CU-MA-Eng-SEM-IV-Women’s Writing

c. Royalty d. Sexual immorality Answers 1-b, 2-c, 3-a, 4-d, 5-c 4.12 REFERENCES Reference books  Flexner, Eleanor. Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Coward, McGann & Geoghegan, 1972.  Mellor, Anne. “Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ and the Women Writers of Her Day.” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002  Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-century England. Antonia Fraser. Phoenix.2002.  Nobody’s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670- 1920.CatherineGallagher. University ofCambridge Press, 1995. Textbook references  Wollstonecraft, Mary. (1792). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. With Strictures on political and moral subjects. London. Websites  https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1553&context=etd- project  https://uniteyouthdublin.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/a-vindication-of-the-rights-of- woman-by-mary-wollstonecraft.pdf  http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=etd  https://www.jstor.org/stable/3735238 101 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

UNIT – 5ROKHEYA SHEKHAWAT HOSSEIN:SULTANA’S DREAM STRUCTURE 5.0 Learning Objectives 5.1 Author’s Introduction 5.2 Background of the Novel 5.3 Plot 5.4 Characters 5.5 Analysis 5.6 An alternative view of Colonial Bengal – Overview 5.7 Themes 5.8 Literary Device 5.9 Important Quotations 5.10 Summary 5.11 Keywords 5.12 Learning Activity 5.13 Unit End Questions 5.14 References 5.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this unit, you will be able to:  Understand the analysis and interpretation of the novel  Expound the theme of the novel  Examine the importance of feminist utopia 5.1 AUTHOR’ S INTRODUCTION Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain was born in 1880 in the Rangpur district in a town called Pairaband in the British Indian Empire. She was also known as Roquiah Khatun at her birth. Her father, Zahiruddin Mohammad Abu Ali Saber, was educated, bilingual, and a landowner. Rokeya’s father had four wives and her mother was Rahatunnessa Sabera Chowdhurani. Chowdhurani gave birth to two sons and three daughters, of whom Rokeya was one. Chowdhurani’s presence is felt in one of Rokeya’s works entitled The Secluded Ones. This is the only book that Rokeya has dedicated to her mother. Her mother was Rahatunnessa Sabera Chowdhurani, the first of four wives. Not much is known about her, except that she strictly followed the purdah as mentioned by Rokeya in dedicating to it The Recluded Ones, some humorous essays that expose some ridiculous 102 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

consequences of the practice of the Purdah (see Women, Islam and Hijab). Her father was Zahiruddin Mohammad Abu Ali Saber, an educated and influential landowner whose huge estate was a bulwark for the traditional way of life. Rokeya had two brothers (Abul Asad Ibrahim Saber and Khalilur Rahman Abu Jaigam Saber) and two sisters (Karimunessa and Humaira). As children, her siblings were first home schooled (as was tradition) and then sent to St. Xavier, one of the most prestigious universities in Calcutta. Rokeya and her sisters only received traditional home schooling. As was tradition in upper-class Muslim families, the girls learned to read Arabic (to be able to read the Koran) and Urdu (to read popular books on “female” behavior). She was prevented from learning Bengali and English precisely because they were also spoken by non-Muslims. This was a way to prevent these women from being “contaminated” by radical ideas outside their religious-economic group. Against wheat, Rokeya’s older brother, who was exposed to Western education, was in favor of women’s education. In secret, he taught English and Bengali at the Rokeya home (see Gender and Country). In 1896, Ibrahim was instrumental in the family who married Rokeya at the age of 16 to a 30- year-old widower, Syed Sakhawat Hossain, who was then a district magistrate in the Bihar region of the Bengal presidency. Ibrahim was struck by Syed’s open mind. Syed studied both locally and in London. Rokeya and her husband settled in Bhagalpur, Bihar. None of her children lived. Syed, convinced that educating women was the best way to cure the ills of their society, encouraged his willing wife to write and set aside 10,000 rupees to start a school for Muslim women. In 1909, 11 years after their marriage, Syed died and Rokeya immediately started school in Bhagalpur in memory of her. WORKS In 1910, a family ownership dispute with her stepdaughter’s husband forced her to close the school in Bhagalpur, abandon her home and move to Calcutta, where she reopened the Sakhawat Memorial Girls’ School on March 16, 1911. The number of students increased from 8 in 1911 to 1984 in 1915. In 1917 the school was inspected by Lady Chelmsford, wife of the Governor General and Vice-Chancellor of India. After that, important people supported the school. By 1930, the school had become a secondary school (10th grade) where Bengali and English were regular courses. In Calcutta you were very involved in civil affairs. In 1916 she founded Anjuman-e-Khawatin-e-Islam, Bangla (Bengali Muslim Women’s Association). In 1926, Rokeya chaired the Bengal Women’s Education Conference held in Calcutta. She actively participated in debates and lectures on the progress of women until her death on December 9, 1932, shortly after presiding over a session at the Indian Women’s Conference in Aligarh. Her death was planted by many Hindu and Muslim activists, men and women, including educators and liberal leaders from her country. In December 1932, Rokeya was working on an unfinished essay entitled Narir Adhikar (The Rights of Women). Her Bequest is that of a Muslim woman born and raised in Purdah. However, he was able to overcome the limits that society imposed on him. With the help of her “liberal” brother and 103 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

husband, she not only was able to write (in Bengali and English), but she took important steps to educate the women of her country. Pipasa (“Thirst”, 1902). Matichur (essays, 1st vol. 1904, 2nd vol. 1922). The second volume of Matichur includes stories and fairy tales such as Saurajagat (The Solar System), Delicia Hatya (translation of the Murder of Delicia, by Mary Corelli), Jnan-phal (The Fruit of Knowledge), Nari-Srishti (Creation of Women), Nurse Nelly, Mukti-phal (The Fruit of Emancipation), etc. Sultana’s Dream Padmarag (“Essence of the Lotus”, novel, 1924). A feminist utopia. Abarodhbasini (“The Secluded Women”, 1931) Boligarto (short story). Narir Adhikar (“The Rights of Women”), an unfinished essay for the Islamic Women’s Association God Gives, Man Robs, 1927, republished in God gives, man robs and other writings, Dhaka, Narigrantha Prabartana, 2002 Education Ideals for the Modern Indian Girl, 1931, republished in Rokeya Rachanabali, Abdul Quadir (editor), Dhaka, Bangla Academy, 2006 Begum Rokeya wrote in a number of genres, short stories, poems, essays, novels and satirical writings, developing a distinctive literary style, characterised by creativity, logic and a wry sense of humour. She started writing in the Nabanoor from about 1903, under the name of Mrs. R S Hossain. However, there is an opinion that her first published writing Pipasa appeared in the Nabaprabha in 1902. She wrote regularly for the Saugat, Mahammadi, Nabaprabha, Mahila, Bharatmahila, Al-Eslam, Nawroz, Mahe-Nao, Bangiya Musalman Sahitya Patrika, The Mussalman, Indian Ladies Magazine, etc. Her writings called upon women to protest against injustices and break the social barriers that discriminated against them. 5.2 BACKGROUND OF THE NOVEL The Sultan’s Dream is a feminist utopian novel written by Rokeya Hussain (also known as Rokeya Begum) and published in 1905 by The Indian Ladies Magazine. The novel portrays a world where women rule the world and men are subordinate beings. Women are in control of every aspect and are enlisting the help of new technologies like flying cars and solar power to help maintain their dominance. The novel details the daily life of these women, which consists of a two-hour workday, and continues to show the progress made by women in a society dominated only by women. 104 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The novel also explores a new religious aspect where the religion practiced is a modern concept of love and kindness, where purity is the most important factor of all. Begum has earned many accolades for her work, as well as the national day dedicated to her. in Bangladesh (December 9). She was a passionate feminist and also founded the 1916 Muslim Women’s Organization in its struggle for women’s access to education. She was also the founder of the first Islamic institution for girls in Calcutta (1911), in her attempt to make education equally accessible to women. 5.3 PLOT This story takes place in the female utopia Lady land, where men are excluded from the community. In this fictional universe, women have greatly guided the progress of humanity, especially technologically. Without men, women have already invented flying machines, fully automated agriculture and other industries. They also learned to manipulate time. Men live under the control of women in their science fiction world. The women of the city continue in their paradise, noting that the men were foolish enough to think that strength came from domination. They observe that there are animals in nature that have larger brains and stronger bodies than humans, yet animals do not try to take control.Without the competition that men unnecessarily introduce, society is much better. The novel explains some of the other differences between Lady land and the real world. For example, in Lady land, all religions have been simplified into truth and love. Since women don’t smoke that many cigarettes, they were able to do in two hours what men took eight hours to achieve. 5.4 CHARACTERS Unnamed narrator The book is entirely in the first person of this anonymous narrator. The only thing we know about this The character is that she is a woman and lives in Lady land, the company. Sister Sara She is the narrator’s closest friend. She takes the narrator out of her comfort zone, chasingactions such as taking off the veil and dressing more feminine. You understand themeaning of female domination and instilling those values in the narrator. Madam Headmaster This category includes women trained to participate in warfare through words and strategies, rather thanstrength and combat. Indian harem 105 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

They are women who have no voice in their choices and are dominated by a male society. Queen The queen rules Lady land and has established the trade and social practices of the land. You will only communicate with other women-dominated societies. 5.5ANALYSIS Sultana’s Dream is a dream world for women where women can be in charge for once in a futuristic society called Ladyland, where men are deprived of their rights and women are privileged to have a good education and a Good work. It may seem like an aggressive feminism, but in reality, it is not; to understand the novel’s conflicting tone, the reader must be aware of Purdah, the Muslim practice of rejecting women from religious practice. The Purdah is what Begum Rokeya criticizes the most, which should help focus some of the novel’s religious ideas. From a more feminine perspective, religion becomes more similar. Rokeya argues throughout history that men tend to focus on distinguishing themselves from the group through competition, which means that in religion they tend to focus on dogmatic differences and who is “right or wrong” there is a religion that heralds social unity through religious and ethnic divisions. Women, without the masculine inclination to competition, notice the similarities of their religions and summarize all religions in two practices: be as loving as possible and be as direct and honest as possible. Another area challenged by the novel is that of sexuality. Now Islam already has a code of sexual ethics, and looking at the rest of the novel, the reader might assume that women would remove that sexual code, but instead integrate it to prevent people from engaging in sexually manipulative or questionable behavior. At the end of the day, the title suggests that this novel should be seen as a thought experiment, like a dream. To get the most out of the novel, the reader must take each idea as a suggestion for a new world that could be realized through social reform. 5.6 AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF COLONIAL BENGAL - OVERVIEW Rokeya Hossain, an elite Bengali Muslim living in a strict purdah and the author of numerous stories in both Bengali and English, was a social reformer. Her story of her begins with Sultana walking the streets of “Ladyland” with Sister Sara as she discovers this fascinating country which is completely different from her Muslim world. Here the men are confined to the mardana and take care of domestic life, while the women rule the country. Instead of inventing military weapons, female scientists invent captivating machines to use the gifts of nature. The land is absolutely crime free as men are locked up in the mardana. Walking through Ladyland, Sultana learns how matriarchal power was established after female 106 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

