PLAINTEXT: DECIPHERING A WOMAN'S LIFE (ESSAYS, FEMINIST-THEORY, LITERARY CRITICISM, AUTOBIOGRAPHY). Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Mairs, Nancy Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 07/10/2021 20:19:32 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/187888 INFORMATION TO USERS This reproduction was made from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. While the most advanced technology has been used to photograph and reproduce this document, the quality of the reproduction is heavily dependent upon the quality of the material submitted. 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Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI4B1 06 8505236 Mairs, Nancy PLAINTEXT: DECIPHERING A WOMAN'S LIFE The University of Arizona PH.D. 1984 University Microfilms International 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI48106 PLAINTEXT: DECIPHERING A WOMAN'S LIFE by Nancy Mairs A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENTOFENGLffiH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 1 984 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Final ~xamination Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation pr~pared by Nancy Mairs entitled ____P_l_a_L_·n __ t_e_x_t __ : __D_e_c_i~p~h __ e_r_i_n~g~a __ ~W~o~m~a~n~'~s~L~i~f~e~ ________________ _ and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy --------------------~~~-------------------------- Date 7 ( , U·;x.·84 Date I {) /d-- ~ Ig 4 Date t Date Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate's submission of the final copy of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. 6issertation Director Date / I STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borl'owers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: ~ tn ~ for both my Annes the mother and the daughter who have made a woman of me and for Ken Marsh who has kept me alive long enough to experience the condition iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS lowe more debts of gratitude for help in this difficult project than I can ever hope to acknowledge adequately. At The University of Arizona, the first is to Edward Abbey, in whose workshop I began, almost by accident, to write essays. I am grateful, too, to Mary Carter, Robert Houston, and Steve Orlen of the creative writing program, who saw merit in my work before I did, and to Barbara Babcock, Jerrold Hogle, and Patrick O'Donnell, who formed my dissertation committee. My greatest debt is to Susan Hardy Aiken, my dissertation director, under whose tutelage I finally emerged as a feminist, and under whose demands I have stretched much further beyond my self-imposed limitations than I could ever have dreamed or dared on my own. Beyond the academy I have found support as well. My aunt, the poet Jean Pedrick, and her husband, Frank Kefferstan, have several times given me a room of my own at Skimmilk Farm in New Hampshire, not to mention more zucchini than any human being could reasonably hope for. My special thanks to them, and to the poets in the Monday Workshop there, who laughed in all the right places. I was fortunate to be able to join the community at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference as a Time, Inc., Scholar in Nonfiction in 1982 and the William P. Sloane Fellow in Nonfiction in 1984. There, I received generous encouragement from many writers, especially David Bain, John Gardiner, Robert Pack, Linda Pastan, Ron Powers, and Hilma Wolitzer. Their excitement over the iv v essays infected me and produced the stamina I needed in order to stay with the work even at its most painful. To my husband and children goes my deepest gratitude, for giving me the life that is this text. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT • . • • • . vii l. INTRODUCTION • 1 2. ON HAVING ADVENTURES • 41 3. ON BEING A CRIPPLE . 48 4. ON TOUCHING BY ACCIDENT •• 67 5. ON BEING A SCIENTIFIC BOOBY •• 73 6. WOMAN WITH FULL RED LIPS • 80 7. RON HER SON. • • . • . 92 8. A LETTER TO MATTHEW.. ..•• •• 113 9. ON BEING RAISED BY A DAUGHTER. • • • 124 10. ON NOT LIKING SEX 146 11. ON KEEPING WOMEN IN/OUT •• 167 12. ON LOVING MEN. 186 13. ON LIVING BEHIND BARS. 211 REFERENCES • • . • • . 255 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY. ' •• 260 vi ABSTRACT Because of woman's peculiar relationship to language, and therefore to the means of comprehending and expressing her experience, female autobiographical writing is a problematic undertaking. An exploration of several premises about Western culture can help to illuminate the difficulties the female autobiographer encounters in creating her life/text. Among these premises are the following: (1) that the culture that provides the context for female experience is what feminist theorists call "patriarchal," that is, a culture dependent upon and reinforced by the supremacy of male interests, pursuits, and values. (2) that the habit of mind of this culture is essentially dichotomous, and that this bifurcation, although it serves very well to enable one person or group to gain power over an other, fails to account for the sense of relatedness characteristic of female moral development as demonstrated by recent feminist psychologists. (3) that one lives through telling oneself the story of one's life (that is, that living itself is an essentially autobiographical act); that this narrative conforms to certain cultural conventions; and that these conventions present distinct problems to the narrator who is female. (4) that the human being constructs her/his self through language, and vii viii that the language of a patriarchal culture is problematic to female authen tici ty. In order to confront these theoretical problems in practice, twelve essays explore some experiences of a middle-aged, middle-class white American woman in the second half of the twentieth century. These include illness, both physical (multiple sclerosis) and emotional (depression, agoraphobia); suicide; relationships with men, strangers, and cats; motherhood; and above all, writing. They form a feminist project whose purpose is so to merge theory with praxis, nonfiction with fiction and poetry, scholarhship with creation, that such distinctions become meaningless and the female writer can get on with the real business of making and contemplating her text. An annotated selected bibliography lists works in feminist theory and criticism, some of which inform the essays, thus providing a program for extensive feminist study, especially in literature, anthropology, and psychology. Chapter I INTRODUCTION Students of human consciousness have long noted the existence of two cognitive modes, which appear now to be located in the left and right hemispheres of the brain. "One mode," Robert Ornstein summarizes, "the articulate or verbal intellectual, involves reason, language, analysis, and sequence. The 'other' mode is tacit, 'sensuous,' and spatial, and operates in a holistic, relational manner."l One need not have done very much background reading to associate these modes (the former usually located in the "left brain" but, regardless of its location, referred to as the "dominant" hemisphere) with masculine "logic," for instance, versus "female intuition" the folk conception of masculinity and femininity, although Ornstein does not do so and does not even list these terms in his index.