Mary Swann & Lady Oracle
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T.C İstanbul Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Batı Dilleri ve Edebiyatları Bölümü İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı Anabilim Dalı Yüksek Lisans Tezi Stories of Endlessly Rewritten Selfless Selves: Mary Swann & Lady Oracle Çerağ Şahin 2501030338 Tez Danışmanı Yard. Doç. Dr. Şenay Kara İstanbul, 2010 0 1 ÖZ Toplum kadına temelde yalnızca bir eş ve bir anne rolü yüklerken, o, kendine atfedilen bu rollere içinde bulunduğu çevrenin de baskısı ile alışmış ve özbenliğini yitirmeye başlamıştır. İster kendi ayaklarının üzerinde durabilen çağdaş bir kadın olsun ister ekonomik olarak yaşamındaki erkeklere bağımlı biri, ataerkil toplum içerisinde kadın, kendi öz kimliği ile toplumda var olabilmek için kendisi ve olması gereken kişi arasında sürekli bir mücadele içindedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, ele alınan iki yapıt üzerinde yapılan çözümlemelerle, erkek egemen toplumlarda kadın ve erkek kimliklerinin, toplumsal cinsiyet kimliklerinin, toplum tarafından yapay yollardan oluşturulmuşluğu gerçeğini vurgulamak ve aynı zamanda da bu kimlik yapılandırmalarının toplumda yalnızca kadına değil, aynı oranda erkeğe de ne kadar ağır yaptırımlarda bulunduğunu da gözler önüne sermektir. Carol Shields ve Margaret Atwood’un postmodern romanları dil ve söylem üzerinden yapılan yapılsalcılık sonrası çözümlemeler ile kadına ve erkeğe yüklenmeye devam edilen bu yapay kimlik oluşumlarını bir kez daha görmemize olanak vermektedir. iii ABSTRACT As society stereotypes the female and assigns to her basically the role of a wife and a mother, the woman, under the oppression of the environment, gets used to these pre-determined positions and begins to lose her true identity. Whether it be an independent female who can stand on her own feet, someone who has a strong socio-economical stance in society or a woman who is economically and socially dependent on males in her life, still she is observed to be in an ongoing struggle between who she really is and who she has to become so as to survive within the existing patriarchal system. The purpose of this study is to emphasize, within the context of the analysis of the two works, the artificiality of the male and female identities, of gender roles, to focus on the contrived nature of binary oppositions which are formed through conscious processes by the patriarchal/capitalist society and, besides, to reinforce the notion as to how the gender constructions not only victimize the female but the male as well. The post-modern novels of Carol Shields and Margaret Atwood, based on a poststructuralist analysis of discourse and language representation, provide the reader with the opportunity to see the constructed identity representations one more time. iv FOREWORD This study consists of a thorough examination of two postmodern novels written by Carol Shields and Margaret Atwood with regard to their exposition of the constructed nature of gender roles. Showing, on the one hand, the artificiality of binary oppositions, the novels also provide the reader with the chance to see how those contrived male and female identities are used as tools to exploit the male and the female equally so as to ensure some socio-economic and political profit to those who have and preserve their power by the workings of the established system, in other words, within the male-oriented/capitalist society. And this is what makes the act of questioning issues concerning the designed gender roles through post-modern discourse so significant and vital. I would like to thank, first of all, to my mother and father for giving me their constant love and support all through this long, hard yet, enjoyable study. I would, also, like to thank my friends for their patience and for their ever encouraging words which have kept me up in my times of need. I am thankful to all my professors at the University of İstanbul for helping me see that reading between the lines is a way of perceiving not only the essence of literature and art, but it is also a way of understanding that there is more to everything than one sees to it in the world that we live in. Finally, and most of all, I would like to give my thanks to my supervisor, Assist. Prof. Dr. Şenay Kara, who has been the most important source of inspiration to write my thesis by her lovely teaching since she has made me love literature even more than I had already done by her undeniably profound knowledge on postmodernism and literature. And I would also like to thank her for encouraging and guiding me all through this study with all her patience and with her endless knowledge on discourse, poststructralism and feminism. v CONTENTS ÖZ .....................................................................................................................iii ABSTRACT......................................................................................................iv FOREWORD ....................................................................................................v CONTENTS......................................................................................................vi INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................1 Chapter I: “Producing/Writing Selves for the Sexes: Gender Construction” ....................................................................................................5 Chapter II: MARY SWANN: The (Re)written Self Hidden Behind The Kitchen Linoleum: Mary Swann ....................................................................................18 Chapter III: LADY ORACLE: The Self-written Death of Joan Foster Delacourt ...........................................................................................................................51 CONCLUSION.................................................................................................83 BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................................................88 vi INTRODUCTION This thesis presents a detailed analysis of the processes in which artificial gender roles are constructed and how they are reflected in the acts of narration and writing. In other words, the two post-modern novels of Margaret Atwood and Carol Shields reflect upon the disadvantageous position of the female within the male-oriented and capitalist cycle. The protagonists of both novels provide the reader with the image of female figures who come across many obstacles during their attempts to write not only the works of literature they have been trying to create but also to write their own selves. With the culturally constructed roles tried to be imposed on them, the two women struggle to survive with their poems and novels they create. As they resist the society which have already burdened them with all the pre-determined roles assigned to women, their writing becomes their weapon. However, their feeble attempts to expose their existence as women writers fall short to express themselves with a language of their own since whenever they try to express themselves, to express their own selves in opposition to the conventional understanding of a woman, they are both exterminated either literally or metaphorically and as they are erased from the arena, what they have left behind could only be the rewritten selves. The two novels, Mary Swann by Carol Shields and Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood, presenting the reader with two major female characters, openly display the invalidity of binary oppositions through deconstructing them since, as also Jane Flax points out, “postmodern discourses are all deconstructive in that they seek to distance us from and make us sceptical about beliefs concerning truth,…the self, the language…that often serve as legitimation for…western culture.” (Flax, 1987: 41). Thus, these two novels become significant so as to exemplify the female attempt to write her own identity within the male-oriented gyre as she strives for a way out of the oppressive patriarchal, capitalist discourse. In Chapter I, the background information regarding feminism in connection with gender construction is given. The chapter basically clarifies the 1 fallacy about the gender differences as also discussed by M.E Bailey who openly states that “gender differences between male and female roles are social rather than biological, they are changeable by human agency.” (Bailey, 1993: 100). That the culturally and politically assigned identity roles are a burden on the shoulders of both men and women is noteworthy since identity construction brings with it fixed, pseudo traits to be acted out by the male and the female all through their lives in order to meet the requirements of the system that feeds on these contrived types of gender identity with the aim of establishing the socio- economical balance to the benefit of the capitalist male-oriented authority. In other words, the concepts such as the characteristics of a male or a female, their attributes as different sexes which are very clear-cut within the society they are born into, their roles considered as unchanging and unchallenged are all a product of constructed values of the patriarchal system. They are no more than cultural and political formations given existence by the ongoing cycle and ironically derive power from the very male and female who are oppressed by it since, perhaps, they are to conform to the canon to live their lives in the best way that they can and survive, both socially and financially, in welfare. In Chapter II, how the identity of Mary Swann, the protagonist of Carol Shields’s novel, is consumed