After another look at Gilbert and Gubar's essay, I noticed that men and women both had problems with predecessors throughout literary history. Men wanted to live up to their predecessors (449), while women wanted to defy their predecessors (452). That led me to the conclusion that, while the essay seems to imply that women did not have predecessors, I would say that their predecessors were male, which only gave them different challenged instead of more.
A male never wrote solely to diminish women's rights. He wrote about women as he saw women. His challenge was to analyze the intents and styles of his predecessors, and not only match but take his own original stand. He had to create his own style in the midst of thousands of other male writers (450). Female writers, however, had no trouble with originality. They themselves were original.
Female writers have had the challenge of forcing America to accept their credibility, never mind originality. If a woman was intelligent, she was crazy (456). And so, as female writers broke through patriarchal society, their works were always new and exciting. The challenge, however, was getting their works read. Once published, the work of a female author was original simply because she had no female predecessors. She could not copy her male predecessors, because she did not think of herself the way a man could think of her.
I liked the approach authors such as the Bronte sisters and, later, Mary Shelley took toward establishing credibility: they forgot about their past, usually indirectly and through the voices of their characters (Gilbert, p. 459). Not having a "past" to write about wiped the slate clean and gave women authors a chance to rewrite their history, which, in turn, added to their credibility by making their works not only original (like you say), but also somehow acceptable within society's framework (of the lost or helpless character...usually a woman).
ReplyDeleteI think as long as the stereotypical male reader had the idea of something to protect or a story that perpetuated his/his culture's image of himself, he found interest in a story. Including a helpless or weaker female, emphasizing society's image of men, and the occasional masculine nom de plume all worked together to attract readers to the works of women authors.
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I like what you say about the works of a female author being original automatically... it reminds me of a book I enjoyed reading not too long ago: "Think" by Lisa Bloom. Bloom talks about the heyday of the early eighties where a girl could record several "first girl ever to..." before lunch, thanks in part to title IX legislation.