International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011 Patterns of Gendered Constructions of the Self - the Narrative of Victorian Lady Novelists Simona Catrinel Avarvarei poison of illusion and seduction.’ [1]. Abstract—In stories of initiation, any hero has to go through Jung considered Anima to be the archetypal feminine a series of trials that will constantly reshape and broaden his symbolism within a man’s unconscious, whereas the horizons by pouring the light of knowledge and experience archetypal masculine symbolism within a woman’s accomplishing him as a human being, who ultimately reaches unconscious is known as Animus. ‘The whole nature of man the epiphantic moment of self-discovery. By the end of the journey, the protagonist would have descended deep into the presupposes woman, both physically and spiritually. His very core of his being, and would have also travelled the world system is tuned into woman from the start, just as it is of shadows and lights, of noesis and eikasia. Such is the journey prepared for a quite definite world where there is water, light, of women during the Victorian time, in their search for self air, salt, carbohydrates etc.’ [2]. assertion, in their quest for the true light of the sun that would It is precisely the same idea of escape, though this time no longer distort the shape and perception of things. associated with the image of women, that voices Victorian Index Terms—self, otherness, identity, womanhood, women’s taste for beyondness. Women can no longer Victorianism swallow their words and let men’s words express themselves and their dreams. Their Animus part unchained the bolts of their mind and they surprised themselves too when they I. INTRODUCTION dared, ‘spears’ in hand, to fight for themselves. The moment Victorian women initiated their symbolic, Women emerged from the cocoon of their confinement, Ulyssean journey of self-discovery, face covered behind challenging time (Zeit) to acknowledge their being (Sein). some ‘kabuki’-like masks, they allegorically embarked on ‘Time’ and ‘Being’ pariahs, women built their way into the the route towards the ‘stage’, as the very place for action, world, stepped onto the ‘stage’ and started to conjugate their existence and creation. ‘being there’ status, that we should interpret in terms of In our representation of the gendered constructions of the Heidegger’s Dasein concept. self (figure 1), the feminine dimension is symbolized by the horizontal axe, the one that symbolically touches the Earth, SKY Mind metaphorically associating it with the image of the nature Action Thoughts Anima goddess Ceres, the one that melts life in every shape, contour, CULTURE bud or blade of grass. With this axe we worship the miracle of InIn-betweeness life and all the sacrifices women have made for it, shedding Dasein // Mitsein tears, weaving dreams, abandoning themselves for a much greater outcome. Women embody the ‘c’-minor concept of culture, the one that records neither the great deeds of Animus EARTH mankind, nor the profound philosophical legacy, but the Soul Feeling vibrant culture of the heart, the vibrant core of the universe Melancholy that accounts for all forms of creation. CULTURE, in capital culture letters, accompanies on its audacious, sometimes It was the sacred dimension that melted together presumptuous way towards the sky the male story, Heidegger’s concepts of Sein and Zeit, two dramatical unstoppable in its verticality, undeniable in its authority. horizons within whose limits women wove the delicate and Throughout centuries, men have always been escorted by the tragic fabric of their destiny. By using the word Dasein, symbol of the spear, be it weapon, mast or pen. It is an Heidegger called attention to the fact that a human being arrow-shaped axe the one that stands for masculinity in our cannot be taken into account except as being an existent in figure, pointing towards the broad horizons men set sail to the middle of a world amongst other things [3], and this is conquer. If women were creators, men were forgers; if precisely what Victorianism means for women, a way of women were the guards of the family hearth, men were the asserting their true self, not within the secluded dimension guardians of lands and waters. The two axes, as different as that would accommodate their humble stories, but within the they are, merge in a single point, and when they do meet, ‘[…] larger, more rewarding realm of men. Heidegger described the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her the self of everyday Dasein as the ‘they-self’, which we distinguish from the authentic Self – that is, from the Self Manuscript received April 2, 2011. which has been taken hold of in its own way [eigens Simona Catrinel Avarvarei , Teacher Training Department U.S.A.M.V. ergriffenen]. As they-self, the