I AM
AMYEM
English Major, lifelong learner, impractical perfectionist.
Painting: Iris Fields - Paul Chester
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Painting: Iris Fields - Paul Chester
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Feminism and feminist writing have been around for hundreds of years with writings from Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792 to Virginia Woolf’s published work of A Room of One’s Own in 1929. However, the largest and lasting movement of feminism began in the 1960s and begat the product of today’s feminist literary criticism (Barry 116). Literary criticism concerned itself with many things, among them being examining representations of women in literature by both men and women, challenging representations of women as ‘other’ or part of ‘nature’, and examining the effects of language in making what is social seem natural, as well as Écriture féminine – the idea that there is a uniquely feminine way of writing. Using this lens, one can look at nearly any piece of literature and evaluate the representations of the multifaceted roles of sex and gender in a work. While feminist literary criticism is a facet of the overarching movement of today’s feminism, it still plays an important role in influencing and changing modern beliefs and actions. The key to feminist literary criticism is not just simply pointing out that they exist, but explaining its significance and impact. “Girl” is a short story written by Jamaica Kincaid that itemizes the expected conduct of a woman in society told from a mother to her young girl. The story discusses themes of housekeeping, cooking, interacting with others, and self-conduct. The interesting thing to note, however, is how the use of language is implemented to occasionally uproot and disturb the social norm. Additionally, the subject of the story – the girl – has only two lines in the story. Her presence as a character and protagonist is nearly nonexistent and is constructed through the ways in which society wants and expects her to be. As a result, Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” demonstrates how the use of language conforms and dissents from performative theory and impacts the individual as a result. Judith Butler pioneered the idea of gender as a performance. In her novel, Gender Trouble, she explained how gender is a repetition of acts through imitating and miming the dominant conventions and expectations of gender. She argues that “the act that one does, the act that one performs is, in a sense, an act that's been going on before one arrived on the scene” (138). Performative theory is exactly this – that our identity is a character in a show in which we have learned the lines from tradition and not from our own creation. In an interview with Liz Kotz in an international magazine called Artforum, Butler explained the idea of performative theory further. She explains that performativity is not voluntary and is often a forceful and oppressive social norm that forces the individual into submission. The individual is not given freedom, but instead a “question of how to work the trap that one is inevitably in” (84). One must shape their own identity in a limited scope while still maintaining the traditional representation of their role in the play of society. Performative theory is supplemented by the feminine way of writing that is solely used by women – or Écriture féminine. In addition, Écriture féminine is used to understand oneself. It was coined by Hélène Cixous in her essay ‘The Laugh of Medusa’ in which she states that it is not just about the format and structure of writing but also that a "woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies" (875). Cixous emphasized the importance of individuality in writing. She uses the rejection of women from literature as a call to action to be more present in literature. In addition, she promotes this defiance by calling to women to use syntax in such a manner to break away from the normal traditions of writing created by men. Kincaid, however, instead fits into the mold of men’s writing. A ‘man’s sentence’ is characterized by carefully balanced and patterned rhetorical sequences, while a woman’s is characterized by the use of looser sequences linking clauses (Barry 121). The structure of the story is split into two sections: the language of command and the language of showing. Kincaid as a writer in ‘Girl’ is performing to the expectations of writing created by men. She demonstrates her own voice, however, with unexpected breaks in these patterns. For example, the mother is directing the girl “soak salt fish overnight before you cook it” before suddenly asking “is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?” The break, along with the mentioning of the word slut that is repeated a couple times throughout the story demonstrates Kincaid’s breaking of the mold that Cixous supported, creating her own individual voice. This is also repeated in the second half of the story where the language transitions to one of showing: “this is how -”. The parallel structure is a pattern repeated until the end with little breaks in speech that revert back to commands. Another aspect to consider when looking at language in feminist theory is the use of the semiotic and symbolic. Julia Kristeva further defined the expression of Écriture féminine with the terms semiotic and symbolic, which she derived from Jacques Lacan. The use of these two words is to designate between two aspects of language (Barry 123). The symbolic aspect is associated with authority, order, fathers, repression, and control, while the semiotic aspect is associated with displacement, condensation, and a looser, more randomized way of making connections. Both of these aspects are present in every piece of literature, and ‘Girl’ is no exception. The symbolic aspect of language is used to maintain that the self is fixed and unchanging. This is demonstrated in the use of commands in ‘Girl’. If the self is fixed and unchanging, then gender roles must be as well. The mother uses the symbolic, the aspect of language used to enforce patriarchy, to perpetuate social norms. For example, “this is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so that it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so that they don’t have a crease” (163) uses the symbolic traits of authority and paternity to condition the girl to be obedient to the patriarchal figure. However, the rejection of these ideas is still present in the text. It is fair to look at the text as a coming-of-age story told chronologically, as Kincaid once said, “It is my mother’s voice exactly over many years” (Ferguson 171). As the girl grows, so do the weight of her duties to society. The first shift in age is with the first mention of benna. Similarly, this is where the mother shows her dissent from the expectations of society, exemplifying the semiotic. If the symbolic is characterized by order, then the semiotic is characterized by disruption. In describing ‘Girl’, R.B. Hughes writes that “the mother’s voice seeks to address the daughter in the lexis of ritual and advice regarding household tasks and social behavior, but it is a prescription which is continuously interrupted by accusation” (15). This analysis of the overall story is