scientists defeated an enemy state with their scientific exploits, when men had failed. The story ends when Sultana awakens from sleep and she realizes that she is still in her bedroom thinking about the plight of women in colonial India. One of the essential aspects of this story is the presentation of women as educated leaders of the country at a time when education, especially knowledge of English, was being imparted to men. The reform movements that took shape during this period discussed the education of women in the context that they are suitable wives and mothers “The Dream of the Sultan” starts with this thinking, illustrating the education of women as a necessity. citizens instead of laudable housewives, for the progressive progress of the country. Interestingly, Rokeya presents this entire shift in thinking and practice as a women’s right to education rather than a privilege. Furthermore, she illustrates Ladyland as a country where women’s education is essential, the presence of schools and universities for girls and marriages no earlier than twenty-one. This endorsement of education for the women, and women, who runs the country acts as a demonstration of power of women over male domination. However, the path of education has a broader political context which is outlined through the use of language in history. The use of the English language to write history goes against the “linguistic colonialism” that prevailed during the 19th and early 20th centuries. With the advent of the East India Company and the subsequent British rule over Bengal and the rest of India, English was introduced as a language into the curriculum so that indigenous peoples could get used to the language and do official jobs. But this English education was mainly limited to one part of society, mainly Hindu, while Muslims, especially Muslim women, were limited. Sayyid Ahmed Khan started a sociocultural movement to introduce English education for Muslims so they wouldn’t be left behind, likewise, Rokeya has also been involved in campaigns that support English education for women. During this time, by learning English and publishing a story about a utopian land in English, she becomes familiar with the concept of an educated woman and demonstrates the need for women’s education. She also establishes English as the language used by a native woman for the creation of literature and not for official work. However, education is not the only theme that has been highlighted in “The Sultana’s Dream”. The dream sequence in the story serves as an imaginary towards the conservation of the environment and alludes to the ecological mismanagement carried out by the imperial power. In Ladyland there are no roads or railways, indeed, there is a green carpet on which people walk. Unlike colonial Bengal, where men think gardening is a waste of time, here it is of immense importance and there is no use of charcoal or fireplaces in the kitchen as it is cooked with solar energy so it is controlled pollution. The whole structure of Ladyland could be read as a territorial metaphor to reflect a change in the colonial model of land use. Ramachandra Guha writing about the Chipko movement of the 1970s, the hypothesis that ecological alteration and environmental problems are correlated with social justice and state 107 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

mismanagement of nature in the name of industrialization is an ecological imperialism that has cultural and ecological effects disastrous. Rokeya writes during a time when colonial power was reorganizing agricultural practices. In this situation, through ‘Sultana’s Dream’, Rokeya illustrates the existence of an alternative world in which the concepts of botany and horticulture arise, which the British considered feminine and open to amateur women. In this context, Rokeya’s description of the importance of nature in Ladyland, starting with the green carpet for the use of solar energy and the conservation of water bodies using only rainwater, could be studied as an attempt towards the ecological balance and environmental sustenance. Throughout history, Rokeya offers an alternative view of a decolonized world where science is used to sustain life and the environment is nurtured and not plundered. Through “The Sultana’s Dream”, Hossain ignores the familiar and signals the emergence of a new world free from the rule of power. His attention to purdah, women’s education and the English language becomes an indicator of the 19th century reform movements that were carried out in favor of women’s education. Furthermore, Sultana’s Dream remains one of the first stories written in English by a woman in colonial times, thus leaving a distinctive mark on the work of Indian literature in the English language. 5.7 THEMES Social reform The purpose of showing a false utopia is to suggest that real life should change in the direction of that utopia, which in this case means that Rokeya believes society would improve by empowering women rather than depriving them of their rights (especially in his own society. ). He suggests that femininity has many advantages that men don’t always consider when competing. Holiness and impurity Women quickly realize that instead of pointing out the differences between their religious beliefs, they can focus on what they have in common: a commitment to truth and love. This attention to religious detail is thematic because the novelist designed the novel as an anti- purdah. Purdah is a religious practice in Islam in which women are excluded from religious practice. The Ladyland religion also has “haram” restrictions, which include a lot of sexual intercourse. Feminism and a woman’s potential The main theme of the novel is that women are not stupid or lacking in inventiveness; they are just busy. If women led society, they would be up to the task, and would do it even better than men, because men are commonly constrained by competition, while women tend to think and operate more as a group (these are the plots of the novel. , apparently). The science fiction futurism of the novel argues that women could be elite and powerful if women had more social power. 108 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

5.8 LITERARY DEVICE Symbols, allegories and motifs Flying machines and automated farms Symbolically, the advancement of technology in Ladyland shows that, contrary to popular belief, women are better able to advance society into the future because they implicitly know how to cooperate and coordinate, while men are primarily focused on economic competition. Climate control The element of climate control comes when women learn to control solar energy to manipulate weather patterns. By including this idea in her utopia, Rokeya suggests that if femininity were the dominant modality in our societies, we might even acquire new powers over nature, divine powers. The reason for the confused male logic Men commonly believe they are the stronger and smarter sex, but in Ladyland these arguments are patently wrong, because there was never a need for competition. Additionally, men previously believed they were better able to work, but women show that without male impulsivity (in the form of cigarette smoking), they can achieve in hours what men achieve in a whole day. These ads form a reason that basically supports the following: Men see the world in terms of competition and therefore don’t realize that every person has something to offer. The symbolic sacredness of sex Rather than having sex more open and liberal, Ladyland women further restrict sexual ethics, adding relationships to the list of prohibited sexual relationships. This symbolizes the argument that women understand the full weight of human sexuality better, probably because they tend to be more vulnerable to sexual abuse or assault and because men don’t get pregnant. So sex in Ladyland is a very serious subject that everyone treats with the utmost caution. The elimination of crime The ladies of Ladyland are capable of solving the riddle of crime. The problem was easy enough to solve; they simply got rid of all men, and there was no one left to commit crimes, and without the social disorder that male competition introduces into society, there is far less social injustice to cause certain types of crimes. The irony of Sultana’s dream The irony of women’s progress Some people may think that only a male utopia can be so scientifically advanced, but in Ladyland, women are definitely up to the task. Without the male tendency to greed and 109 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

economic competition, women have found that they can coordinate their work and cooperate. Furthermore, when women get better education and better jobs, they are in a better position to contribute to society. These ideas are ironic simply because they show the opposite of what many men believe about women. The irony of the reversal of roles In a word, this novel is about investments. The novel overturns commonly accepted ideas about gender to show that the future would be brighter if women were empowered like men. This is mainly due to the male tendency to personal gain and competition. The irony of crime How have women solved the crime problem? Have they hired a police force and established strict legal rules? No, instead they got rid of all men and, apparently, men were the cause of all crimes. This is ironic, because crime seems more complicated than that, but after all, statistically speaking, most criminals are men. The short working day We tend to believe that it takes 8 hours a day to get a job done, but women have realized that without the constant distraction and indulgence of men, they can get their job done in just a few hours every morning and then spend their days in luxury. This shows that our common beliefs about work and business should change. The irony of sex You would think the novelist includes a positive aspect about sex in the novel, since other parts of the book seem so overtly feminist, but in reality, in Ladyland, the difference is not that the sexual stigma has decreased, but that sex is appreciated. . as a sacred and volatile endeavor, and they put a lot of restrictions on who can and who can’t have sex. This irony illustrates that women have more to lose from sexuality than men, so Ladyland reflects this concern. 5.9 IMPORTANT QUOTATIONS “Your kitchen is not inferior to a queen’s boudoir!’ I replied with a pleasant smile, ‘but we must leave it now; for the gentlemen may be cursing me for keeping them away from their duties in the kitchen so long.’ We both laughed heartily.” This quote states that duties that are considered “feminine” are normal for everyone and shouldn’t make you feel inferior. A kitchen can be considered as elegant as a queen’s dresser and still get the same value. This sets the standard for equality between women across society and an uplifting quality that is seen through one’s character. This is the clear utopia that is reflected as the most efficient environment in the book. 110 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

