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

[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. :)