true. The mother follows the order of age and the order of command, but slips when she says, “this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming” (163). Within the language of showing, the mother interjects her own accusation of her daughter becoming a slut, a word that "is denied to women [and] cloaks it by using for indoctrination of patriarchal values, thus taking away the rebuke the usage would have earned her from society” (Jayasree 82). However, the mother is not just making an accusation but is recognizing her daughter’s desire to dissent. The mother is torn as she is to fit the role of perpetuating performativity, but still sees that it is wrong. Hughes notes this in their article, as saying, “for the mother, the house and houseyard contain a tension of groomed femininity and servitude [and] the troubling existence of sexual and moral dangers” (15). As a result, she is experiencing her own dissent from performativity and into individuality by showing her daughter how to avoid the pitfalls of societal judgment and masking it under an accusation. The sentence “is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school? Don’t sing benna in Sunday school” is not meant to be accusatory, despite its appearance. The mother is trying to protect her daughter. Benna is a form of folk music that is typically about lewd and scandalous subjects. Sunday school is used to reference church, which is seen as pure and no place for scandalous things in colonial Christianity's eyes. Singing benna in Sunday school would surely lead to ostracization. With benna being a semiotic word that disrupts the performative with its political and feminist statements, and the setting of ‘Girl’ being in a rural area such as Antigua, the only social settings are normally churches in which words hold a heavier importance (Jayasree 83). The use of language and its relation to performative identity has an impact on the individual. In the primary case of ‘Girl’, Kincaid uses the voice of the mother to teach her daughter not only the expectations of society, but also how to circumvent them. The mother is demonstrating individuality in explaining to her daughter how to dissent as she herself is aware and critical of society’s hand on women. The primary instance of this is within the expectation of appearance. Performativity says that women should be presentable and friendly, welcoming and approachable. The mother supports this claim, but aims to show her daughter how to undermine this expectation so as not to undermine her personality or fill her with guilt of saying no while still trying to give her daughter and individual identity that can choose agency in saying “this is how you smile to someone you don’t like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely” (163). For instance, not smiling at a man walking down the street could jeopardize one’s safety from security, however no one should be required to smile (in this example) if they do not want to. Jayasree supports this statement that the girl can “[fulfill] her desires quietly, by taking care not to provoke the censuring or irritated gaze, [a novel skill] that teaches women to fight a misogynist society from within, covertly, without jeopardizing her only source of sustenance, her home and marriage” (85). However, the most blatant of these disguised instructions on how to dissent is in the line, “this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child” (163). The mother is teaching her daughter survival in the sickness of a cold, and in the health of just not wanting a child. She is showing her daughter that, early enough, the choice is hers. There are also impacts on the individual in other ways than just how to disrupt the system. In the story, the girl only speaks back to her mother twice. The first time, she says, “but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school” and admits to her straying from the norm of not singing benna at all, regardless of the day. However, this is met with no response. This could be interpreted to mean that she is being taught to learn that a response is not always necessary to a woman, or that no acknowledgment means permission. The latter supports that her mother wants her to be an individual, but still know how to protect herself. The former is one the silent language of performativity, the latter the silent language of individuality. The second instance of the daughter speaking back to her mother is one of doubt. She says “What if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?” to which her mother responds, “you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?” (163). This interaction between the two of them is, on the surface, one of rebuking and shaming, representative of society. Deep within the camouflage, it is the mother chastising her daughter for having doubts after everything she has taught her about survival in a society that is against the presence of free women. The language of performativity in ‘Girl’ shows conformity on the surface level of the text. It is full of symbolic words that demonstrate how a woman is to act in her role – being a good housekeeper, a good cook, a good wife. However, digging deeper, the uses of semiotics and underlying meaning within phrases as a result demonstrates how a woman is to dissent from her role. As is exemplified with the role of the mother within the story, performativity can stuff the self into a box in which the self so desperately wants to escape. The desire to escape leads to dissent that must be guarded and covered, as she explains to her daughter. Kincaid experiences this same tension within her writing. Her use of language conforms to the male expectation of writing with the repetition of patterns, however the interruptions in the story and the masking of agency through language speak specifically to an unchained woman writer. The tension of the language of conformity to - and dissent from - performativity is the largest impact on the individual in which Kincaid uses to highlight how one can dismantle the system from within it through a mother speaking to her daughter. Works Cited
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: an Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 3rd ed., Manchester University Press, 2017. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 2015. Cixous, Hélène, et al. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 1, no. 4, 1976, pp. 875–893., doi:10.1086/493306. Delbanco, Nicholas, and Alan Cheuse. Literature: Craft and Voice. 2nd ed., McGraw-Hill, 2012. Ferguson, Moira, and Jamaica Kincaid. “A Lot of Memory: An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid.” The Kenyon Review, vol. 16, no. 1, 1994, pp. 163–188., https://www.jstor.org/stable/4337017?seq=1. Hughes, R. B. “Empire and Domestic Space in the Fiction of Jamaica Kincaid.” Australian Geographical Studies, vol. 37, no. 1, 1999, pp. 11–23., doi:10.1111/1467-8470.00062. Jayasree, K. “Linguistic-Literary Camouflage in Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Girl.’” IUP Journal of English Studies, vol. 13, no. 2, June 2018, pp. 81–87. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=130775795&site=eds-live. Kotz, Liz. “The Body You Want.” Artforum, Nov. 1992, pp. 82–89.
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