“Woman in Ladyland are powerful, but to portray a society where women are in a position of power, Rokeya did not find it necessary to eliminate men or to propose anything so drastic.” Let’s see a definition of what feminism really is in this quote. Although throughout the book men are subjected and taken as a bad example, Rokeya shows that the solution will never be to eradicate men but to show them what equality is and establish this equality within the environment. Women also seem to accept that there shouldn’t be a violent solution, otherwise they would follow what men have taught them. Instead, they should use a socially active solution that is peaceful and non-violent. “Why do you allow yourselves to be shut up?’‘Because it cannot be helped as they are stronger than women.’‘A lion is stronger than a man, but it does not enable him to dominate the human race. You have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves, and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests.” This is the quote that talks about how patriarchy has emotionally subdued women so that they don’t speak and open their mouths, but the queen struggles with the narrator over logic as she uses an analogy with a lion and establishes how strength comes from. indoor. The queen as ruler not only represents women in her own society, but she has a duty to present men as a gender that doesn’t have all the power and needs to be regulated and show what it’s like to be submissive. This quote explains why the queen makes men an example of what society shouldn’t achieve. 5.10 SUMMARY  The story begins with the narrator “thinking lazily about the condition of the Indian woman”.  The narrator has no name; “Sultana” is a title, the feminine equivalent of “sultan”, and not a name.  She says she isn’t sure if she fell asleep or not, but she knows she felt like she was awake.  A friend, Sister Sara, enters her room and wishes her good morning, even if it is night. Sara asks him to go out and walk in the garden, and the narrator discovers that there is really light outside and the streets are full of people.  The narrator is ready to be embarrassed, he is afraid of meeting a man as he walks down the street in broad daylight, an action that is taboo for women at the time.  But curiously, there are no men out there.  Passers-by laugh at her in a language she cannot understand.  Sister Sara says they tell her that she looks “masculine”, that he behaves shyly like men do. 111 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 The narrator does not understand her and suddenly realizes that he is not walking with her friend at all: this woman is a stranger.  He tells the woman, still known as “Sister Sara”, that she feels uncomfortable walking without a veil.  Sister Sara tells her not to worry about her veil: she is in Ladyland and she doesn’t need to worry about meeting a man while she is unveiled.  The narrator looks around and sees that Ladyland is like a garden.  The streets are full of flowers. Sister Sara says that Calcutta could look like this too, if the men of that city wanted it that way.  The narrator asks where all the men are and Sister Sara explains that men are kept locked up in Ladyland, just like women in India.  The narrator says that he is not sure that women come out of the zenanas, the women’s quarters, because they are naturally weak, and Sister Sara replies that this is only true when there are men or wild animals on the streets.  She likens the idea of keeping women indoors while men roam free to lock up the sane and set the madman free, because men are more capable of doing harm.  The narrator explains that he has no choice but to follow the Zenana; women have no say in their affairs in India.  Everything is decided by men, whose strength makes them “lord and master”.  Sister Sara claims that lions are stronger than men, but that doesn’t mean that lions rule the world.  She says that women in India have lost their rights by ignoring their best interests.  The narrator and Sister Sara sit together.  Sister Sara begins to embroider, explaining that although this is all women have to do in Zenana, the women of Ladyland continue to do this work, rather than give it to men, who don’t have the patience to thread a needle.  She explains that she can do both women’s housework and men’s office jobs because women are more efficient.  Men, on the other hand, can stretch two hours of work into seven, smoking and talking instead of doing business.  Sister Sara also tells the narrator that there are no epidemics in Ladyland, not even mosquito bites. 112 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 It is rare for someone to die young. She also shows the narrator her own solar technologies: they use solar energy to cook food.  She says these new technologies were developed a few years ago after the queen of her country ordered all women to be educated and banned them from getting married until they turned twenty-one.  Women’s colleges invented ways to draw water from the sky (which also put an end to excess rain and storms) and energy from the sun.  While women invented new technologies, the men of the country focused on military strength and laughed at the inventions of women.  The women sought revenge, even if the “Lady Principals” of the two women’s colleges advised them not to respond with words but with deeds.  The opportunity came when refugees from another country sought political asylum in theirs.  In response, the king of the neighboring country declared war.  All the men of Ladyland went to fight the enemy, but were defeated.  One of the Directors devised a plan to defeat the enemy, but she said that all remaining men must be confined to the Zenanas.  The next day, Lady Principal and her students marched across the battlefield and directed all the sun’s rays at the advancing army. Burned, the enemy retreated.  Since then, says Sister Sara, no one has dared to attempt to invade Ladyland, and the women have ruled while the men remain in Zenana.  The queen sent a letter explaining that the men would be called back if their services were needed.  Ten years have passed so far and they haven’t helped.  Sister Sara explains that the system is called mardana; marda is the Urdu word for “man”.  From the Mardana system, there was no crime and there was no need for the criminal justice system.  Sister Sara goes on to explain how the women of Ladyland save their work: the fields are cultivated by machines.  There are no railways or paved roads, so there are no rail or road accidents either.  An irrigation system keeps everyone cool in the summer, while stored solar energy keeps them warm in the winter. 113 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 Their religion is based on “Love and Truth”.  No one is punished with death; offenders are simply banned, even if they are forgiven if they repent.  The narrator asks if he can meet the queen, and her sister Sarah kindly assembles a hydrogen-powered air car that takes them to her.  The queen greets them both and tells the narrator about her job: Ladyland trades only with women from other countries, not with men.  They prefer to seek knowledge rather than wealth, and they try to enjoy what nature offers them.  The narrator makes the rounds of Ladyland, but wakes up to find that he is back in her chair in India. Ladyland was all a dream.  Hossain has won accolades for “The Sultana’s Dream” and other works by him.  The story is an important work of early Indian feminism and science fiction.  Her idea of education for all women (and the innovations she would bring) was radical for the time. Hossain examined the importance of education for women in a later novel, Padmarag.  Thus Sultana’s Dream is a utopian novel written by Begum Rokheya Sakhawat Hossain, a pioneer of Muslim feminist thought and writing, which defends women’s right to education and freedom.  This first appeared in 1905, when the purdah system of female isolation was widespread. Begum Rokheya in her life gave birth to parts of Ladyland.  She founded a school for girls called Sakhawat Memorial Girl’s School in Kolkata, which is there to this day.  Her belief in a universalist society, where women are determined to improve their own destiny through concrete social organizations and actions, remains an inspiration even today.  This edition of a feminist classic is a conversation in time; Durga Bai, a brilliant artist from the Gond tribe of central India, brings her vision to tackle the radical tale of a Muslim woman.  The Gonds are one of the largest indigenous groups in India, with a culture dating back a thousand years.  It is a form of community art, created and enjoyed by all people.  It is traditionally painted on the clay walls of their homes. 114 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 The dream city of Ladyland, where peace-loving women dominate aggressive men with the power of their brains, captured Durga Bai’s imagination and gave a new level of meaning to a story written more than a hundred years ago. 5.11KEYWORDS • Utopia - a happy society where all of the subjects are prospering • Taboo - not aligning with society’s policies • Domestic - relating to within the household • Feminism - a movement that establishes equality for women in a society • Sultana - female queen • Secluded - alone, located apart from others • Purdah - a Muslim practice that involves covering up oneself with clothes all around the body • Deterioration - the diminishing of something, breaking down • Profound - something important/significant • Regime - a political empire, a majority ruler 5.12 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. Feminist Visions of Science and Utopia in the novel ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 2. Compare the thirst for Individual Female Identity with Ibsen’s A Doll’s House ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 3. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s “Sultana’s Dream” as a science fiction – Discuss ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 5.13 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions Short Questions 1. What is the feminism concept in Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Sultana’s Dream? 2. What was the story Sultana’s dream about? 115 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

3. What is the central theme of the novel Sultana’s Dream? 116 4. Is Sultana’s Dream a feminist utopia? 5. Who is the protagonist and antagonist of the novel? Long Questions 1. How are the men of Ladyland described? 2. Why doesn’t Ladyland require any safety measures? 3. Describe Ladyland after begum rokya? 4. Discuss the characters of the novel. 5. Analyse the themes of the novel B. Multiple Choice Questions 1.When was Sultana’s Dream published? a. 1905 b. 1805 c. 1906 d. 1915 2. Who published Sultana’s Dream? a. In Newspaper b. In Magazine c. Indian Ladies’ Magazine d. Indian Women Magazine 3. What was her husband’s name? a. Khan Bahadur Syed Sakhawat Hossain b. Khan viswan Syed Sakhawat Hossain c. Khan Bahadur Syed Sakhawat bolte d. Khan Bahadur Abraham Sakhawat Hossain 4. Why did Rokeya feel lonely? a. She is a Bengali b. She is not a Muslim CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

c. She is a Christian d. She does not like her family 5. ______ is a significant work of early Indian feminism, as well as science fiction. a. Sultana’s Dream b. A Room of One’s Own c. Cruelty d. Dedication Answers 1-a, 2-b, 3-a, 4-a, 5-a 5.14 REFERENCES Reference books  Flexner, Eleanor. Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Coward, McGann & Geoghegan, 1972.  Mellor, Anne. “Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ and the Women Writers of Her Day.” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002  Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-century England. Antonia Fraser. Phoenix.2002.  Nobody’s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670- 1920.CatherineGallagher. University ofCambridge Press, 1995. Textbook references  Wollstonecraft, Mary. (1792). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. With Strictures on political and moral subjects. London. Websites  https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1553&context=etd- project  https://uniteyouthdublin.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/a-vindication-of-the-rights-of- woman-by-mary-wollstonecraft.pdf  http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=etd 117 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3735238 118 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

UNIT – 6HELENE CIXOUS:THE LAUGH OF THE MEDUSA STRUCTURE 6.0 Learning Objectives 6.1 Author’s Introduction 6.2 Background of the Novel 6.3 The Historical Context of Cixous’s Essay 6.4 Helene Cixous as a Representative of the Poststructuralist Movement 6.5 About Medusa 6.6 Analysis 6.7 Characteristics of Ecriture Feminine 6.8 Important Quotations 6.9 Summary 6.10 Keywords 6.11 Learning Activity 6.12 Unit End Questions 6.13 References 6.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this unit, you will be able to:  Understand Helene Cixous as a feminist  Expound the theme of the essay  Examine Eurocentrism 6.1 AUTHOR’ S INTRODUCTION Helene Cixous, born in 1937 is a French feminist. She, along with Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and several other feminists, are part of what is called “French feminism”, not because they were born in France, but because they share the ideas of feminism propagated by feminists in France in the 1960s, who were strongly influenced by the works of Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault and many others. All were strongly influenced by the theories of post-structuralism and psychoanalysis. These French feminists like Cixous have used and criticized the ideas of such theories to question and challenge male hegemony, Derrida’s ideas have been used to criticize the notion of binary and the very nature of language, its meaning and how language plays an important role in the subordination of women, as most concepts and ideas are biased against women. Women and are socially and 119 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

culturally constructed by male hegemony, keeping women in a state of perpetual subordination. All these French feminists place great emphasis on women’s physiology and how it can help and guide women’s writing in a way that can break free from the limitations of patriarchal prejudices. Cixous’s seminal work was titled The Laughter of Medusa and Sorties, both published in 1975. Cixous coined the concept of feminine écriture, translated as feminine writing in English. In this work Laughter of Medusa, Cixous uses psychoanalysis, inspired by the aforementioned work of Lacan, to interpret Greek mythology in a way that challenges patriarchal hegemony. This work is written in the form of poetry and Cixous’s intention is to break the structural rules of logic and argumentation established by the patriarchy and preferring a poetic medium, more imaginative and not limited by the limits of prosaic logic, and so away we witness the Cixous rebellion against the borders that the patriarchy imposes on women. Through this work, Ella Cixous urges women to write extensively, as this is the platform that can change history, oppose the male hegemony that has repressed them and distanced them from that art. Ella cixous wants women to write in a unique way, using pro-feminine language that celebrates the femininity, her body and sexuality that have been repressed over the centuries. Cixous uses the Greek myth of the monster Medusa, who was depicted as a fierce and ugly woman, full of anger and with snakes instead of hair on her head, to argue that this narrative of Medusa was distorted by the patriarchal man to portray a woman, she who has equally dangerous and ugly desires, unlike the beautiful, faithful, virgin princess who is adored by them. Cixous criticizes precisely this notion in which women are portrayed as monsters like Medusa or as an “unexplored abyss”, an idea proposed by Freud in which he insinuates women as negative beings compared to what men represent (they are shown as beings without penis), the mystery of her nature cannot be explored or understood. This is what Cixous wants women to be, a rebellious nature that defies all limits and the framework in which patriarchy wants to limit women. Cixous uses the metaphor of Medusa’s laughter as a tool to reject the very idea of truth, binaries that are deeply rooted in Western patriarchal thoughts when he says, “Just look at Medusa directly to see her. And she is not mortal. She is beautiful and laughs” . This laugh, as explained above, is the laugh of a rebellious woman against male tyranny in any form. For Cixous, the goal of this feminine writing, which wants women to write with full vigor and freedom, is to “destroy everything, breaking the fabric of institutions, blowing up the law, breaking the ‘truth’ and this also in a way manifested in the demystified version of Medusa with laughter. The main focus of Cixous and the writing is on the female body and its parts, which, as he writes, “Woman must write herself and must insert herself in the text - as in the 120 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

world and in history - with her own movement”. Also, he reiterates his point by telling women, “Write yourself. You should listen to your body. “ Awards Cixous was felicitated with the French literary award ‘Prix Médicis’, for her fictional work, ‘Dedans’, in 1969. In 1989 Hélène was honored with the ‘Southern Cross of Brazil’ for her extensive studies on the Russian-Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, and her works. She was awarded the ‘Légion d’Honneur’, one of the highest French orders, in 1994, by the 21st President of France, François Mitterrand. 6.2 BACKGROUND OF THE NOVEL In 1975, French feminist author Helene Cixous published an essay entitled “Laughter of the Medusa”. In it, she develops a completely new theoretical concept with the aim of giving rise to the feminist voice. This article will present the central ideas of Ecriture Feminine, literally “feminine writing”. In the first part, a brief description of Cixous’s intellectual environment is given to show the real reason that led her to elaborate a new notion of women’s liberation from patriarchy. In this context follows an elaboration on post-structuralism, the philosophical current to which Cixous belonged. Closely related to this is the authors’ skepticism towards Sigmund Freud’s philosophy of language. In particular, Freud’s claims on the theory of penis envy. Primary attention is paid to the theory of phallocentrism, which can be seen as one of the main reasons for Cixous’s writings. For a better understanding of this term, the concept of logocentrism is also explained. Logocentrism can be seen as a pillar of the phallocentrism theory and therefore deserves mention at this point. In the second part we address the question of what is meant specifically by “female writing”. Furthermore, we will analyze what role the female body and sexuality play in this context. This excursion is very interesting as it is essential to understand the concept. As the female body is considered as a key for women to resistthinking and, therefore, the systematic repression of women. Aside from that, we try to show whether the characteristics of Ecriture Feminine are evident in “Laughter of the Medusa”. Furthermore, a different point of view on Cixous’s theory is shown in the chapter “Critique” where the arguments for and against her theory are shown. Point five “Conclusions” summarizes the main aspects of this work. During the writing of this article, the main source of information was essays on feminist writing and French feminist writing, dated between 1987 and 1986. In addition, secondary literature on literary and cultural theory was used, as well as feminist practice and post- Structuralist theory. However, no recent research has been found on Cixous’s work. The only source that deals particularly with his writings dates back to 1991. 121 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

