Originally Posted by
Newcomer
It's an ideological argument, based on belief, not reason. By necessity it's a long argument, so I ask for your patience.
Suppose I would argue that Eve was a proto-feminist. Committing the original sin she challenged a patriarchal deity, hence all women are feminists and all novels written by women are feminists novels. Case for belief. A theory can be disproved if one exception can be found. And I know at least one woman in the Forum who is not a feminist, hence this theory is false.
Case for reason.
However I also know of at least one woman who is a feminist and in the 20th. century there exists a feminist literature. So the question is a bit more complex than of belief vs reason.
In medical diagnosis a number of symptoms are considered before a likelihood of a disease is established. And even here we are left with a best guess, not a theological certainty. So what are the symptoms of a feminist literature? I shall use as a reference, The Female Imagination and the Modern Aesthetic, edited by Gilbert and Gubar. The preface states, “This collection of essays edited by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar addresses topics that are central to feminist scholarship and gender studies, such as the relationship of female literary tradition to the larger literary context and inner-connection of social and sexual identity with historic and economic events.” With such an imprimatur, there should not be any question that the quotes used to establish the symptoms of a feminists literature are out of context or prejudicial.
а.Misogamy - In the essay, “Drunk with Chastity”: The poetry of Renee Vivien, by Pamela Annas. She quotes from Vivien's novel, A Woman Appeared to Me: “I neither love nor hate men ... What I hold against them is the great wrong they have done to women. They are political adversaries whom I want to injure for the good of the cause. Off the battlefield of ideas, I know them little and am indifferent to them.”. Shorn of poetics the operating principle is: - I want to injure for the good of the cause – hence the disclaimer, I neither love nor hate men, is disingenuous.
b. Sexuality – 'Chastity and virginity in Vivien's poetry explicitly refer to lesbian sexuality. In “I Will Stay Virgin” (Sappho, CK) it is clear that virginity does not mean sexual abstinence or inexperience but rather freedom from male sexual experience, which she describes as “the horrible embrace, / And the corroding kiss.”'
c. Creativity – The Female Artist in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, is used to analyze the problem of creativity from a feminist perspective. Woolf's “a room of one's own” is used as a metaphor for 'growing psychic and financial independence.' when Edna 'moves out her husbands house, using money from an inheritance and from the sale of her paintings, into a smaller house of her own. By itself, artistic expression is not sufficient as at the novel's end Edna commits suicide by walking into the sea. In Tomorrow is Another Day:Women Writers in the South, Anne Jones, a feminist, argues “she will not relinquish the core of her vision, which is not finally romance, but rather her own autonomous being ... so she freely goes to the sea, losing her life. But she does not lose herself.”. It is illustrative that Austen could create in a common room, seated at a small desk, lacking ' a room of her own'. Such a view of self is diametrical to Austen's view, to paraphrase, “A man in possession of a fortune is in need of a wife.”
d. Life affirming vs. life denying. - “Though death imagery is characteristic of the poetry of both (Plath / Vivien) these women, neither poet is simply working out a death wish in her verse .... point through death toward the rebirth of a transformed self into a transformed world”. This is pure sophistry, poetic imagery aside, death is absolute. The mind, the seat of self, ceases to exist, hence there is no transformation, no possible rebirth. My emphasis is solely with the contrast of the underlaying morality of Austen. Vivien's feminism is of “there is suffering, unfulfilled desire, death, violets and lilies, the artificial, shadows, lust, that which is cunning, artful, designing, colors which are dark, dull or wan, tombs, transience, tangled nets, water to drown in, weeping, dependence, weary decadence, sickness, frailty and faintness, whores, the corrosive and tainted, cruelty, spring, especially April, anxiety, night, perfume, being trapped, drugs, the drowned or dying lady, one's self as victim or slave.”. Compare it with Austen's social irony.
While I have used only 3 of the 14 essays to illustrate the salient points of feminism, they are sufficient to point out that none of them are present in Austen's novels and that the claim that Austen wrote as a proto-feminst is false. Criticism of laws of inheritance or the lack opportunities for self advancement, even of a patriarchal structure does not make one a feminist. The enumerated criteria of feminist ideology, a - d, would have been abhorrent to Austen regardless of their validity in the 20th. century.
