Starting out my post-graduate studies, I never imagined that the 17th century would be my area of literary and historical focus. Initially, the poetry of the Romantic period attracted me. The earlier poets, Donne, Jonson, Dryden, Pope were intimidating—especially the allusions to Christianity. But as I get older, the Romantics seemed fluffy, verbose.
As I age, I face a truth that I had sensed, though not always named. Whatever power I had wielded, had been a combination of looks, sexuality, and intellect.
Somewhere around my mid-forties, I became invisible: My daughter and I were walking on 110th Street north of the pond in Central Park called Harlem Meer. Construction workers were whistling at my daughter-not at me. It took a handful of years to come to terms with my membership in The Invisibility Club.
Previously, I never had to test gender limitations. I knew instinctively how to use my power. In my forties, working on my 2nd M.A., Professor Holly Laird introduced us to feminist theory. I still avoid the angrier theorists, but in re-reading some Lit Theory journals, I see how I was attracted to Helène Cixous’ more joyful writing, especially when referring to women writers.
I had forgotten how I cited her approach to feminist theory in one of my Oxford papers on 17th century poet Anne Finch. Winding in and out of research, I landed in an era of repression so complete, that I felt outrage for the first time and knew there was an angle from which I needed to delve deeper. Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” entered the picture: Now seeds are connecting.–WH Forrester, “Only connect.”
Cixous’ 1975 poetic essay,The Laugh of Medusa, intends to break structural norms set by patriarchy. She prefers a more playful, imaginative medium. Cixous urges women to write extensively. She coins the concept of Écriture féminine ‘ translated, ‘feminine writing.’ “Cixous uses the Greek myth of monster Medusa,** depicted as a fierce, ugly woman, full of rage and has snakes instead of hairs on her head.
Cixous argues that this narrative of Medusa has “been distorted by patriarchal man to depict woman who have desires as dangerous, contrary to the beautiful, loyal and virgin princess that is they adored.”
Cixous bridges the gap between the physicality of the female body and authorship. Her premise: Women must write for themselves and claim their bodies.
What color ink do you use?
* Women write of the female experience, with their breast milk, or that of their ancestors – it is the ink we women use to pass down our stories.
** In Greek mythology, Medusa was one of the three Gorgons, generally described as a woman with living snakes in place of hair; her appearance was so hideous that anyone who looked upon her was turned to stone.
*** From: English Summary