6.3 THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF CIXOUS’S ESSAY Helene Cixous was part of the French feminist movement which had grown considerably since 1968, when frustration and anger at the exclusion of women from political institutions became evident. At that time, women were also excluded from general public discourse. Feminists were convinced that language reflected this kind of exclusion and that its presence in literature would change existing power relations. Their purpose was to be heard as women in a female discourse and not as women as the object of a male discourse. As a result, the idea of a feminine-defined writing practice emerged. This way of writing should become a starting point for the female conscience, as well as a means to subvert the patriarchal system in society. Cixous sets this goal very well when she states that “women must bring to light what male history has removed in them”. Cixous sought to change the field of literary production that is part of the cultural system. Since the cultural system is deeply political, your attempt to change it is clearly a political act. 6.4 HELENE CIXOUS AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE POSTSTRUCTURALIST MOVEMENT In the 1970s, Cixous was considered one of the most influential representatives of the post- structuralist theory. It is a theory that “analyzes the patriarchal structures of society and the positions we occupy within them”. Moving towards this theory, Cixous wanted the public to understand why women tolerate social relationships that ultimately subordinate their interests to those of men. Furthermore, he focused on the way in which texts construct meanings and their political implications, both when looking at the past and when examining the present. In doing so, he deals with language and representation, as well as philosophical issues. Speaking of the latter, Cixous addresses his criticism of Sigmund Freud’s theory of penis envy: The woman who still lets herself be threatened by a big cock, who continues to be struck by the emotion of the phallic position, who still guides a faithful teacher to the rhythm of the drum: this is the woman of yesterday. According to her, Freud sets the stage for precarious biological discrimination and prejudice against women. The reason for their criticism is Freud’s claim that women generally envy men for not being born with a penis. Freud added that therefore female sexuality is characterized by the desire for a penis, a process in which women are naturally condemned to be inferior to men. It goes even further in assuming that this inferiority may also be the reason for women’s small number of cultural achievements. That said, Freud, among other men, has created a system in which women are repressed due to a masculine style that predominates in the realm of writing. The concepts of phallocentrism and logocentrism Phallocentrism, coined by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. In this regard Cixous argues that: Almost the entire history of writing is confused with the history of reason, of 122 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

which it is both the effect, support and one of the privileged alibis. It was one with the phallocentric tradition. Indeed, it is phallocentrism itself that is admired, encouraged and celebrated. The term phallocentrism seeks to combine the notion of phallus with the concept of logocentrism. Logocentrism emphasizes the privileged role of logos, that is of the word, and argues that the word has been granted in the Western tradition. Furthermore, logocentrism refers to the prioritization of logical language, understood as the way in which men use to express themselves. Therefore, consider any other language, including that of women, marginal and insignificant. By combining phallus with logocentrism with phallocentrism, a whole new meaning is obtained. Phallocentrism is a form of logocentrism but strongly influenced by the masculine gender and the masculine concept of patriarchy. In response to this theory, Cixous urges women to be more dominant in the field of literature through the use of their sexuality: when women, historically limited to being sex objects for men, have been prevented from expressing their sexuality. If they can, and if they can talk about it in the new languages it requires, they will establish a point of view from which phallocentric concepts and controls can be seen and dismantled. 6.5 ABOUT MEDUSA The story of Medusa has moved in time along with her face. In Greek mythology, she is one of the Gorgon sisters (derived from the Greek Gorgos for “terrible”), and Perseus uses a reflective bronze shield of her to defeat her. She then she uses her head and her stone glow as a weapon, a tool that she later gives her to the goddess Athena, who used it on her armor of hers. In a later version, as reported by the Roman poet Ovid, Medusa is a beautiful human woman, who is transformed into a monster by Athena as a punishment after being raped by Poseidon (woe to mortal women in mythology). A red-figure film container from 450-440 BC is one of the earliest depictions of Medusa as an innocent child, with Perseus climbing the sleeping Gorgon. The classical period of Greek art: from 480 to 323 BC C. C. - further associated beauty with danger as Medusa, sirens, sphinxes and Scylla warmed up a bit, losing some scales and wings as their bodies became more and more human. Fun with Jellyfish “Laughter of the Medusa” (1976) is a fundamental essay by the French writer and feminist Helene Cixous. This work expresses her unique contribution to literature, Ecriture female (feminine writing). The work is structured like a poem as a rejection of conventional rhetorical formats of argumentation. The “arguments” of this text are based on the materiality of the language, the texture of the words and the effects of the combination of words, etc. The work does not revolve around any central metaphor, since according to Cixous the very notion of centrality is transitory. Cixous accuses “Men have nailed us between two gruesome myths: between the Medusa and the abyss.” The “Abyss” refers to the connotation of Freud’s designation of woman as a “dark continent”, difficult to analyze and understand. Dismiss this myth. 123 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Medusa was traditionally represented as a monster; with snakes for her hair. She was once famous for her beauty. Her hair was attractive. Poseidon (God of the Sea) stole her virginity and punished her by changing her hair into snake repellent and made her face so terrible. The myth of Medusa represents the repression of female sexuality and beauty. Cixous focuses on Medusa before suppressing her sexuality, before she transforms into a monster. For Cixous, laughter is a symbolic way of rejecting the masculine concept of history and truth as defined by the masculine thought traditions. She adds that A Feminine Text is designed to destroy and shatter the entire structure of institutions, explode the truth and break the “truth” with laughter. Cixous urges to break the myths related to women. To redeem the woman from a degraded state in the history of male mythology, she must demolish all these myths and start writing. She urged women to say, “Write to yourself, your body must be heard.” The beauty and horror of Medusa Early portraits of Medusa show anoutrageous creature, part human and part animal, with the wings and fangs of a boar. In the fifth century BC, that figure of Greek myth began to transform into a seductive seductress, shaped by the idealization of the body in Greek art. Her coiled snake hair turned into wild curls, with perhaps a couple of snakes under her chin to hint at her more beastly origins than her. Today, Medusa, with her snake hair and her gaze that petrifies people, resists as an allegorical figure of fatal beauty, or an image ready to superimpose itself on the face of a hated woman in power. Most of the time, she is only depicted as a severed head, a visual object that even has her name, the Gorgoneion, carved, painted or sculpted while her assassinating her, Perseus holds it. 6.6 ANALYSIS Cixous goes on to say that there is a female practice of writing, although it may be impossible to theorize. He means that such a practice would be beyond the reach of a phallocentric discourse and operates in areas that go beyond the territorial limits of the male “philosophical-theoretical” rule. Only those who are bold enough to break the automatism or controls that manipulate their actions can initiate the creation of a feminist practice of writing. Therefore, changes are more likely to occur in areas along the margins away from the center that continue to be limited by the authority of a phallocentric system. Very rarely has there been a writing that inscribes femininity. People have always been reluctant to admit or accept the distinction between feminine and masculine writing. In this context, it is important to keep these points in mind. 1. Sexual opposition has always sought to ensure respect for men’s standards in areas such as writing. Western literary culture is trapped in a phallocentric modality, the “logical logos”. Writing against this mode would destroy the male / female and logical / illogical binaries. But this opposition only serves to set limits. Boundaries will be crossed and then a corpu s of 124 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

literary works will be created that will bring femininity into writing, the effects of which will be impossible to ignore. So a woman must write and forge the anti-logos weapon to undermine the cultural privilege of phallocentrism. 2. It is mainly due to ignorance that the possibility of a distinction between masculine and feminine writing is completely rejected. Writing was believed to be something that denied sexual difference. The ideology of liberation is based on the celebration of a female difference that can destabilize the sexual opposition that favors men. Cixous compares a woman’s experience to that of a man to the experience of a woman seeking the pleasures of male sexuality with an ineffective paper penis. Derrida’s influence is evident in the section where Cixous states that writing actually works between the two binaries of masculine / feminine, logical / illogical. The idea of ”in-between” is a textual and theoretical feature of Derrida’s writings. Clues must be replaced by a fluid play of desires. The midwayers suggest the human subject whose identity is fluid and changeable. It is important to recognize the distinction. Only then can the process of delivering and exploiting its terms begin, which ultimately destabilizes the opposition. It is a whole and not just a part of something. Bringing femininity to writing is not the expulsion of the masculine or the end or death. The concept of bisexuality is suppressed or subjected to the concepts of: 1. Castration anxiety (fear of penis loss - Freud’s psychoanalytic theory) 2. The fantasy of being “total” as a state of perfection with the meeting of the two halves. It is this bisexuality that can eliminate the difference that is believed to have arisen due to the loss of the penis. Fear of losing it is the cause of anxiety. The traditional idea was to treat bisexuality as neutrality and this generated the fear of lack (castration). Cixous contrasts this traditional idea with a new type of bisexuality that is identified with a sexual orientation towards both sexes. In this sense, a woman is bisexual, while a man cannot be without losing his phallocentric male identity. A woman’s writing is also bisexual because she writes for both men and women. To elaborate, evading traditional bisexuality is tantamount to neutrality or being neither here nor there. Against there is another type of bisexuality, not codified by a phallocentric representation and therefore a place of the erotic universe itself. This is the type of bisexuality that accepts orientation towards both sexes in its various manifestations. According to Cixous, female writing is a manifestation of desire outside of heteronormative conventions. It blurs all distinctions to give way to an erotic writing that would subvert the binary opposition and offer a multiplication of places of bodily pleasure. Cixous rejects the intrinsic limits of being one or the other and supports multiplicity. He defines bisexuality as the multiplication of the effects of the inscription of desire, referring to the pleasures of choosing a wider mode of sexual expression. Faced with the bipolarity of the sexes, he suggests the bimodality in which men and women are identifiable groups that have areas of overlap and celebrate the virtues of each. That is, the traits attributed to each sex are present in both. 125 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