particular Dasein has been Iasi, Romania (Email: [email protected]) dispersed into the ‘they’, and must first find itself. […] If 67 International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2011 Dasein discovers the world in its own way [eigens] and everything to do with the idea of becoming more brings it close, if it discloses to itself its own authentic Being, intellectually endowed and accomplished. then this discovery of the ‘world’ and this disclosure of Simone de Beauvoir explains that a woman, ‘was no Dasein are always accomplished as a clearing-away of fellow creature in man’s eyes; it was beyond the human realm concealments and obscurities, as a breaking up of the that her power was affirmed, and she was therefore outside of disguises with which Dasein bars its own way [4]. that realm. Society has always been male; political power has We translate Dasein as in-betweenness, for women’s new always been in the hands of men’ [7]. position in the world is somewhere in between seclusion and Patriarchal perceptions of women as ‘gender’-pariahs, spotlights, caught as it is in between the gynaeceum-agora overlook women’s humanity and their essential role in the dichotomy that in social terms, not only for the nineteenth perpetuation of society. The idea of in-betweenness century, spelled women and men. This in-betweenness, associated with women’s destiny and their place within the Dasein, articulates a positioning of women in the universe, a patriarchal society tends to articulately define itself within a statement of their self and intellect. In-betweenness is a dominant dimension of time, when ladies were perceived as gnoseological projection of women’s hidden self. Coming beyond and outside the human status. A clearly stated point back to Martin Heidegger, we can draw another parallel of view belongs to Sherry B. Ortner, who describes culture as between women’s emergence onto the stage and his concept a ‘small clearing within the forest of the larger natural system. of ‘thrownness’ [Geworfenheit]. ‘This characteristic of From this point of view, that which is intermediate between Dasein’s Being – this ‘that it is’ – is veiled in its ‘whence’ and culture and nature is located on the continuous periphery of ‘whither’, yet disclosed in itself all the more unveiledly; we culture’s clearing; and though it may thus appear to stand call it the ‘thrownness’ of this entity into its ‘there’; indeed, it both above and below (and beside) culture, it is simply is thrown in such a way that, as Being-in-the-world, it is the outside and around it’ [8]. ‘there’. The expression ‘thrownness’ is meant to suggest the Excluded, marginalised, considered less than human facticity of its being delivered over’ [5]. beings, denied any social and ontological role, women had to It is this over, this void that women had to fill with their act, to do something, to mark their presence and gain presence, wits and feelings. Disguised as a man, under acknowledgement first of all as humans and then as allegoric masks, the Victorian woman writer felt that, gnoseologically endowed beings; most importantly, they had wrapped in the cloak of maleness, sheltered by her male to voice their ‘silence’. In England, the revolutionary pseudonym, she could roam about the forbidden realms of platform of liberty, equality and fraternity vibrated in the words. She has swapped sword for pen, but she still preserves voice of an exceptional woman, Mary Wollstonecraft. ‘Give the same majestic attitude of her warrior ‘counterpart’. us freedom’, she wrote flamingly in her Vindication of the Before turning into women of letters, women trespassed the Rights of Women [9]. kingdom of maleness dressed as one, combating in open However, feminism did not start in the factories, nor down battles and thus, breaking down the walls of her confinement. the mines, but in middle-class Victorian drawing rooms [10]. Quite a few Penelopes decided to set sail, abandoning the It was in those chambers, around the fireplace, where women imprisoning weaving machine, and once they assumed spun the thread that was to bridge their own, sheltered Ulysses’ identity, the world had no other alternative but to horizon with the far broader ones of the outer world. Women recognize them. started to spin the fabric of their freedom and self-assertion; It was Elaine Showalter who suggested that women writers the force of these Arachne- like creatures was all the more participate in a quite different literary subculture form amazing since they initiated their symbolic journey from inhabited by male writers, a subculture which has its own within the very limits of their world, at the same time distinctive literary traditions, even – though it defines itself in continuing to do what they knew best – to embellish, to adorn, relation to the main, male-dominated literary culture.