a completely different matter.

Le Guin does have a good deal to say about this incredibly vexing issue, as does Joanna Russ. What I like about Rabinowitz is the ways in which he pinpoints where the problems creep in--not just, the canon is weighted against women but the canon is weighted against women because it reinforces a particular strategy of interpretation that does not recognize value in women's experiences & writing. And in another chapter he shows how a preconceived interpretive framework can cause perfectly sincere and well-meaning critics to misread, in this case, Chandler's The Big Sleep. It's a very patient, nuts-and-bolts kind of argument, and it talks about what actually happens when people read (as opposed to the kind of analysis typified by the intro-level women's studies approach, which is to shout Patriarchy! at everything one happens not to like).

I'm probably not explaining this very well.

[pameladean]

Carolyn Heilbrun has a lot to say about this issue also; the books I have date from the seventies, but I know she's done some more recent stuff too. The books in question are Reinventing Womanhood and

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Carolyn Heilbrun has a lot to say about this issue also; the books I have date from the seventies, but I know she's done some more recent stuff too. The books in question are </i>Reinventing Womanhood<i> and <Towards a Recognition of Androgyny</i>. She is what I can only, so early in my day, call queer-insensitive, but she has a lot of interesting remarks anyway, particularly about the difficulty of reading and appreciating texts outside the mainstream.

Pamela

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

First of all, your comment got munged, but second of all, I do know that Heilbrun did various things related to May Sarton. (even if I haven't READ them yet, bad me.)

Who was, after all, a lesbian, even if a somewhat uncomfortable one.

How'd Heilbrun deal with that, if she's "queer-insensitive"?

Meh

[pameladean]

No idea what I did with those italic tags.

The other Heilbrun book is called Towards a Recognition of Androgyny.

She has also written some distinctly weird and lopsided mystery novels under the name Amanda Cross, wherein she plays with a lot of conventions and from time to time tosses them out the window and watches what they break on the way down. I have no idea how to determine how successful these books are, but I reread them all the time.

Pamela

Re: Meh

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

L. Timmel Duchamp talks about Heilbrun's work as Amanda Cross as a point of comparison with another writer, here (http://ltimmel.home.mindspring.com/dobson.html). The essay's worthwhile -- very interesting remarks on narrative there.

[aquila1nz.livejournal.com]

and in--damn it, I can't find The Language of the Night--the essay where she suggests an old woman, any old woman who lives in Africa and works behind a counter somewhere, as a suitable representative of humanity for the well-meaning aliens.

"Into the space ship, Granny" - I think her granny was Indian actually, not that it makes a lot of difference. - Ah I found a link to it online:

http://www.egr.unlv.edu/~rho/interests/other/essays/crones.html
It was in Dancing at the Edge of the World.

Yes, Carrier Bag was my first thought on this too.

"If it is a human thing to do to put something you want,
because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a
basket...and then take it home with you, home being another,
larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then
later on you take it out and eat it or share it...or put it in
the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum...the area that
contains what is sacred...if to do that is human, then I am a
human being after all...."

Longer quote here:
http://ceo.cudenver.edu/~Katherine_Goff/quote3.html

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Does Winnie The Pooh (including The House at Pooh Corner) have a female narrative structure, then? Episodic, valorizing "doing nothing", male goals like hunting and exploring totally undermined, focus on houses and food and making houses comfortable and domestic details and domestic disasters...

Hoom, hom, mustn't be hasty.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I'd be tempted to argue that it does, and furthermore that "women's literature" and "children's literature" tends to get lumped together as left-handed stepchildren in the process of canon formation. (Mercifully, the canon is starting to break down, bombarded with questions and attacks from all sides, but it's still a powerful influence on how we are trained to read and to think about what we read.) Even more so than women's literature, children's literature is a separate subfield. If you're studying twentieth century lit., you won't necessarily read anything written for children, especially not in a course of study designed in accordance with the canon. Alice in Wonderland gets taught, I think, but it most frequently gets taught in ways that bring a very different frame of reference (as for example Freudian) than that of a-book-written-for-children.

... and completely tangentially, I'm wondering if part of the reason women's experiences don't map onto narrative structures very well is that they reject closure. The structure of men's narratives--you go out, you kill something, you come back--involves a definite ending point, whereas women's experiences, by their nature are cyclical (menstruation), endlessly repeated (sewing, mending, cooking, cleaning), or simply unending (pregnancy has a definite ending point, but it is entirely nonclosural, since it's arguably only a prologue to the story of being a mother). So not only are they not "heroic" (and please note the sarcastic quote-marks) but there's no good way to stop.

completely tangential

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Oh my God. That is the cutest porpentine in the entire world.