The concept of “Vatican sexuality” demonstrates Cixous’s zeal to get rid of rigid opposites. Traditional bisexuality denies sexual difference by merging two halves into a fantasy of an entire being. Vatic sexuality does not cancel differences, but awakens them and increases their number. This is opposed to the shy type of fusion of bisexuality. Referring once again to the Freudian theory of psychoanalysis, Cixous admits that she has always been overshadowed by the excessive power of the phallic symbol that she, as a woman, could never have wielded. However, the man who should be wielding this symbol of power lives in constant anxiety and fear of castration. In this essay, Cixous makes an ironic statement on the concept of Lacan. According to Lacan, language acquisition begins when the child’s imaginary identity (pre-Oedipal phase) united with the mother is destroyed with the appearance of the father. The child learns to say “I am” different from “he is”. In Lacan’s theory, the phallus does not refer to a specific attribute of man, but symbolically refers to the law binding for all. It is necessary to deconstruct Lacan’s phallocentric system and invent new strategies for the expression of the relationship between language and female bodies. Feminine lécriture (feminine writing) refers to the unconscious, to repressed female sexuality. Women have to find their sexuality, their bodies have to be heard. Once activated, the language structure will change. And the language that will evolve would be a deconstructive language. Cixous urges women not to identify with men. Helene Cixous affirms the need to shape such a women’s movement. You must also destroy the prison of sexual misconduct. Derrida accuses Lacan of being both phallocentric (phallus as the center of the symbolic order) and logocentric. Phallocentrism treats the phallus as the source or origin of language). Post-structural and citrus feminists criticize this concept for its subordination of the feminine to the masculine. In opposition to Freudian traces of possession and lack, Cixous states that the new woman is not obliged to restore the supremacy of her father’s religion. Molly Bloom from James Joyce’s “Ulysses” has Penelope as her mythical counterpart. “I said yes, I will” is her soliloquy that forms the 18th and final episode of Ulysses. This episode of Penelope illustrates the emotional complexity of marriage and fidelity. The “yes” is the feminine word that suggests acquiescence and surrender. Molly’s sexual associations contrast with Penelope’s loyalty to her long-absent husband, making her an emblem of the ideal woman. Like Penelope and Arianna, she must weave the thread of the text that will lead her to salvation. The writing process is a transformative process. To weave her stories of hers, she must return to the patriarchal canon and expose the narratives of the past that keep her quiet and captive. Death is the transformation and not the end. By undoing the work of death, you learn to enjoy your creativity. In other words, writing has the ability to erase the silence and death of trauma and bring it back to light and life. She feels free to follow different paths with many encounters and transformations. You absorb energy from a continuous process of 126 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

mutual exchange. This idea is contrary to what Cixous proposes in his essay on the necessity of women’s action in writing and history. The life-changing, life-changing imagination is true for both men and women. But with women it is not recognized enough. Cixous accuses Freud of a form of gender apartheid and of perpetuating a myth about the impenetrable nature of female consciousness. Freud’s imaginary mapping of female sexuality and the clumsy way in which he tries to repress femininity make his psychoanalysis of him no different from the other human sciences, simply by reproducing the male view. The female unconscious remains untapped and unmapped by psychoanalytic theory, as women were led to believe it was too dark an area to walk and explore. They are even led to believe that it is the white continent that interests them. In other words, this is how it is perceived by the colonial explorer and cartographer’s gaze. Cixous’s writing, despite its outward approval of the idea of more women, is captured by a desire to totalize women’s history and is based on a deeply Eurocentric consensus on African darkness. It presents Freud’s black continent as a male construction. Speaking of the phallocentric structures inherent in language, Cixous states that women are silenced. Their sex is an abyss, a mysterious dark room, an unexplored but vindicated country. The phrase Medusa and the abyss indicate options for a woman in phallic speech, the choice between the silence of castration and the silence of beheading. He is always closed in silence because either he speaks in a language that is not his or his words are not received by the ears of a man who can only hear when he speaks in the masculine. Cixous reminds us of the patriarchal character of the myth and the fact that it articulates a falsehood. He does it with reference to the sirens of mythology. The idea that mermaids were charming women who attract men to drain all vigor is a masculine construction. All women should get rid of this nonsense and stop listening. History is just a story that can be changed if serious efforts are made to change it.Castration is again a typically phallocentric symbolism, with female genitals symbolizing the absence of something men possess. The feminine means lack in the face of masculine presence and substance. Here Cixous recovers the myth by creating a laughing Medusa who rejects the role entrusted to her by the patriarchy. For men, femininity is synonymous with death. Cixous cites Genet as one of his three examples of female writing and refers to the novel “Pompes Funebres” (translated Funeral rites), a 1948 novel by Jean Genet. For Cixous, “female writing” is not only a prerogative of female writers, but also a way of writing that has been used by male authors such as James Joyce and Jean Genet. Cixous has named Genet as one of the few French authors in whose works “femininity” is inscribed. Femininity has yet to be fully explained by anyone. There is still a lot to be written about the infinite and mobile complexity of sexuality, eroticism, awakenings and a myriad of other feelings related to awakening and discovering one’s body. Female education will only evolve when this happens, and it will happen when censors and controls are destroyed to transform 127 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

the traditional male mother tongue into one that resonates or resonates with more than one language.We have been taught to be ashamed of our bodies. The idea of heterosexuality was so ingrained in our minds that we became victims of the old fool’s game. Cixous urges women to steal men’s voices, light up their mouths, permeate their words, and stand up without men’s phallic structures. To do this, women must denounce the male language, which is the mother tongue. Cixous is optimistic about women’s ability to claim their right to speak and write in a feminine style. To be most effective, the style must take an unconventional form. Abandoning the orderly and linear characteristics associated with traditional masculine style, Cixous uses phallogocentric language to his advantage. And when the “oppressed” return to take revenge, it will happen with such force and destructiveness as to restore the feminine principle in our society and culture. The end of the phallic period could be the total annihilation of the woman or the ascent to violent splendor. The fate of the women had been to remain silent the entire time while participating in silent rebellions in a dream world. But there was great power in its fragility. Instead of succumbing, they may reserve their energies. Unfinished, they took possession of their splendid bodies and made Freud succumb in explosions or eruptive reactions against the systematic suppression of expression. When the woman frees the seven veils of modesty and emerges in all her sincere honesty, exposing her passion and carnal desires of her, she is the mosaic statue of shattered phallocentric authority. The bodily revolt that Cixous evokes pierces like an arrow and is led by none other than women who in the past were just supplicants. But now they are leading the way for the emergence of the new woman. In this context, Cixous cites Freud’s well-known patient, Dora, a girl whose inexplicable cough led Freud to look for the psychological causes of his symptoms. About her He developed a nervous cough and lost her voice, the reason for her was her father’s relationship with Fran K, whose husband Herr K had also tried to get various discoveries for her. Freud attributed the cough to her suppressed anxieties.On the body: Cixous analyzes the role played by the female body and sexuality in the context of female writing. The female body is considered a key for women to resist male thinking. For a long time he had passively submitted to all kinds of persecution. They tried to speak but they failed. It is important to overcome fear. Cixous urges women not to fear language, thinking it belongs to men. If it has always worked within the male discourse, it is time for it to unleash and invent a language that allows it to emerge easily. Cixous argues that flying is a feminine gesture. Flying also means stealing. Women’s love writing/escape is a deliberate transgression of accepted physical and verbal limits. Only women know what it means to be caged and trapped in strange territory. A true female text is more than subversive. Not only does it upset an established order, but, like a volcano, it will upset the traditional order and shatter false truth with a triumphant laugh. He would chart his own path and strive to break the path to achieve this goal. The story that saw the death of many women enlightened them to see the truth before men. He 128 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

realizes the folly of decorum and the reduced frugality in the marital relationship which in return offers him little. It is not petrified or limited. This new female subject ventures into anonymity without male recklessness. It is fearless and there is no castration anxiety. Cixous berates Nietzsche for thinking that women are selfish and only give drinks, which is actually an attribute of men. Nietzsche’s name is often considered synonymous with the worst kind of misogyny, a kind of aggressive and unrepentant “male writing”. Cixous also speaks of the immense capacity of women to “enter”. Disproportion is indifference to possession, a form of renunciation, the will to relate to the world without imposing ownership conditions. It constitutes an ethic of care that requires a different “ethos” from that of ownership.In the realm of the maternal feminine, there is nothing wrong with central identity. Helen Cixous delves into the argument that women don’t focus on a single object. You are opposing the Freudian theory of penis envy. Female libido is not limited and therefore more limited than male sexuality. She is able to lose a part of herself without losing her individuality or identity. Releasing it will alter the power relations. In fact, you Cixous are speaking in very metaphorical terms and with psychoanalytic terminology. You suggest a “cosmic” superiority in female sexuality over phallic resolution. It is a cosmos in motion crossed or guided by libidinal impulses not always centered on the masculine norm or on the phallus. The theme of female sexuality has always been repressed by men and, therefore, should be a starting point for a new female discourse. Her call to find a language “that the body can speak” means that the woman must contemplate her relationship with her body. They have to orient themselves to the multiple sexual drives in their body to find a liberating way to write. The language thus invented would not be something that limits or contains. She reaffirms the multiplicity of sexual impulses which is “the wonder of being different”. By allowing the expression of her id, he transforms and it is this gift of her alteration that allows her to return to the primitive and instinctive part of the mind that contains her sexual impulses, from her the pleasure of she. Cixous affirms that female empowerment and written expression are linked to water and fluidity in the face of the solidity of the symbolic order. You invoke the birth of the author through the text. The new woman will come to life when the hitherto repressed voices become loud and clear in her writing. Women’s language is more fluid and immediate. There is no distinction between symbolic, imaginary or real order. Her writings create a female vocal sphere centered on female heterogeneity. Cixous invites women to return to their bodies by writing the feminine, to write their torrential sensations, their exceptional and multiple erogenous. According to Cixous, Freud laid the groundwork for unjustifiable biological discrimination and prejudice against women. According to Freud, a woman’s sexuality is characterized by the desire for the penis. If men need to believe that women are holes sharpened by the desire for penises, that’s their business. Women assure men that their penises are still there. Cixous 129 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

also criticizes the Freudian nuclear family, which he sees as the generator of the ideas of castration and lack that underlie the ideas of the feminine in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He wants to break these “old circuits” so that the family formations that support the phallogocentric symbolic are not recreated every time a child is born. The family system is as restrictive and oppressive for men as it is for women and must be “patronized by prisoners”. Cixous offers a suitable metaphor for artistic creation as the child is the other, the creation of the parents, without the violence, loss, death of those who gave him life. Addressing women, she says that getting pregnant with the baby is not the only way to “experience your pregnancy” and that there are many ways to have that connection in life, leaving open the idea of artistic creation that satisfies the desire to live. The desire can be described as the desire to give birth to something with which to develop an intense relationship, nurture and guide fruiting. Cixous urges women not to suppress their urges or instincts. He attacks the defenders of the theory - “the sacrosanct yes men of the concept, supporters of the phallus”. The attack is directed against the Lacanians and the Althusserians. According to Lacan’s theory of lack, the female desire for the male body does not derive from the body itself, but from the lack of the penis. Cixous criticizes the interpretation by saying that his personal desire for the other is for the other. The inexhaustible and omnipresent desire of women is not a lack. He doesn’t even experience castration anxiety. Cixous is very critical of the phallocentric male values proposed by Freud and Lacan. In a short and concise scene, Cixous scoffs at the Lacanian drama of lack. Cixous says that female writers and theorists remain vulnerable to the “new old”. A woman who idolizes the male sex is the woman of yesterday who is still held in the darkness of the past or falsely resurrected by naive moral thinking. But, unfortunately, these women are still numerous. New women continue to be subjected to the “discipline” of “prominent cops”. Freud believed that in the “phallic phase” of early childhood development, boys attributed the possession of a penis to the mother. More love: Cixous has never set out to eliminate sexual difference in her definition of a female writing practice. He also denigrates masculinity, which itself part of writing. Accepting the difference, Cixous speaks of the desire to seek the other. There is no jealousy or other designs. There is no fear or submission to the phallus. There is no exchange or exchange in love, in the sense of not expecting anything in return. Cixous defines it as an economy that cannot be put into economic terms. It is not an exchange to take more than what you give. It is an exchange that multiplies. It is important that women do not stop. When they write, the act of writing brings out everything they never knew they could be, without constraints, rules or exclusions that lead them to a tireless, tenacious and endless search for love. He concludes with the words “One in the other will never fail”, which is in fact his 130 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

