UNIT 1 - Women’S Writing – SHS5012

SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH UNIT 1 - Women’s Writing – SHS5012 0 1. Juliet Mitchell, “Femininity, Narrative and Psychoanalysis” In Juliet Mitchell’s essay, “Femininity, Narrative and Psychoanalysis,” Mitchell examines the role that the novel has played in our capitalist society for women and the influence of psychoanalytic motives for writing the novel to prove that the novel was, and perhaps still is, the defining element of women in our society. Mitchell’s essay addresses more than a single topic. All of her topics are link together, though, as Mitchell places each topic as a constraint around the identity of the women in society. In terms of language, the woman is constrained because language is a masculine language. In a capitalist society, the woman is constrained by the bourgeois roles expected of women. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, from a psychoanalytic perspective, the woman is constrained by the resulting masculine or not-masculine society derived from pre-Oedipal childhood (I think). The combination of these constraints ways down upon the women and results in a feminist movement that simultaneously rejects masculine society, while adhering to its rules. The novel is, in Mitchell’s words, “the prime example of the way women start to create themselves as social subjects under bourgeois capitalism.” After finishing Mitchell’s essay, I couldn’t tell if she was opposed to the novel, which I think is an important point to clarify, as Mitchell herself asserts the novel as the defining element for women in a capitalist society. Perhaps she is in favor of novels that are critical, such as a main subject her essay, Wuthering Heights, and not for conformist novels, such as those by Mills and Boon. Even if a novel is critical, though, it still operates within the confines of the masculine society it admonishes. This puts women in a crux, with the very identity of the woman at stake. One option is madness, as Mitchell puts it. Her essay hinges on a few premises that I do not know enough about to accept or refute. One of the more blunt statements Mitchell posits is when she says, “language itself is phallocentric.” I see how in languages like Spanish or French, where some words are categorized as masculine or feminine, that this assertion could be obvious enough to simply state and move on, but in English I am not so sure if I can believe what she is talking about. his piece will examine Mitchell's essay, by critically analyzing the feminine narrative in psychoanalysis influenced by the Bakhtinian concept of the carnival, applying the hysteric to women in the early novel, the application of the symbolic in defining an alternative universe, and briefly discussing Wuthering Heights. Firstly, Mitchell's foremost point is that on feminine narrative in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is the practice of investigating the way one's mind works, and then using it as a method of 1 treatment to cure various psychological or emotional ailments. The patient recounts certain incidents affecting their psyche. The psychoanalyst is then able to offer a solution to the incident. Through analysis of incidents affecting the patient, the psychoanalyst applies the respective theory and, "â€¦intrudes, disrupts, offers the 'anarchic carnival' back into that historyâ€¦" (Ibid, 426) The carnival referred to here is that of the Bakhtinian notion of deception. Mikhail Bakhtin states that in every level of society, deception is at play where there are multiple levels of power and resistance at work. These forces of deception are what allow people in a society to, put on masks and play certain roles. [1] Thus, because of this deceptive nature of communication, any form of action in society is never constant, always being in a state of flux. Mitchell mentions this flux in her statement where she says, "What can you do but disrupt a history, and re-create it as anotherâ€¦?"(Ibid, pg. 426) What Mitchell means here is that there is already an alteration of events, through multiple retellings of one's history. However, when Bakhtin's carnivalesque element is put into play, the history of the patient is not only replaced with an alternate one, but also that there is no single correct form of history present. With the elements involving a patient's history being always in a state of flux, the disruption and creation of multiple histories is imminent. Now if one adds the element of femininity, the issue becomes even more complex. If there is a disruption of history at play, what happens to a woman speaking about her issues, in a phallocentric setting? Mitchell is concerned about the effect that a male-oriented language has on a female subject. If there is already so much disruption in the shaping of one's history, then for a woman it becomes a momentous task to express herself freely in a society that has been shaped according to the norms of men. Also, if the woman subject is being studied