Re: completely tangential

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It really, really is.

I adore my porpentines.

(Courtesy (of course) of heres_luck.)

[heresluck]

Isn't it, though? It's the purple flowers that get me. I saw that picture and KNEW that it must become a Truepenny icon.

[cija.livejournal.com]

No wonder it's an uphill battle to write about women protagonists who haven't simply been substituted in to a male narrative structure.

If you're willing to accept a construction of narrative structures which divides up human experience such that men get philosophy, adventure, symbolism, structure, violence, and abstract thought, while women get blood, milk, shit, and housework. Personally, I'm not.

It's not even about different spheres; it's about the tininess of that sphere you seem to be on the verge of accepting as female. Sure, you can find eternity in a grain of sand, you can be bounded in a nutshell and count yourself queen of infinite space, but you damn well shouldn't have to. Women don't have only and always "women's experiences" in life; why should they in literature?

I have a copy of How to Suppress Women's Writing sitting right across the room from me, and I'm entirely in agreement with the idea that women should be free to write about what they find deeply important without those things being judged a priori trivial. It's the idea that what women have been traditionally forced to limit themselves to is somehow specifically female, while everything else human is male, that gets me. That looks a lot like what you were saying yourself, about how it's only male experiences that get generalized to the human (while human is defined as male), but that's just it: killing things and going on quests and rescuing lovers and whatnot aren't specifically male experiences. Saying it doesn't make it so. Saying it for two thousand years doesn't make it so.

And while I'm having a tirade, I'm vaguely familiar with the idea that there is supposed to be a difference between male and female coming-of-age rituals, because a woman can just lounge around not doing anything, adulthood will come and find her, whereas a man has to go out and look for it and do something brave & special to acquire it. This has always seemed to me like a really, really flimsy explanation for why menstruation and menopause are a big deal (because women are slaves to biology, see) but nocturnal emissions and male pattern baldness are politely ignored.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Right. Clearly I have expressed myself very badly.

Personally, I do not believe that women's experience is limited to what Victorians called the private sphere, and I am incredibly thankful for that--being, as it happens, almost entirely uninterested in the private sphere in my own life.

And I'm not saying that women shouldn't be able to be the heroes in what have traditionally been men's narratives.

What I'm arguing for is the idea that women SHOULDN'T HAVE TO play by men's rules in order to be noticed and/or taken seriously. And I'm saying it now, when arguably the walls between "men's experience" and "women's experience" are as weak as they've ever been, because otherwise the real possibility is that "men's experience" will come to be the default, participated in by men and women alike, and the realm of "women's experience" will simply be unjudged unfit for art and literature, regardless of the sex/gender of the person experiencing it. And while I think it would be absolutely kick-ass to have a world in which "men's experience" was simply human experience, I don't want that at the cost of trivializing, infantilizing, ignoring, and otherwise erasing patterns, rituals, symbols, experiences that don't fit those rubrics.

***
In my experience, menstruation is just as politely ignored as nocturnal emissions, and male pattern baldness greeted with as much or more hysteria than menopause. But perhaps my experience is atypical?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

My porpentines and I thank you.

I've thought on and off since I was eleven and started menstruating that one of the real perks of being fictional would be that I wouldn't have to menstruate. Because almost no fictional women do. And, even if you assume that it's like other bodily functions and simply not mentioned, that still doesn't explain why fictional women don't get freaking cramps. It would add a sort of horrible verism to one of those endless Tolkien-knock-off quest trilogies, if the party has to stop a day or two every month because the female member(s) of the party have such dreadful cramps they can't even walk. (I've had cramps like that, thank you.) But in fantasy novels, you can just invent an herb that takes care of it for you.

Like I said, there are days when it would be nice to be fictional.

[leadensky.livejournal.com]

Not that you guys would like, never have heard of this story, but how does Connie Willis's Even the Queen fit into this discussion?

And (while I'm butting in asking questions) do societies that work on a more cyclical vision of time and events (here I'm thinking traditional Chinese) really have any different view of 'women's work' than 'time is a straight line that starts and stops' Western society?

As I remember, the Roman Catholic Church, even with its unending cycles of worship, doesn't get much credit with feminist circles for valuing women.