pertinent recognition of him that in an exchange no longer controlled by phallocentric values, women will lack nothing. Cixous concludes the essay by proposing a critique of the Freudian nuclear family, the mother-father-child formation, which he sees as the generator of the ideas of castration (Penisneid) and lack that underlie the ideas of the feminine in psychoanalysis. both Freudian and Lacanian. He wants to break these “old circuits” so that the family formations that support the phallogocentric symbolic are not recreated every time a child is born; he argues that this family system is as limiting and oppressive for men as it is for women, and that it must be “dematerialized-paternalized”. He then discusses other ways of calculating pregnancy, arguing that, like all functions of the female body, pregnancy should be written in “I’ecriture female. When pregnancy is written and the female body figures in language as the source of life instead of the penis, birth can figure more than a separation or a lack. 6.7 CHARACTERISTICS OF ECRITURE FEMININE The issue of the female body and sexuality As just quoted, Cixous believes that the expression of female sexuality in literature is essential in order to break the deadlock of masculinist writing. As regards female sexuality, she counters Freud’s theory of penis envy with the argument that women are not focused on just one object, namely the penis. In the consequence, the female libido is not restricted and is, therefore, more sophisticated than men’s sexuality. At this point we have to remind ourselves that Cixous leaves the ground of logical discourse and speaks in highly metaphorical terms and psychoanalytical terminology. She does that because she views metaphor as a means to release the feminine from the bonds of phallogecentric language: Though masculine sexuality gravitates around the penis, woman does not bring about the same regionalization which serves the couple head/genitals and which is inscribed only within boundaries. Her libido is cosmic. This statement suggests a “cosmic” superiority in women’s sexuality in comparison to “phallic single-mindedness”. Besides, she argues that the subject of female sexuality has always been repressed by men and should, therefore, be a starting point for a new female discourse. Her appeal to find a language that can “speak the body” means that women should start to contemplate their relationship to their body. They should orientate towards the multiple sexual impulses of their body to find a liberating way of writing. Characteristics of Ecriture Feminine As the female libido features a huge variety of impulses, women’s writing should look like an ecstatic torrent of words. However, Cixous herself fails to specify how such writing should look like in the long run. The question of the female body and sexuality 131 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

As just mentioned, Cixous believes that the expression of female sexuality in literature is fundamental to breaking the stalemate in male-dominated writing. When it comes to female sexuality, he opposes Freud’s theory of penis envy by arguing that women do not focus on just one object, namely the penis. Consequently, the female libido is unlimited and therefore more sophisticated than male sexuality. At this point we must remember that Cixous leaves the field of logical discourse and speaks in highly metaphorical terms and psychoanalytic terminology. He does it because he sees metaphor as a means of freeing the feminine from the bonds of phallocentric language:Although male sexuality gravitates around the penis, the woman does not produce the same regionalization that serves the head/genitals of the couple and who only subscribes to the limits. Your libido is cosmic.This statement suggests a “cosmic” superiority in female sexuality over “phallic determination”. Furthermore, he argues that the issue of female sexuality has always been repressed by men and should, therefore, be a starting point for a new female discourse. His call to find a language that can “speak the body” means that women must begin to contemplate their relationship with their body. They have to orient themselves to the multiple sexual drives in their body to find a liberating way to write. Feminine characteristics of Ecriture Since female libido presents a wide variety of impulses, women’s writing should be viewed as an ecstatic torrent of words. However, Cixous itself does not specify what such writing should look like in the long term. 6.8IMPORTANT QUOTATIONS I shall speak about women’s writing: about what it will do. 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—for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text—as into the world and into history—by her own movement. At the beginning of his essay, Cixous establishes his purpose by writing it. The general point of him is that writing was dominated by men and that men used writing to dominate the mind and body of women. To combat this, to recover themselves, their minds and their bodies, Cixous believes that women themselves must write. Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs. They have made for women an antinarcissism! A narcissism which loves itself only to be loved for what women haven’t got! They have constructed the infamous logic of antilove. Women who fear other women or who fear themselves are easy to control. If women turn against each other, men don’t have to work so hard to control them. Cixous believes that men 132 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

constantly need to be confident in their masculinity and power, and dominating women is one of the surest ways to do this. 6.9 SUMMARY  Cixous’s essay “The Laugh of the Medusa”.  Medusa had been forcibly separated from her body and now it’s up to her to find her body and break free from the shackles of patriarchy.  The past must no longer be allowed to determine the future, even if the effects may still persist.  But repeating and repeating the past will only make them strong enough to control the future. To prevent women from writing and free themselves from those who hide them.  They should write about the “infinite wealth of their individual constitution”.  The private world of her is the place where she makes a “passionate and precise interrogation of her heterogeneity of her”, the space where “beauty will no longer be forbidden”.  It is important for women to write and proclaim their unique empire and new desires that are aesthetically superior to any man-made work of art.  Cixous admits that she was embarrassed to open up to her deeper desires than her.  Many women have accused themselves of being a monster or a sick woman horrified by the confusion of their own sexuality.  He stresses once again that writing is not just the prerogative of great men and that women need not feel guilty to enter the territory of writing hitherto monopolized by men.  The truth is, men are intimidated by female texts.  The male-centered world has always tried to keep men “cold” by imprisoning their “hard” bodies to prevent them from stabilizing.  They have been taught to internalize “the horror of the dark” by making them believe that their sexuality is as dark and black as Africa on the black continent.  The greatest crime men have committed against women is that they have caused women to hate each other and to be their own enemies.  They made women anti-narcissists with immense force by working against themselves for the masculine needs of men.  This must not be allowed to continue. 133 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 It is time to free the “new woman” from the “old” and this liberation can only be facilitated by writing.  There was no writing that inscribed femininity.  Not only has the number of female writers been ridiculously reduced, but the little work done so far to this end has been in no way different from that of men.  By masculine writing it refers to the type that has no place for women or simply something that represents women as “sensitive, intuitive and dreamy”.  In other words, they are typical classical representations of women who do not resemble the “New Woman”.  Helene Cixous argues that writing was an activity driven by a libidinal and cultural economy.  And since women have always been denied the opportunity to speak, writing / language has become a perfect place for female oppression.  It is important that men silence him because otherwise her writings would become a springboard for subversive thinking, paving the way for social and cultural transformation.  Pointing to the phallocentric tradition, she Cixous states that she has always been admired, stimulating and self-indulgent.  There have been few exceptions like some poets capable of going against tradition and imagining the strong woman, an “impossible” subject, unsustainable in a real social network”.  The rise of such women would lead to a revolution with the power to change the seemingly unchanging male stronghold.  But only the poets did it, never the novelists.  This is why women have to invent a new rebellious writing that allows them to make transformations on two inseparable levels. 1. Individually: Write to claim the body that was forcibly taken from you. You have to write to make your body feel and to realize the body’s relationship with your sexuality. It has always occupied the space reserved for the “guilty”; “Guilty of everything, guilty of everything: having desires, not having them; be frigid, not be “too hot”, “He had to kill in her the false woman who had been a slave to the dominant male. 2. Take the opportunity to speak: Her presence in the story was based on her repression. She was shy when she spoke, fearing transgression. Accepting the challenge of the word, previously controlled by the phallus, will guarantee you a 134 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

place that is not in the realm of silence. Let the body speak and speak the language of truth.  Cixous believed that a woman’s language had the power to move people.  It is the strength of the “first music of the first voice of love that lives in every woman”; the power of breast milk.  Cixous’s exhortation that women should write their bodies in white ink or breast milk has sparked criticism from theorists such as Toril Moi and Elaine Showalter, who have expressed fear that Cixous reduced a woman to her body and her writingthe status of “cultural construction” and the defense of the mythology of the “eternal feminine”.  The celebration of motherhood written by Cixous is that a distinctive feminine discourse (écriture female) derives from the female body, the maternal body.  It is the body that infuses creative power into your language.  In other words, motherhood or reunion with the mother’s body becomes a catalyst for writing.  A woman’s need to write is a biological urge very similar to her maternal instincts.  This cannot be achieved without dominating your body, which has been completely dominated and misinterpreted by male rhetoric.  It is their bodily experiences that will give rise to “female writing” which in turn will subvert the phallocentric discourse and allow them to recover their own voice and body.  Cixous tries to destroy the prison of sexual impudence  Urges women NOT to identify themselves in relation to men.  Before a woman can write herself in a new type of text that vomits rather than just more oppressive, she must find out where her sexual pleasure lies. This will dispel the mythology that suggests that woman is defined by what she lacks (the phallus).  He claims that the entire history of writing has belonged to the “phallocentric tradition” and that women have not yet received their turn.  Cixous asks for a solution.  His solution is the concept of female writing, this is female writing that communicates a new language, this language is not limited by the “traditional” binaries of woman and man, passive and active, and so on.  It is this language in which the woman rejoins her body that has “confessed” the typical “male economy” that dominated literature. 135 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 This language is the woman who uses her body as ink, or as Cixous suggests writing in “white ink”, which is a metaphor she uses to further affirm the importance of the encounter, because as the female presentation of herself for the body is a place where lack and separation are dominated by connection and health. 6.10KEYWORDS  Feminist - the belief that women and men should have equal rights and opportunities.  Liberate - set (someone) free from imprisonment, slavery, or oppression.  Body - the physical structure  Independence - freedom  Medusa - Gorgon sisters in Greek Mythology  Masculinity - qualities or characteristic of men  Dominating - have power and influence over. 6.11 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. Commonalities as well as differences - Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Cixous’s The Laugh of the Medusa ___________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ 2. Make a study on Myth of Medusa ___________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ 3. Analyze postmodernist trends in The Laugh of the Medusa ___________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ 6.12 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions 136 Short Questions 1. How is feminine writing different from women’s writing? 2. What does Cixous mean by marked writing? 3. What is the laugh of the Medusa? 4. What is the role of the phallus in women’s writing? 5. What are some features of Cixous’s style? CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Long Questions 1. Explain some of Cixous basic complaints about attitudes towards women in (contemporary French) culture. 2. Discuss the features of language and Western thought that have made the repression of women inevitable with reference to Cixous. 3. Analyse which aspects of the psychoanalytic model Cixous accepts. 4. Annotate “Now I -- woman, am going to blow up the Law”. 5. Evaluate the themes of The Laugh of the Medusa. B. Multiple Choice Questions 1. Who is the writer of The Laugh of the Medusa? a. Helene Cixous b. Sigmund Frued c. Simone de Beauvoir d. Judith Butler 2. Writing in “white ink” is metaphorical. What does Cixous mean by this? a. Women write with breastmilk b. Women use white pens c. Women must mother other women d. Women must be braver than men 3. Phallocentrism, coined by the French philosopher ________ a. Helene Cixous b. Sigmund Frued c. Simone de Beauvoir d. Jacques Derrida 4. The Laughter of the Medusa begins with an exhortation to women _______. 137 a. to write themselves b. to write ourselves c. to right themselves CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

d. to right ourselves 5.__________ is closely related to the culture and the ideology of the modern capitalist world. a. gynocriticism b. Eurocentrism c. Feminism d. Dedication Answers 1-a, 2-a, 3-d, 4-a, 5-b 6.13 REFERENCES Reference books  Flexner, Eleanor. Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Coward, McGann & Geoghegan, 1972.  Mellor, Anne. “Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ and the Women Writers of Her Day.” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002  Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-century England. Antonia Fraser. Phoenix.2002.  Nobody’s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670- 1920.CatherineGallagher. University ofCambridge Press, 1995. Textbook references  Wollstonecraft, Mary. (1792). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. With Strictures on political and moral subjects. London. Websites  https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1553&context=etd- project  https://uniteyouthdublin.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/a-vindication-of-the-rights-of- woman-by-mary-wollstonecraft.pdf  http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=etd 138 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3735238 139 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

