The book of the city of ladies (original) (raw)

Ladylike Lunacy - Hyteria and the Female Body in Sarah Waters' Fingersmith - Tammy Kaye

The aim of this paper is to examine how exactly female mental illness in the Victorian era is represented in Waters’ novel. While the “madness” for which Sue (as Maud) is confined to the asylum is merely a sham, what I am going to focus on is the Victorian phenomenon of female hysteria and how Maud in Fingersmith actually exhibits disordered symptoms which at the time may have been considered a sign of hysteria. Tammy Kaye Drawing on the findings of Susan Bordo – who, in her book, Unbearable Weight, Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, explores to what extent predominantly female nervous disorders (just like the very construct of the female body) can be seen as “constituted by culture” (Foucault qtd. in Bordo 142) - I am going to argue, that hysteria – contrary to Victorian psychiatrist beliefs – can be considered the result, not of women’s physical and mental “fragility”, but rather of the era’s problematic conception of femininity.1 As I will demonstrate, the example of Maud (who was brought up within the rules and restrictions common to Victorian upper-class femininity) illustrates how women, in a culture that sought to control and censure the female body, might have internalized these anxieties about their own bodies that then manifested themselves in the physical symptoms of hysteria. Furthermore, I will discuss how Waters portrayal of Maud shows her hysteric symptoms to be not only caused by, but actually compliant with, Victorian social norms, and thus can be said to refute that notion in feminist discourse which glorifies hysteria as a form of proto-feminist protest. Rather than descend into futile madness, Waters’ protagonists by the end of the novel can be said to have found a much more effective way of resisting social control of their bodies. For, to accept their lesbian sexuality allows them, not only to embrace their own as well as the other’s body, but also to defy Victorian society’s narrow definition of femininity in the style of what feminist writers such as Monique Wittig have championed by proclaiming that a lesbian is not a woman (Wittig 2020).

She Writes With a Man in Mind

Bildungsroman flourished as a literary genre at the outset of the 19th Century. As a result, its subgenre Künstlerroman, where the main character reaches an artistic destiny through mastery of an artistic craft thrived. Though initially it was preoccupied with romance, towards the 20th Century female theorists and novelists added an aura of feminism into the female version of it. Thus, like many other, the three novels, ‘The Golden Notebook’ by Doris Lessing , ‘Diviners’ by Margaret Laurence and ‘Hotel du Lac’ by Anita Brookner are considered as 20th Century female Künstlerromans in which the protagonists are writers who pursue feminism. Yet, by using these three novels, I’ve counter-argued that not all female Künstlerromans of the 20th Century can be generalized as novels which demonstrate the effects expected of feminist writing and turn them into free women. Patriarchal notions are so powerful that detaching from it makes them alienated and so women willingly conform to its stereotypes. Moreover, though the art of ‘writing’ is considered as a means of challenging patriarchy, the three protagonists, prove that not every woman writer explicitly supports the feminist ideologies. Since Bildungsroman is in the form of Confessional Novels, Künstlerroman, as its subgenre, has been analyzed using Rosalind Cowards’ perspectives about the ‘Confessional Novels’. Relating to that, it is argued that the coming-of-age of female protagonists happen in relation to phallocentrism and experiences of sexuality. In essence, Female artist is developed in terms of the female gender stereotypes and so fails often to criticize patriarchy, conventional notions about women and promote gynocentrism, though a female writer is usually known to be doing that through a text. Accordingly, 20th Century female Künstlerroman can be considered as a gendered genre. Key words : Künstlerroman, Free women, Gynocentrism, Phallocentrism, Alienation

Contemporary Erotic Romance: Cunning Linguists or Fifty Shades of Feminist Dismay?

The New Birmingham Review, Dissertation Special Edition (2015)

The opening lines of most contemporary critical theory on the erotic romance genre are about as predictable as erotic romance texts themselves. Critics such as Jayne Ann Krentz (1992), Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan (2009) inform us that the genre is scorned, misunderstood, and that readers of the genre are made to feel ashamed (Krentz, 1992: 1). However, three years after the release of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy[1], when millions of women now unashamedly access erotic romance on their Kindles, and popular titles make it into mainstream bestseller lists, does this over-protective defence of the genre still hold true? With more fame should come more responsibility; the genre needs to be brought up to date with its new modern readers rather than continuing to justify its well-worn narratives as being ‘subversive’ and ‘empowering’ for women. Therefore, I return to a literary critique of the genre, in particular the three texts, In Too Deep (2008) by Portia Da Costa, Seven Years to Sin (2011[a])[2] by Sylvia Day, and a collection of seventeen short stories edited by Kristina Wright called Best Erotic Romance (2011), to show that for a genre that reflects shifts is social discourses surrounding feminism and female sexuality (Sonnet, 1999, p.171), contemporary erotic romance is behind the times when it comes to modern sex-positive feminism and gender theory.