For that matter - is 'men's work' that has a cyclical nature - planting and harvesting, the endless routine of fishing, etc - is that frequently featured in heroic (or other) narratives? (The Wind Witch is one I remember where the year's cycle of crops had importance, but over shadowed by a war.) For that matter, horse (and other stock) breeding is frequently discussed in relation to production of one superior individual, instead of being an on-going enterprise.

Hmmm. This was, honest, related to your post at one point. ;)

- hossgal

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The thing about "men's work" that is cyclical is that it tends to be a cycle of repeated narratives. You go out, you kill something, you come home. You go out, you kill something, you come home. Each iteration can be its own story.

In general, I don't think cyclical patterns get used for storytelling in Western culture. I don't know the first thing about Asian narrative traditions and so shall not embarrass myself by pretending to have an opinion. But the religious stuff (technical term, that) that gets used in Western narratives tends to be focused on Christ, and that is very much a linear story, punctuated by miracles.

But I'm rapidly getting towed out of my depth here, and should probably sit down and shut up.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Years and years and years ago, I got a big box of Astoundings/Analogs that were about as old as I am, and had a fun time reading John W. Campbell's editorials. Two or three, I noted, were All About male circumcision. Campbell pointed out (which I hadn't properly realised till then) that most cultures which practice male circumcision, practice it at puberty, not in infancy. (He may have been wrong about that, it's not something I've ever researched thoroughly, but I know that some cultures do practice male circumcision at puberty.) Campbell saw this as the point when male children get to be tested and made to endure pain in order to turn them from being males into Men, and was full of theories about how humans (he meant Men) can evolve themselves into a higher state of being by enduring these important tests.

But what I thought was, wow, I bet what male circumcision at puberty started out as was a menstruation-envy ritual. And this is still an appealling theory to me. After all, for a girl, there is a key and unmistakeable moment; first period. It's true it's only one of a number of things that indicate that your body is passing from childhood into adulthood, but it is a noticeable - unmistakable - marking point. And it's one that boys don't have. So maybe, long ago, a bunch of men got together and invented a marking point, like the marking point girls have, that entailed bleeding from the genitals, because that's how girls can mark their transition from childhood to adulthood, so boys should have that transition moment too.

[cija.livejournal.com]

Then I don't really disagree with you very much. There's no conflict between saying women shouldn't have to play by men's rules and saying they shouldn't have to play by women's rules either.

In my experience, menstruation is just as politely ignored as nocturnal emissions, and male pattern baldness greeted with as much or more hysteria than menopause.

In day-to-day conversation, yes, certainly. I just meant in Joseph Campbell-esque pronunciations on what big momentous events mark transitions between stages of life - no examples come to mind, but I know I've heard people talk about women's life stages in terms of biological markers far more often than men's, and I don't think they're actually more significant for one sex than the other. Except childbirth, which not every one cares to experience, and without which one can easily be a throughly competent female adult, without becoming a substitute man, either.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

In terms of how people choose to live their lives and what they choose to do, I don't think there should be "men's rules" and "women's rules" at all.

But the context of all this was narrative. One of the things Rabinowitz points out about narrative is that it's a way for human beings to impose patterns on the essentially chaotic nature of life, and patterns require rules. And thousands of years of male-dominated culture have ensured that the patterns that we are all trained to recognize are the ones I'm described very broadly as "men's rules."

I don't know about the stages of life thing. This may be merely because my own menarche was just one more stupid, painful, messy, vaguely embarrassing thing to deal with. I've always been very impatient with people who gush about it as the "flowering of womanhood" or similar bullshit. I think what you're saying--and please correct me if I'm wrong--is that this, too, is a pattern that's been imposed by "men's rules": women, closer to nature, ruled by their bodies, no brains at all poor things. And if that's the case, I agree with you. Human beings age. Some bodies announce this with blood, others with semen. Big freaking deal.

If that's not what you're saying, please lob it at me again, and I'll try to get it right this time. :)

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

That looks a lot like what you were saying yourself, about how it's only male experiences that get generalized to the human (while human is defined as male), but that's just it: killing things and going on quests and rescuing lovers and whatnot aren't specifically male experiences. Saying it doesn't make it so. Saying it for two thousand years doesn't make it so.

Cheers of enthusiastic agreement.