UNIT – 7ELAINE SHOWALTER :TOWARDS A FEMINIST POETICS STRUCTURE 7.0 Learning Objectives 7.1 Author’s Introduction 7.2 Text 7.3 Social and Cultural background 7.4 About Feminist Poetics 7.5 Elaine Showalter as a Feminist Critic 7.6 Important Theory 7.7 Summary 7.8 Keywords 7.9 Learning Activity 7.10 Unit End Questions 7.11 References 7.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this unit, you will be able to:  Analyse Elaine Showalter’s essay as a Feminine Criticism in the Wilderness  Understand the concept of Gynocriticism  Interpret the importance of women’s writing 7.1 AUTHOR’ S INTRODUCTION Elaine Showalter (born January 21, 1941) is an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues. She is one of the founders of feminist literary criticism in the American academy, developing the concept and practice of gynocriticism.She is known and respected in both academic and popular culture. She has written and edited numerous books and articles that focus on a variety of topics, from feminist literary criticism to fashion, which has at times sparked a great deal of controversy, especially with her work on diseases. Showalter was a television critic for People magazine and a radio and television commentator for the BBC. 140 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Showalter is a specialist in Victorian and Fin-de-Siecle (early 19th century) literature. Her most innovative work in this field is in madness and hysteria in literature, particularly in female writing and the representation of female characters. Showalter’s best known works are Toward a Feminist Poetics (1979), The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture (1830-1980) (1985), Sexual Anarchy: Gender at Culture at the Fin de Siecle (1990), Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media (1997) and Inventing Yourself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage (2001). In 2007 Showalter was chairman of the jury for the prestigious British literary award, the International Man Booker Prize. Showalter’s book Inventing Herself (2001), an investigation of feminist icons, appears to be the culmination of a long-standing interest in communicating the importance of understanding the feminist tradition. Showalter’s early essays and editorials in the late 1970s and 1980s examine the history of the feminist tradition within the “desert” of literary theory and criticism. Working in the field of feminist literary theory and criticism, which was only emerging as serious academic research in universities in the 1970s, Showalter’s writings reflect a conscious effort to convey the importance of tracing the past of her discipline with in order to base it on substantive theory, and accumulate a knowledge base that can guide a path for future feminist academic research. Showalter is concerned about stereotypes of feminism that view feminist critics as “obsessed with the phallus” and “obsessed with the destruction of male artists.” Showalter wonders if these stereotypes stem from the fact that feminism lacks a fully articulated theory. Another problem for Showalter is how feminists move away from theory due to the attitudes of some male scholars: the theory is their property. Showalter writes: “From this perspective, the academic demand for theory can only be heard as a threat to the feminist need for authenticity, and the visitor seeking a formula that can be carried without a personal encounter is not welcome.” In response, Showalter wants to sketch a poetics of feminist criticism. 7.2 TEXT Feminist criticism can be divided into two distinct varieties. The first type is concerned with woman as reader - with woman as the consumer of male-produced literature, and with the way in which the hypothesis of a female reader changes our apprehension of a given text, awakening us to the significance of its sexual codes. I shall call this kind of analysis the feminist critique, and like other kinds of critique it is a historically grounded inquiry which probes the ideological assumptions of literary phenomena. Its subjects include the images and stereotypes of women in literature, the omissions and misconceptions about women in criticism, and the fissures in male- constructed literary history . It is also concerned with the exploitation and manipulation of the female audience, especially in popular culture and film; 141 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

and with the analysis of woman-assign in semiotic systems. The second type of feminist criticism is concerned with woman as writer - with woman as the producer of textual meaning, with the history, themes, genres and structures of literature by women. Its subjects include the psychodynamics of female creativity; linguistics and the problem of a female language; the trajectory of the individual or collective female literary career; literary history; and, of course, studies of particular writers and works. No term exists in English for such a specialized discourse, and so I have adapted the French term fa gynocritique: nocritics’ (although the significance of the male pseudonym in the history of women’s writing also suggested the term ‘georgics’). The feminist critique is essentially political and polemical, with theoretical affiliations to Marxist sociology and aesthetics; gynocritics is more self-contained and experimental, with connections to other modes of new feminist research. As we see in this analysis, one of the problems of the feminist critique is that it is male- oriented. If we study stereotypes of women, the sexism of male critics, and the limited roles women play in literary history, we are not learning what women have felt and experienced, but only what men have thought women should be. In some fields of specialisation, this may require a long apprenticeship to the male theoretician, whether he be Althusser, Barthes, Macherey or Lacan; and then an application of the theory of signs or myths or the unconscious to male texts or films. The temporal and intellectual investment one makes in such a process increases resistance to questioning it, and to seeing it’s his- torical and ideological boundaries. The critique also has a ten- dency to naturalise women’s victimisation, by making it the inevitable and obsessive topic of discussion. In contrast to this angry or loving fixation on male literature, the programme of gynocritics is to construct a female framework for the analysis of women’s literature, to develop new models based on the study of female experience, rather than to adapt male models and theories. Gynocritics begins at the point when we free ourselves from the linear absolutes of male literary history, stop trying to fit women between the lines of the male tradition, and focus instead on the nearly visible world of female culture. Before we can even begin to ask how the literature of women would be different and special, we need to reconstruct its past, to rediscover the scores of women novelists, poets and dramatists whose work has been obscured by time, and to establish the continuity of the female tradition. As we recreate the chain of writers in this tradition, the patterns of influence and response from one generation to the next, we can also begin to challenge the periodicity of orthodox literary history, and its enshrined canons of achievement. It is because we have studied women writers in isolation that we have never grasped the connections between them. When we go beyond Austen, the Brontés and Eliot, say, to look at a hundred and fifty or more of their sister novelists, we can see pat- terns and phases in the evolution of a female tradition which corns pond to the developmental phases of any sub cultural art. In my book on English women writers, A Literature of their order I have called these the Feminine, Feminist and Female stages. During 142 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

the Feminine phases, dating from about 1840 to 1880, women wrote in an effort to equal the intellectual achievements of the male culture, and internalized its assumptions about female nature. The distinguishing sign of this period is the male pseudonym, introduced in England in the 1840s, and a national characteristic of English women writers. The feminist content of feminine art is typically oblique, displaced, ironic and subversive; one has to read it between the lines, in the missed possibilities of the text. In the Feminist phase, from about 1880 to 1920, or the winning of the vote, women are historically enabled to reject the accommodating postures of femininity and to use literature to dramatize the ordeals of wronged womanhood. In the Female phase, ongoing since 1920, women reject both imitation and protest two forms of dependency and turn instead to female experience as the source of an autonomous art, extending the feminist analysis of culture to the forms and techniques of literature. Representatives of the formal Female Aesthetic, such as Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf, begin to think in terms of male and female sentences, and divide their work into ‘masculine’ journalism and ‘feminine’ fictions, redefining and sexualizing external and internal experience. In trying to account for these complex permutations of the female tradition, feminist criticism has tried a variety of theoretical approaches. The most natural direction for feminist criticism to take has been the revision, and even the subversion of related ideologies, especially Marxist aesthetics and structuralism, altering their vocabularies and methods to include the variable of gender. I believe, however, that this thrifty feminine making-do is ultimately un- satisfactory. Feminist criticism cannot go around forever in men’s ill-fitting hand-me-downs, the Annie Hall of English studies; but must, as John Stuart Mill wrote about women’s literature in 1869, ‘emancipate itself from the influences of accepted models, and guide itself by its own impulses” as, I think, gynocritics is beginning to do. This is not to deny the necessity of using the terminology and techniques of our profession. But when we consider the historical conditions in which critical ideologies are produced, we see why feminist adaptations seem to have reached an impasse. The new sciences of the text based on linguistics, computers, genetic structuralism, deconstructionism, neo formalism and deformalism, affective stylistics and psych aesthetics, have offered literary critics the opportunity to demonstrate that the work they do is as manly and aggressive as nuclear physics not intuitive, expressive and feminine, but strenuous, rigorous, impersonal and virile. In a shrinking job market, these new levels of professionalism also function as discriminators between the marketable and marginal lecturer. Literary science, in its manic generation of difficult terminology, its establishment of seminars and institutes of post-graduate study, creates an elite corps of specialists who spend more and more time mastering the theory, less and less time reading the books. We are moving towards a two-tiered system of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ criticism, the higher concerned with the ‘scientific’ problems of form and structure, the ‘lower’ concerned with the ‘humanistic’ problems of content and interpretation. And these levels, it seems to me, are 143 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

now taking on subtle gender identities, and assuming a of a new criticism practiced by women has made it even more possible for structuralism and Marxism to strive, Henchard- like, for systems of formal obligation and determination. Feminists writing in these modes, such as Hélene Cixous and the women contributors to Diacritics, risk being allotted the symbolic ghettoes of the special issue or the back of the book for their essays. It is not because the exchange between feminism, Marxism and structuralism has hitherto been so one-sided, however, that I think attempts at syntheses have so far been unsuccessful. While scientific criticism struggles to purge itself of the subjective, feminist criticism is willing to assert (in the title of a recent anthology) The Authority of Experience.’ The experience of woman can easily disappear, become mute, invalid and invisible, lost in the diagrams of the structuralist or the class conflict of the Marxists. Experience is not emotion; we must protest now as in the nineteenth century against the equation of the feminine with the irrational. But we must also recognise that the questions we most need to ask go beyond those that science can answer. We must seek the repressed messages of women in history, in anthropology, in psychology, and in ourselves, before we can locate the feminine not said, in themanner of Pierre Macherey, by probing the fissures of the female text. Thus the current theoretical impasse in feminist criticism, I believe, is more than a problem of finding ‘exacting definitions and a suitable terminology’, or theorizing in the midst of a struggle’. It comes from our own divided consciousness, the split in each of us. We are both the daughters of the male tradition, of our teachers, our professors, our dissertation advisers and our publishers a tradition which asks us to be rational, marginal and grateful; and sisters in a new women’s movement which engenders another kind of awareness and commitment, which demands that we renounce the pseudo-success of token womanhood, and the ironic masks of academic debate. How much easier, how less lonely it is, not to awakento continue to be critics and teachers of male literature, anthropologists of male culture, and psychologists of male literary response, claiming all the while to be universal. Yet we cannot will ourselves to go back to sleep. As women scholars in the 1970s we have been given a great opportunity, a great intellectual challenge. The anatomy, the rhetoric, the poetics, the history, await our writing. The task of feminist critics is to find a new language, a new way of reading that can integrate our intelligence and our experience, our reason and our suffering, our skepticism and our vision. This enterprise should not be confined to women; I invite Criticus, Poeticus and Plutarchus to share it with us. One thing is certain: feminist criticism is not visiting. It is here to stay, and we must make it a permanent home. 7.3 SOCIAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND Age 144 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

