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truepennyPeter Rabinowitz has some really useful and interesting things to say about this problem that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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:
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:
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:
Taking this idea, he points out that the canon's preference for "well-rounded" stories (stories in which characters reappear and relationships develop):
Circling back around to the question of women's experience and narrative form:
And, finally, the question of thematic coherence, and the reasons why even well-disposed readers will have more trouble with Edna than with Gatsby:
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.
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WORKS CITED
Rabinowitz, Peter J. Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
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.