[jcalanthe]

Thank you - you managed to say so clearly what I wrote digressed and rewrote digressed some more and deleted. :)

And thanks, truepenny, for clarifying how this isn't the same old separate spheres nonsense - I had that belief rolling about in the back of my head, but couldn't put into words why.

I'll go further and say no one should have to play by men's rules. Cuz a lot of men and other genders are limited by those rules as well. Wouldn't it be nice to read a story in which a man was raising kids, where it wasn't written as if this was a Big Deal for which he should get major kudos or for which he is emasculated? I don't mean this in a Oh, you're talking about women, I need to interject men way, but more in the spirit of not making it a gender binary.

And yea, so in agreement about how menstruation and menopause are these huge markers in life, while men supercede bodily existence...

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it be nice to read a story in which a man was raising kids, where it wasn't written as if this was a Big Deal for which he should get major kudos or for which he is emasculated? I don't mean this in a Oh, you're talking about women, I need to interject men way, but more in the spirit of not making it a gender binary.

See Tiptree's Up the Walls of the World. It's not men, exactly, but she was pottering around with the idea of men doing the mothering since 1974 at least and she used it in this, and it's a cool book all around.

And yea, so in agreement about how menstruation and menopause are these huge markers in life, while men supercede bodily existence...

Dismissing the body while, ironically, attempting to transcend it (thus confirming its importance by the obstinacy of the wishing it away) is a very old hang-up... Nicola Griffith wrote an essay about that. (http://www.nicolagriffith.com/body.html)

[(Anonymous)]

Slight spoilers for _Up the Walls of the World_:

I love this book. And maleness is still valorized in the alien society. "Fathering" is given special status (men's work), while the females who go out and explore and do all the traditional macho things in *our* society are dismissed lightly.

Of course when a human female shows up and proves to be exemplary at "Fathering", the alien males are thorougly aghast at this unnaturalness.

--
Theresa

[marith.livejournal.com]

Hm. My litcrit is so rusty that I shouldn't even try to wade in here. But the idea of a narrative structured around "women's activities" instantly made me think of the Fates. Three women at distinct stages of life, doing a very feminine activity that sums up the experience of being human. Not only are they a powerful and respected symbol, but surely making a tapestry (the weaving step, in particular) is used as the framework for stories?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The only story I can think of that's structured around weaving is Diana Wynne Jones's The Spellcoats. Can anybody else think of others?

The three Fates, Norns, what have you, is certainly a symbol that gets used and reused (I'm particularly fond of what Neil Gaiman does with it in Sandman and even more fond of Lloyd Alexander's take in The Chronicles of Prydain), but again it's not narrative. The point of the Fates is that they themselves have no stories.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

The only story I can think of that's structured around weaving is Diana Wynne Jones's The Spellcoats. Can anybody else think of others?

Actually, I am just now reading Cherry Wilder's Torin trilogy (The Luck of Brin's Five, The Nearest Fire, and The Tapestry Warriors--the last of which is resting beside the keyboard, by my left hand, as I type), set on an alien planet where the intelligent species are marsupials and their primary technology (and cultural metaphors) are weaving; they have a vexed and complicated relationship with what they call "fire-metal-magic," the human core technologies of welding, building, combustion engines.

The first book reminded me a bit of The Spellcoats, but I'd thought it was about the family structure and the long river journey; I hadn't made the connection to weaving.

I can't wholeheartedly recommend them, as the worldbuilding fascinates me much more than the characterization or plot; but they are interesting.

There's also Nancy Kress' The Golden Grove, which is about Arachne--surely there are other novels about Arachne? Or Penelope unweaving?

And for some reason that makes me think of Sheherazade, "spinning stories," metaphors for storytelling that are about weaving or spinning, female domestic tasks. Old Mother Goose, old wives' tales, Anonymous was a woman, you know, the usual stuff. Which is getting away from the literal question of stories structured around weaving.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

the Oresteia is structured around weaving: Penelope faithfully weaving, Clytaemnestra weaving a plot and a net both - and the word for shuttle is the same as for sword, it's even called the woman's sword at one point - and the perversion of building up the wealth of the house in a faithful partnership vs the destruction of the house and the broken vows of marriage. There is a big element of unnatural woman, ruling in her husband's absence - but that's Penelope and Clytaemnestra both and there's an underlying hint that passivity and unravelling get you so far but who has the kingdom in decent shape to come home to - but there's also a huge element of wrong on both sides and how C was pushed to act as the antithesis of wife by Agamemnon's acting as the antithesis of father. Weaving stands for the things of the house - literally the oikonomie (economy) and the natural order and the place of women and several other things besides, and is very resonant - though you never see any poor sod breaking their back at the weaving.