by a woman analyst, the analysis becomes even more questionable. Both women have been bred in a society adhering to the rules of the male. This means, that the method of communication and also of expression then strictly falls into the realm of the male. A woman attempting to understand her own history is thwarted by the loss of true communication in the feminine sense. Secondly, Mitchell explains the plight of a woman attempting to create her own history, by looking into the involvement of women in the early period of the novel. Here as well, women were attempting to carve a niche into an ultimately male dominated realm. This was quite successfully done with the advent of the novel during the seventeenth century, where a vast majority of the authors were women. The introduction of women writers was further accentuated by the very essence of their actions. It was radical enough that women were beginning to express themselves, but it was another thing altogether that they were doing this through the medium of writing. In doing so, they were successfully creating, "â€¦what critics today call the 'subject in process'." (Ibid, 426) Thus, Mitchell explains that in order for women to establish a history, they were doing so by expressing during a state of flux. Here something akin to psychoanalytic practice is at work, where the subject is consciously able to re-create a 2 history of herself. According to Mitchell, in the midst of a rising bourgeoisie wrought under the clutches of capitalism, a woman's life was constrained to, "Domesticity, personal relations..." (Ibid, 426) One facet of a woman's history is preset. But, there is a conscious endeavour to write another form of history; this time it is written from the perspective of the woman. This is not a form of history replicated in the midst of a therapy session in a psychoanalyst's office. Here the woman subject is in control of shaping her own history. As Mitchell further illustrates, "The novel is that creation by the woman of the woman or by the subject who in the process of becoming womanâ€¦." (Ibid, 426) The subject, being the woman, is able to understand the numerous difficulties of the subject of her work which is also the woman, therefore successfully being able to express her concerns. By expressing oneself during a transitional time-frame, in this case during the creation of the bourgeois class, the woman is defining her qualities, her abilities and her boundaries, "â€¦where women are, why women have to write the novel, the story of their own domesticity, the story of their own seclusion within the homeâ€¦"(Ibid, 426) In doing so, the woman is classifying herself within a given domain, but she is doing so based on the constraints imposed on her by the patriarchal element, thus the Bakhtinian concept of deception. The woman is expressing, but with a mask of social hindrance, further limiting the effectiveness of her message. This is further proved by Mitchell's discussion of the 'discourse of the hysteric'. The phenomenon of the hysteric is where the woman accepts and rejects the organization of sexuality under a patriarchal realm. As Mitchell further clarifies, there does not exist, "â€¦a thing as female writing, a 'woman's voice. There is the hysteric's voice which is the woman's masculine languageâ€¦" (Ibid, 426) Again, here the Bakhtinian ideology is at work. The woman knows that she must talk in a masculine voice, thus the woman consciously constructs her argument within the framework of a phallocentric world. Thus, there is a "deceptive" nature to her presentation, but it is all the more necessary in gaining a patriarchal audience that is willing to listen. In addition to this, Mitchell further clarifies the hysteric using the moment of the symbolic. The moment of the symbolic according to the Lacanian school of thought is, "â€¦where sexuality is constructed as meaningâ€¦what was not symbolized, becomes organizedâ€¦" (Ibid, pg. 428) Before a child is made aware of the sexual hierarchy in a patriarchal setting, the atmosphere is that of the carnival. Moreover, before the child is aware of a phallic presence, it is only concerned with the presence of the mother. The mother is a source of nourishment and satisfaction and the child sees no other. The child is free of notions of gender definitions and borders for the respective sexes. This is known as the pre-Oedipal, where between the duration of three to five years, there are libidinal and ego development. [2] Freud simply states that the transitioning period is when the child is aware of the male member, "At the point in which the phallus is found to be missing in the mother, masculinity is set up as the normâ€¦" (Ibid, 428) 3 Further defined in the Lacanian model, the child is made aware of a phallic presence that is dominating, and also is made aware of the further responsibilities of the mother that are not just limited to the child, but also to the dominant male figure in the family.

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