ROOM 14.4 Women and Literary Theory

1991

Digital only; out of stock in print.

How women represent themselves and their concerns in writ­ing, whether in the language of fiction, poetry, or criticism, is a fundamental issue to a feminist journal.

Recently, attention has been focused on literary criticism— how it oppresses or empowers women—variously characterizing women’s relationship to it as to a “dark shadow,” a distorting and malevolent being, and questioning whether theory is Beast, or Beauty. And questioning whether it is possible to not have a theo­retical stance. In this issue of Room of One’s Own we look at some of the problems women confront when dealing with criti­cism—as readers and writers of it.

These essays are interesting for the variety of styles—auto­biography, collaboration, review, critique—and approaches— quizzical, inviting, hostile—by which both writer and subject are represented. But their style always adds a dimension to their con­tent. In the diallage between Charlene Diehl-Jones and Aritha van Herk you can see the playful form with its embedded narrative as an illustration of the interdependence of fiction and theory, and how it can open communication between women. Some of the other concerns that emerge call into question the possibility of di­ alogue—is it possible between parties who are not, in fundamental ways, “equal”? Might it be a form of patronization, colonization even, to “welcome in” a colleague on condition that she speak as one marginalized by colour, race, sexuality, or whatever? Margaret Christakos broaches this difficult problem in “Axioms to Grind” and Janice Kulyk Keefer responds. And what about the women- only nature of this forum—is there a danger here, as one might extrapolate from Kristjana Gunnars’ article, of stagnating, suffo­ cating even, by being too closed in a room with “one’s own” ? And are we all alike—what about the “essence” of woman? Is there a “feminine hieroglyphics” that only women can write, and fully understand, that underlies our writing, our being? Jennifer Hen­ derson and Kathleen Scherf attend to this. But if there is an essence common to women, and if we can be said to share—and pursue— common interests, does this merely perpetuate the power of white, middle-class, heterosexual women through a homogenization that silences those women marginalized within the global designation “women”? But if we differentiate amongst women do we risk los­ ing what empowerment we have gained through collective struggle? Do we risk—as Susan Rudy-Dorscht suggests—regres­sing to mute, embittered individuals in cataloguing minutely specified “hierarchies of oppression”?