There was something that troubled me about the Gilbert and Gubar essay that I thought I'd give a stab at.
Towards the end of the essay, when the authors are elaborating on the "socially conditioned epidemic of the female illness", they gives the two extremes of the negatively portrayed female condition in literature. First off, there is the "angel in the house of literature", or the heroine that is generally portrayed as either being chronically ill, some form of a hypochondriac, or is just the helpless sweetheart that loses her marbles. This heroine, this angel, does not suffer "just from fear and trembling but from literal and figurative sicknesses onto death". Is is an idealized role for women in literature in which they are pure and sweet and the ultimate example of femininity but they also suffer from some kind of illness.
Then, soon after that, the two authors mention the other extreme, the Evil Queen to the angelic Snow White. This extreme of womanhood seems sprung from too much mental exertion. They say, "the despair of the monster-woman is also real, undeniable, and infectious. The Queen's mad tarantella is plainly unhealthy and metaphorically the result of too much storytelling".
So here we have the authors making a claim that both the angelic and the monster visions of literary and socially conditioned womanhood are the only options that a patriarchal society offered women, especially in the 19th century. They claim that women were conditioned to believe that these were their options for public opinion, the suffering saint or the crazy woman, but are they saying that these two opposing visions were the only choices a woman had? Or are they just discussing the only two extremes that society offered women to be? And, connecting back to literature, are the authors claiming that these were the only female figures to be found in literature back in the 19th century? Or are they just examining specific archetypes? Or, if we are connecting this to the discussion of female authors directly, are the authors claiming that these were the ways that oddballs like female writers were generally seen, and were they so alienated because they refused the delicate invalid role and became the "mad woman" by writing and gaining too much knowledge?
From the text they make it sound like this was all that women had, when in fact there are several heroines from novels at that time that weren't super evil and crazy or suffering and fragile. I'm just raising the question of specificity for potential debate. I wasn't really certain myself, so I just threw it out there. Quotes are from page 456.
1 comment:
I think that patriarchal society only gave women the option of being the angel or the monster. Through these labels are the only ways that men of this time could understand women (perhaps men of today can only understand women through these labels as well). Burke would probably say that labeling females in such a simplistic way is just the way of relating complexities among each other. Perhaps men know that women are way more complex than a monster or an angel, but for literary's sake, it is easier to use the labels to symbolize something more complex.
Maybe women were the ones that didn't get the memo that the patriarchal society wasn't trying to pigeon hole them. Perhaps the male roles in literature could be seen as equally contraining, but Gilbert and Gubart didn't show that side of the story.
There were other roles for female characters than just the angel or the monster, but those roles were not the norm. It seems that more female authors were trying to break out of the molded roles for female characters, and they were receiving some resistance in doing so.
I agree that the text was a bit troublesome (maybe because it seemed incomplete?) and it's natural to question writers that are only presenting one side of the story. Everything Gilbert and Gubar claim about how women are presented and regarded seem to be true, but there can be truth beyond that. Perhaps they are making patriarchal society to be as bad as an "ill" woman.
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