Welcome to the 20th exploration of the Planet of the Savage Strident DKos Feminist Supervixens!
In celebration of the 20th week since we first staked out a feminist outpost on Daily Kos, tonight I'm talking about one of my favorite essays: "(Woman) Writer: Theory and Practice" by Joyce Carol Oates.
"Feminist Supervixens" of every sex and gender are invited to participate in this feminists' circle. Our goal is to build a vibrant community of feminists here on Daily Kos. The emphasis here is on camaraderie and support, so if you're looking for an argument, we suggest that you go instead to room 12A, just along the corridor.
Previous "episodes" in this diary series have been written by hrh, with guest-host diaries from mem from somerville, Elise, righteousbabe, irishwitch, and aphra behn. Some more guest-hosts are waiting in the wings. Feminists who are interested in being a guest-host can email hrh at: feministsupervixens (AT) yahoo.com
Have you met Ms. Oates?
Here she is:
She looks like a wispy, frail, (female) creature, yet she writes such shattering stuff. She gives a new meaning to the word "bookish".
This essay of hers came to my mind after aphra behn's wonderful diary on Aphra Behn, the Restoration author who was rediscovered by feminist critics. Behn was huffily dismissed by professional gasbag Harold Bloom when he was on one of his "I'm a Dick-tator of Kulchah!" jags:
A fourth-rate playwright like Aphra Behn is being taught instead of Shakespeare in many curriculums across the country.
Bloom's main target in that piece was Stephen King, yet somehow he contrived to get in digs at Danielle Steele and J.K. Rowling. Those (women) writers are, at least, contemporary with King. The attack on Behn is off-the-wall. Could it have been because she was.... female?
That was in 2003. Oates' essay is from a collection compiled in 1988: (Woman) Writer: Occasions and Opportunities. It's an excellent collection that includes her rip-roaring essay on Emily Dickinson, some boxing stuff, and other tasty morsels such as her description of her test-drive of a red Ferrari Testarossa:
While the black Testarossa may very well resemble, as one commentator has noted, Darth Vader's personal warship, the lipstick-red model evokes smiles of pleasure, envy, awe - most pointedly in young men, of course, but also in older, even elderly, women.
Fancy that! A sexy car making an old woman smile!
Somehow I don't think Harold Bloom would ever write about that.
What I love about Oates' essay "(Woman) Writer: Theory and Practice" is the way that the infuriating problem of women writers being ignored or treated as "unworthy" is dealt with so elegantly, so wittily, and so calmly.
[W]hile there are "women writers" there are not, and have never been, "men writers". This is an empty category, a class without specimens; for the noun "writer" - the very verb "writing" - always implies masculinity. (Hence the double-edged praise that always befalls the woman writer when she is told, by men, that she writes "like a man". Which man? I always ask.)
This paragraph speaks to the problem of misogyny:
Of course not all women are despised by all men, at least not all of the time, but it is a commonplace dilemma that a man's quarrel with the feminine in his own nature will be a quarrel with women: the impulse may be abstract and psychological but its fruition is always concrete.
She discusses the problem of (women) writers being sequestered by their gender into subheadings, special courses, women-only anthologies, and so forth:
Being so ghettoized seems insulting until the (woman) writer stops to realize that a ghetto, after all, is a place in which to live; raze it, and she may find herself homeless altogether.
This is something that should be borne in mind when we instinctively recoil at the idea of "women's issues". Of course they should be "everyone's issues", but until they're perceived as such, who will champion them?
But even when the (woman) writer's point of view is indistinguishable from the (man) writer's, and she manages to attain some distinction during her lifetime, it frequently happens that she is likely to be devalued and forgotten after her death. Literary scholarship and history, as practiced by homosocial critics like Kazin, Davenport, Bloom and numberless others, makes no effort to preserve her. For she does not finally belong to the "family" of Man.
Better to be despised, then, than to be ignored; or damned with condescending praise. There is a luxury after all in being despised if it frees energy away from the self and into the work; away from the distractions of visibility and into the permanence of art.
How should we women deal with this problem of being pigeonholed against our will, simply because of our gender? Oates suggests:
with resilience, with a sense of humor, with stubbornness, with anger, with hope.
Supervixens, you're welcome to share your thoughts and experiences on this, or any other topic.