[jcalanthe]

Wow, this is fascinating. Makes me want to go forth and teach different and new ways to interpret literature, new genre conventions, new themes. Which is quite a feat, given how much of an English major I am not. Thanks to the pointers to interesting books - I never would have run across them on my own Time for another trip to the bookstore. :)

I love this quote and am thinking about framing it on my wall.

Yes! I adore that quote. Tho it is interesting that "men's" coming of age markers are actions while "women's" coming of age markers are about bodily processes... I'm torn between thinking oh typical, women are all about their bodies and hey, yea, Western culture doesn't value the body enough. I suppose it ties back to his argument that the abstract is valued over the concrete, tho I'm uncomfortable with the binary men are abstract while women are concrete. I do appreciate that you throw in the word "traditional" instead of just talking about generic "women's activities."

I'm all atwitter with the ideas of recurring characters being a class marker and cyclical vs finite tasks in terms of what makes a "good" story. I love that he/you bring in class (with perhaps a touch of race) as well as gender - I'm so starved for holistic analysis. So yea, thoughtprovoking post, thanks!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm glad you like the post--I was feeling ridiculously self-indulgent putting up these great huge tracts of text, so it's good to know that other people are finding Rabinowitz thought-provoking.

I think that binary "abstract/concrete" (which I agree is a gender-essentializing move I would not like to make) is actually more about which texts get favored in canon-formation. (This is the problem with quoting extracts from a much larger and more complicated argument.) The canon is of course formed and defended largely by male critics, but it also carries with it freight of intellectual elitism, class-markers, etc. One of the things he points out about Edna His Wife is that the constraints Edna's lack of education place on the novel is another reason it has been devalued by the acadmy. No brilliant prosodical fireworks which--especially post-Joyce and post-Eliot--is exactly what we've been taught to think of as "good" and "valuable."

Now, personally, I love prosodical fireworks, so this is a matter where my theoretical loyalty to upsetting the canon suffers slightly from my own elitism and snobbery. But that abstract/concrete divide, although it can be associated with gender, I think is a more general trend. Stories that are plot-driven--that deal with concrete actions--are similarly devalued, as Rabinowitz points out repeatedly with regard to detective fiction, especially the hard-boiled school.

[jcalanthe]

Aaaaaahhhh, you make so much sense. And yea, I figured that you were simplifying to fit an entire book into one lj entry.

Interestingly, this explains a lot of why I don't enjoy canon works - I tend to be fairly concrete, and get lost if things are too symbolic/abstract. Nice to think that it might be more than just I'm a philistine engineer. :)

this is a matter where my theoretical loyalty to upsetting the canon suffers slightly from my own elitism and snobbery

Eh, I figure that throwing out everything that makes something canon is still letting those rules define us (look, Ma, I learned something from being a separatist ;). There has to be some sort of model where prosodical fireworks can be good and concrete stories without closure can also be good...

[rinue.livejournal.com]

[You don't know me; I'm just stopping by. May do so again as I liked what I read. ::grins::]

There's a play I saw several years ago - I don't remember the name, or the author - that focused on a group of (fictional, I think) Impressionist painters. In large part, it was about a woman married to one of the painters; she had been a painter as well (they had all gone to school together) but she no longer painted. This fact sort of bothered everyone else, partly because it obviously bothered her.

In any case, she makes a speech at one point about why she doesn't even try to produce art anymore. Impressionism strongly emphasizes the behavior of light, which is why a lot of the work seems pastel. As a sort of final exam back at school, they all had to create a still life for exhibit. The woman was very careful to choose her subjects, things that emphasized and played with the behavior of light, and when she finished she was very proud of the painting. The problem was that she'd made a "mistake" - she'd chosen "feminine" objects, like jewelry and glassware; these things were considered so inappropriate that people at the exhibit stood around laughing at how awful the painting was. So she stopped.

I don't think I worded that well, but my memory is not what it might be.

I do find it funny that a house is not as good a symbol for home as, say, a dog is.

-Romie

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, that's why Mary Cassatt flew under the radar all those years. She was painting nice, safe, domestic pictures (just imagine the sarcastic quote-marks, if you don't mind), and so nobody noticed how good she was.