Infection in the
Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship
莊琬君 (Sarita Chuang) 2003/10/21
Selective Readings
of Contemporary Literary Theories
Introduction
1.
patriarchal literary authority
2.
the polarities/ extreme stereotypes
of angel and monster
3.
literary psychohistory: The
Anxiety of Influence by Harold Bloom
a)
The psychology of literary
history: “the tensions and anxieties, hostilities and inadequacies writers
feel when they confront not only the achievements of their predecessors
but the traditions of genre, style, and metaphor that they inherit from
such ‘forefathers.’”
b)
Applying Freudian structures
to literary genealogies
c)
“Bloom’s model of literary
history is not a recommendation for but an analysis of the patriarchal
poetics”. à Bloom’s model is helpful in distinguishing
the anxieties and achievements of female writers from those of male
writers. The anxiety
of authorship
1.
The female artists’ battle
is not against the male precursor’s reading of the world but against his reading of her. a) struggle against the effects
of socialization b) a revisionary
process à “Re-vision (an act of survival)” 2. The phenomena of inferiorization
mark the woman writer’s struggle for artistic self-definition. II. a
literary subculture
1.
The separateness of this
female subculture is both exhilarating and debilitating.
2.
The literary tradition is
handed down “not from one woman to another, but from the stern literary
‘fathers’ of patriarchy to all their ‘inferiorized’
female descendants”. III. the matrilineal
anxiety in Emily Dickinson’s poem
A Word dropped careless on a Page
May stimulate an eye
When folded in perpetual seam
The Wrinkled Maker lie
Infection in the sentence breeds
We may inhale Despair
At distances of Centuries
From the Malaria IV. Anne Sexton’s
verse & Margaret Atwood’s Lady
Oracle
à women
were meant to be muses, not maestros? V. The effect of
patriarchal socialization in the 19th century 1. extreme
stereotypes of angels / monsters 2. The ways in
which patriarchal socialization literally makes women sick, both physically
and mentally:
hysteria, anorexia, and agoraphobia 3. “’The female
diseases’ from which Victorian women suffered were not always byproducts
of their training in femininity [training in submissiveness/renunciation];
they were the goals of such training.” 4. The notion
that “Infection in the sentence breeds” is so central that the works
of 19th century female writers are often concerned with disease.
a) Jane Austen’s Henry Tilney b) Charlotte and
Emily Brontë’s anorexic heroines
c) Christina Rossetti
d) Fear of the openness of the literary marketplace 5. Eye troubles / aphasia
/ ignorance of language / feeling of anomie Conclusion:
1.
What the female authors in the 19th century fear they
have forgotten is the aspect of their lives which has been kept from
them by patriarchal poetics.
2.
The matrilineal literary heritage is important to woman authors
3.
Bloom’s “anxiety of influence” needs to be redefined. Some
Afterthought / Questions
1.
Is the notion of anxiety of authorship found or observed only in
the writings of woman authors of the 19th century? (How about
Anne Sexton and Margaret Atwood?)
2.
The assumption of “the secret sisterhood of their literary subculture”
/ treating women as a unitary category is questionable. à Does this assumption focus too
much on “the sexuality of the text”, and ignore “the textuality
of the sex”?
3.
Why “eye troubles” abound in the works of literary women? “The predominance of the visual
… is particularly foreign to female eroticism. Woman takes pleasure
more from touching than from looking, and her
entry into a dominant scopic economy signifies,
again, her consignment to passivity: she is to be the beautiful object
of contemplation.” (Irigaray) (?)
4.
Poem 435 by Emily Dickinson
To a discerning Eye-- Much Sense--the starkest Madness-- 'Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail-- Assent--and you are sane-- Demur--you're straightway dangerous-- And handled with a Chain-- (1862) |