Feminisms II: Examples

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Feminisms II Examples

• Housekeeping and Female Artists

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Outline

• History of Womens Writings since 19th Century
• Virginia Woolf and A Room of Ones Own (her
  Story of Shakespeares Sister)
• Sylvia Plath and The 15-Dollar Eagle
• Katherine Anne Porter and The Jilting
• Some Other Stories of Housekeeping
• Some Other Stories of Female Artists

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History of Womens Writings since 19th Century

• According to Elaine Showalter (textbook chap 1,
  p. 184)
• imitation (the feminine phase)
• Protest (the feminist phase)
• developing female understanding (the female
  phase)

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Womens writings in the 19th century

• Very few of them got to write write diaries or
  letters.
• the use of pseudonyms to write,
• The use of madness, death as tropes of
  self-preservation e.g. Christina Rossettie, Emily
  Dickenson, Yellow Wallpaper, etc.
• Followed the general plot in Victorian novels
• exclusion death or
• domestication (marriage e.g. Jane Eyre)

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Feminist Writings and Criticism in the 20 century
(gynocriticism p. 185)

• Writings
• Bring about changes in both form and content.
• Content
• Critique of patriarchal society, e.g. A Room of
  Ones Own.
• empowerment of female roles and female bonding.
  Granny W
• Discovery of female desires.
• Analysis of female psyche.

• Criticisms main concerns
• 1. Linguistic
• 2. Cultural
• 3. Biological
• 4. Psychoanalytic

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Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

• An extremely important Modernist novelist of
  Stream of Consciousness.
• Daughter of Sir Leslie (a biographer, critic, and
  scholar) Self-educated
• Committed suicide by drowning, March 28, 1941,
• Mrs. Dalloway appears on bestseller lists
  following the release of The Hours (directed by
  Stephen Daldry, stars Meryl Streep, Nicole
  Kidman, and Julianne Moore)

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Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) Causes for her
Sensitivity to Life

• Witnessed in her early years several members of
  her family fall victim to insanity and illness.
  (e.g. her half and her cousin's madness)
• Endured sexual abuse as a young girl by her older
  half brother which permanently altered her
  attitude toward sex and may have contributed to
  Woolf's frigidity as a married woman. (Quentin
  Bell Virginia Woolf A Biography, 1972)
• The combined effect of these childhood
  experiences ? heightened her sensitivity to the
  harsh realities of life,
• ? but also seriously damaged her ability to
  cope.
• (source Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2003.)

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Virginia Woolfs A Room of Ones Own.

• Womens position in fiction and in real
  life.(clip 1)
• Why did not women write poetry in the Elizabethan
  age? (clip 2)
• e.g. Shakespeare vs. Shakespeares sister life
  in the living room, arranged marriage, not being
  able to work and survive by herself in London,
  with child.
• Androgyny manly woman, womanly man.

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Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
First Turning Point Her fathers death in 1940.
(Her poems show both rebellion and guilt.)

• Second Turning Point won a Mademoiselle fiction
  contest and was invited to be a guest of the
  magazine the following summer. After that
  summer, she suffered from a severe nervous
  breakdown and, at the age of 19, attempted
  suicide by swallowing sleeping pills. She
  survived the attempt and was hospitalized,
  receiving treatment with electro-shock therapy.
• The Third Meeting and Marrying Ted Hughes

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Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) Ted and Sylvia

• Married Ted Hughes (a poet), June 16, 1956
  (separated, 1962)
• Under Ted Hughes influences both during her life
  and after her death.
• Anxious about her not being able to write, or
  write well.
• The Plath Estate has a strict control over Plath
  materials.
• ? controversies in her biographies. The only
  biography endorsed by them (Bitter Fame A Life
  of Sylvia Plath 1989 ) presented Plath as a
  spoiled product of the 1950s whose egoistic rage
  inspired brilliant but obsessive poetry
• BBC produces the film Ted and Sylvia,
• starring Gwyneth Paltrow.
• The Estate, again, does not let the film
• use her poems.

• (source Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume
  152 American Novelists Since World War II,
  Fourth Series. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book.
  Edited by James Giles, Northern Illinois
  University and Wanda Giles, Northern Illinois
  University. The Gale Group, 1995. pp. 194-201. )
  .

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The Fifteen-Dollar Eagle

• The Tattooist
• -- Is Carney an artist or a craftsman? If the
  former, what kind of artist is Carney? What is
  he proud of? Where are his limits?
• How is his tattoo art presented differently in
  this story from the way we understand it today?
  What do you think about the no face, hands and
  feet law?
• Tattoo in context
• What does the title mean?
• In this story we have several characters who
  serve as foil to Carney Mr. Tomolillo, his
  customers (the sailor, the boy) and the narrator?
  What do they each think about tattoo? What role
  does Laura play in this story?