By the end of World War II, international political and economic influence had shifted from Great Britain, whose empire was in decline. The new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, were emerging. The Cold War period followed the hostility between these two power blocs. This period was marked by various crises such as the Berlin blockade, the Cuban crisis, and the Korean and Vietnam wars that followed. During this period, Mexican campus life sought to provide places of alternative culture to established capitalism. When the US military intervened in Vietnam, many US campuses became centers of the peace movement and criticized the government. In 1968, the “Paris Spring” or the all-Europe youth movement for peace and liberation was revived by similar movements on American campuses. The 1970s and 1980s saw an explosion in the field of critical theory on American “campuses,” particularly with reference to women’s writing and African-American literature. Outside of academia, the women’s movement and the black power movement had started a long time ago. But within academia, the theoretical underpinnings of these movements were developed most widely during the 1970s and 1980s, in other words, during the period of much of Showalter’s work. This was also the moment when the American academy solidified its response to European challengers in the field of theory. What, if anything, could have been the effect of these pressures on the women’s movement and on the issue of women’s writing? Position of the woman Within the academy, and this is primarily the context of Showalter, this is a tricky problem. Feminist theories at this point have formulated three central themes around which, in principle, the debate is structured. These are perhaps most clearly set out in Annette Kolodny’s 1980 essay “Dancing through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Pracnce and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism.” mine. 1. The history of literacy (and with it the historicity of literature) is a fiction 2. Insofar as we are taught to read, what we undertake are not texts but paradigms. 3. Since the foundations on which we assign aesthetic value to texts are never infallible, immutable, or universal, we must reexamine not only our aesthetics, but also the inherent biases and assumptions that inform critical methods that (in part) shape our answers aesthetic. In other words, at the time of writing the essay prescribed by Showalter, the three points established by the American academy regarding feminist theories in which there is general agreement are respectively: Feminist theories try to reconstruct the canon to claim a bastion of patriarchy, raising the awareness of readers of theoretical paradigms or models, hidden in texts, based on gender conditioning, and the role of theory in changing the way producers interpret texts . Furthermore, in terms of the positioning of the bread and butter, Women’s Studies had become a recognized discipline in American conferences, published magazines, and structured programs on feminist theories. What could have gone wrong? 145 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

7.4ABOUT FEMINIST POETICS Elaine Showalter’s 1979 article “Towards a Feminist Poetics” is considered a milestone in the history of feminist literary criticism. Her use of the term “poetics” is largely a product of the period in which it was written and of the major trends in literary theory of that time. The dominant form of literary theory in the 1970s was structuralism, which, applied to literature, meant a systematic examination of the formal characteristics of texts using concepts from continental structuralist linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson. In this context, a “poetics” is a systematic and quasi-scientific account of how literature works particularly its formal qualities and modes of discourse. Although some theorists limit the term “poetics” to poetry, it more commonly refers to any form of complete literary theory. The origin of the term dates back to the Platonic school, in which the suffix “ike” was attached to abstract concepts to describe the science of studying these areas. Thus, the study of what rhetoricians do was called “rethorike”, the study of “dialectical” logic and “poetic” poetry. Thus, Aristotle’s book on poetry in Greek is entitled “Peri [on] Poiêtikês [Poetics]”. Because Aristotle’s work was so influential and covered a general theory of imitation by means of words, rather than just the verse form, the adoption of the term poetic indicates a systematic or comprehensive treatment of verbal artifacts.Showalter herself, while using the term poetic in the title, took the position that much of “poetics” marginalized women and therefore preferred to coin a new label, “gynocritical”, to refer to her own literary studies project: feministas.Thus, Showalter’s attempt is notable in the sense that she wants to free women from the male-dominated literary tradition. To do this, she rejects the heliocentric language and calls for women’s access to language so that women can develop a cultural model of their writing to express and interpret women’s experiences in a different and authentic way. 7.5 ELAINE SHOWALTER AS A FEMINIST CRITIC Elaine Showalter is an influential American critic famous for her conceptualization of gynocriticism, which is a woman-centered approach to literary analysis, Her A Literature of their Own analyzes the feminine literary tradition that she analyzes as an evolution through three phases. She note that literary “subcultures” (Black, Jewish, Anglo-Indian) tend to go through these stages: 1) Imitation of the paths of the dominant tradition and internalization of art and social values. 2) She protests against these standards and values and calls for autonomy. 3) Self-discovery: turning inward free from some of the opposition’s addictions, a quest 146 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

by identity. Considering the literary tradition of women in terms of these phases, Showalter calls the fir st phase “female” running from 1840 to 1880 (an imitation phase, when writers like George Eliot wrote under male pseudonyms); the second phase as a feminist phase (1880-1920, protest phase) when women won the right to vote; the third phase as a female phase (from about 1920 to 1960) when women’s writing entered a new phase of self-awareness. Showalter notes that while female writers from the beginning have shared a “hidden solidarity” with other female writers and their female audiences; before 1840 there were no expressive similarities or self-awareness. Even during the female stage, writers did not view their writing as an expression of their female experiences. However, repressive circumstances have led to innovative and hidden ways of expressing her inner life, which is why we have the madwoman locked in the attic, the crippled artist and the murderous wife. Despite the restrictions, Jane Austen’s novel to George Eliot speaks of the daily life and values of women within a family and community. In the feminist phase of political participation, the writers challenged stereotypes and challenged the linguistic restrictions of women, denouncing the ethic of self-sacrifice and used their dramatized fiction of oppression to bring about social and political change. They embodied a “declaration of independence” in the female tradition and were directly opposed to the male establishment. Challenging the monopoly of the men’s press, many feminist magazines were born and some, like Virginia Woolf, controlled their own press. The female phase was characterized by courageous self-exploration and a return to more realistic modes of expression. Post-1960 writers such as Doris Lessing, Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch, and Margaret Drabble have embraced genuine anger and sexuality as sources of creative power, while reaffirming their continuity with writers of the past. Showalter also speculated that feminist criticism falls into two categories: women as a reader (feminist criticism) and women as a writer (Gynocriticism). In the first category, women are consumers of a literature produced by men, and this aspect of feminist criticism concerns stereotypical representations of women, the cracks in male literary theory, and the way patriarchy has manipulated women audience. Gynocriticism attempts to construct a female framework for the analysis of female literature and focuses on female subjectivity, female language, and female literary career. 7.6 IMPORTANT THEORY Gynocriticism Gynocriticism is a feminist reformulation of late 20th century literary criticism. It began in the 1970s and its goals include focusing on literature understood in its entirety from a woman’s point of view and the discovery and recovery of the writings of lost women. He 147 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

challenged masculine constructions of the feminine, particularly the feminine experience of sexuality, and focused particularly on debunking Freud’s theories about women. Gynocriticism, sometimes supported by Lacan, fought against Freud’s definition of a woman defined by the lack of a phallus. As Lacan pointed out, defining women in this way was a logical mistake: since women should never have had a phallus, it makes no sense to define them with this “lack” any more than it would be to define elephants as lacking. pens. The gynocritic thus rejects the male attempt to define a woman as a “lesser man” or to see her in terms of how she satisfies male desire. Gynocriticism has turned to women, like the writer Doris Lessing, to explain the female experience of sexuality and sexual pleasure from the point of view of a woman, not a man. Lessing can, for example, explain the female orgasm in a way that a man cannot because he actually experienced it. A good example of gynocriticism is found in Judith Herman’s introduction to her classic Trauma and Recovery. In it, she says that we can understand Freud’s mistake in repudiating the female experience of child sexual abuse as a fantasy by understanding it through his male anxiety: he, not the women, is the one with the problem. Had he accepted the omnipresence of male family members who abuse girls, he would have had to deeply question the institution of the patriarchal family, which he was unwilling to do due to his own investment in privilege. patriarchal. Gynocritism corrected a gap in the critical world by adding an assertive female perspective. Analyze the characteristics of gynocriticism Elaine Showalter’s A Literature of Their Own, which describes three stages in the history of women’s literature, also proposes a similar multi-part model of the growth of feminist theory. First, according to Showalter, an androgynous poetics emerges. Then follows a feminist critique and feminine aesthetics, accompanied by gynocritics, and these are closely pursued by post-structuralist gyno feminist critique and gender theory. Androgynous poetics, having relationships with and perhaps roots in the female imitation writing of the mid-Victorian period, holds that the creative mind is asexual and that the very basis of describing a female tradition in writing was sexist. Critics of this line have found that gender is imprisoned, nor have they believed that gender has weight in the content of writing, which, according to Joyce Carol Oates, is actually determined by culture. The imagination is too wide to be relegated to the genre. However, from the 1970s onward, most feminist critics reject the genderless mind, finding that “imagination” cannot evade conscious or unconscious gender structures. Gender, one could say, is part of that cultural determination that, according to Oates, serves as inspiration. This position underscores “the impossibility of separating the imagination from a socially, sexually, and historically positioned self.” This movement of thought allowed for a feminist 148 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

critique when critics attacked the meaning of sexual difference in a patriarchal society / ideology. 7.7 SUMMARY  Elaine Showalter’s feminist critique is a clearly articulated feminist literary theory.  Showalter proposed a separate and independent model of feminist literary theory rejecting the inevitability of male models and theories and recalling the history of female writing to the present. She divides her female model of hers into two types: 1) Feminist criticism that exposes women as readers 2) Gynecocrites who present women as writers. He is more prone to gynocritics to develop his own literature.  Feminist criticism as a kind of feminist criticism sees women as readers of these texts produced by men.  Feminists thus try to trace the images and stereotypes of women exposed in male texts.  This is also called traditional feminist criticism in which women are the consumers of production in literary writing. • Gynocriticism, for its part, is a phase of feminist criticism in which “women become writers with women as producers of textual meaning, with the history, themes, genres and structures of female literature”. • This is truly the female model of independent writing of male values and norms. • It reflects the position and importance of female writing in the history of literature. • In this way, gynocritics avoid (deliberately avoid) the inevitability of male models and theories and seek a purely female model. • It begins with the assumption that women are different in terms of nature, race, culture, and nation. • Therefore, they cannot be studied universally. • He states that, like male writers, female writers also have their own tradition. • She says that women’s writing in the past has been overlooked and underrated by male critics. • For women’s literature to be different and special, it is necessary to reconstruct its past and rediscover the dozens of female writers. 149 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

• Consequently, she reconstructed the past of women’s literary history by dividing the three phases of female writers. • The female phase (1840-1880): -  Writers such as the Bronte sisters, George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell, belong to this phase, which covers the period from 1840 to 1880.  The female writers followed the male norms internalizing the dominant one. aesthetic masculine canons.  They identified with male culture as women were not allowed to write.  Some of them even wrote under male pseudonyms.  His works deal with a social and domestic background.  However, they showed some kind of guilt in their writing.  They have accepted some limitations in their writing. The feminist phase (1880 to 1920): -  This phase covers the duration from 1880 to 1920 including writings such as Elizabethan Robins, Francis Trallope and others.  The writers of this phase protested against masculine canons and values.  It is the period of the separatist utopia.  They rejected any text that stereotypes women.  They developed a personal sense of injustice and wrote masculine biases. The female phase (from 1920 to the present): -  Writers such as Rebecca West, Katherine Mansfield and Dorothy Richardson from the period between 1920 and today have returned to this phase.  Writers in this phase avoid both the imitation of writers and the protest of feminist writers and the protest of feminist writers.  They purely develop the idea of female writing and female experience.  They differentiate female writing and male writing in terms of language.  Their effort to identify and analyze the female experience leads them to this phase of self-discovery. Towards a Feminist Poetics is Showalter’s important critical essay. Showalter discusses the following topics in this essay. I am: 1. Woman as reader (Feminist Critique) 150 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)