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The Fifteen-Dollar Eagle Carney

• As an artist the best and all capable, an
  artist of meticulous details, making dreams and
  constructing identities for his customers. (p.
  93)
• As a craftsman cater to the customers needs
  with a mixture of signs (animals, the exotic,
  religious)
• A walking ad p. 95
• His pride and limits?
• Adding colors to the Eagle
• Limits the no face, hands and feet law no
  tattoo in Japan no photos of ladies with
  butterflies on their legs narrow understanding
  of women solemn in front of his wife

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The Fifteen-Dollar Eagle Tattoo in context

• Tattoo in context
• A commercial world All of his work carefully
  priced, just as the customers express themselves
  differently with the amount of money they have.
  
• Mr. Tomolillo no tattoo, comes for the spring
• the sailor wants the best, to show his power
  and have his vision (militaristic)
• the boy no heart, just a name which can be
  hidden
• the narrator so nervous that she faints.
• Laura not interested at all.
• Plath as the author her ambiguities shown in
  the presentations of Carney, tattoo, Laura and
  the narrator.

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The Fifteen-Dollar Eagle the humorous and
subtly ironic parts

• Plaths descriptions of faces and appearance
• Mr. T p. 94 a praying mantis
• Carney p. 95 Like a comic strip out in the rain
  
• The sailor p. 97 diamond-shaped head
• Carneys action p. 98 like a priest whetting his
  machete for the fatted calf
• The boy a smile which is a public substitute
  for tears (104)

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Katherine Ann Porter (1890-1980)

• Born in Texas. Many of Porter's stories echo her
  past, but she herself remained taciturn about the
  past.
• A Formalist writer under the influence of Henry
  James.

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Katherine Ann Porter (1890-1980)

• After her mother's death in 1892, her family
  moved and Porter was raised by her grandmother
  until the grandmother's death in 1901.
• --She gave out romanticized stories about those
  early years in Kyle--rooms filled with books,
  faithful ex-slaves in attendance, education in a
  convent school
• --The reality The family of six was cramped
  together in a tiny house (later sold for ten
  dollars), and Harrison Porter, devastated by his
  wife's death, made no attempt to provide the
  economic necessities for his children. More
  affluent neighbors gave cast-off clothes to the
  Porter children. KAP, even then proud and
  defiant, felt the shame of poverty.
• (source George Hendrick, "Katherine Anne
  Porter", In Twayne's United States Authors Series
  Online New York G. K. Hall Co., 1999
  Previously published in print in 1988 by Twayne
  Publishers. )

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Katherine Ann Porter (1890-1980)

• James William Johnson critical judgment, . . .,
  has limited her artistry in several ways. It has
  not permitted her to universalize but has
  confined her to being a witness to life.
  Consequently her fiction has been closely tied to
  what she herself has experienced firsthand.

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The Jilting of Granny Weatherall (1929)

• From 1964 Collected Stories (which incorporates
  Flowering Judas and Porter's other collections as
  discrete units) -- the theme of betrayal
• What does the title mean? p. 382

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Jilting of GW

1. How do you characterize Granny? What does she
   feel about being jilted? What is she proud of?
2. How does Granny relate to the people around her?
   Why is she impatient with the doctor as well as
   her daughter Cornelia?
3. Why is Granny pre-occupied with Hapsy?

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Ref. Jilting of GW Some Interpretations

1. John Hagopian the moral of the story "to be that
   the universe has no order, the proper bridegroom
   never comes--to expect him will inevitably lead
   to cruel disillusionment."
2. Darlene Unrue-- Granny "has identified the absent
   George with Christ and feels abandoned by both.
3. A lesbian/queer reading Hapsy is not Grannys
   daughter, but her female friend.

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Ref. Jilting of GW A Different Presentation

• The Film Version
• Told in a chronological way, from before Granny
  falls ill. (clip 1 her views of housework and
  memory of the past)
• How the film presents Grannys memory of being
  jilted (clip 2) more dramatic.
• The death scene (clip 3).

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Some Other Stories/Films about House-keeping

• Late 19th -- Modern
• Trifles by Charlotte Perkin Gilman
• Sunday at Minton by S. Plath
• A Rose for Emily
• Contemporary
• I Stand Here Ironing (1961) Tillie Olsen
• Dancing in the Dark (a film)
• Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson (1983 )

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Some Other Stories/Films of Female Artists (or
Künstlerinroman)

• Modern
• To The Lighthouse (Mrs. Ramsey and Lily Briscoe)
• Contemporary
• The Lover (M. Duras)
• Ive Heard the Mermaid Singing Mansfield Park
  (P. Rozema)
• The Woman Warrior (Maxine Hong Kingston)
• Disappearing Moon Café (SKY Lee)
• Margaret Atwoods later novels