Gilbert and Gubar- What about Women?

There is a point that Gilbert and Gubar made right in the beginning of their piece that I just cannot get over. I want to explore it a bit more than we did in class, because it ties in so well with other classes I am taking right now, and also, I find it really interesting.

So the section I am referring to is this: "If the Queen's looking glass speaks with the King's voice, how do its perpetual kingly admonitions affect the Queen's own voice? Since his is the chief voice she hears, does the Queen try to sound like the King, imitating his tone, his inflections, his phrasing, his point of view? Or does she "talk back" to him in her own vocabulary, her own timbre, insisting on her own viewpoint? (Gilbert and Gubar 449)

I cannot help but think of this whole King and Queen analogy in terms of what it means for gender and writing. There is a concept that has been discussed in my gender and sexuality classes that I think really applies here: The concept that viewers (men and women alike) view things in terms of the way a male might view them, and thus women judge themselves in the way they think men might and articulate themselves to account for that. The idea that women have to think of themselves in terms of the way men think of them is intriguing to me.

So here's the connection: Does a woman as a writer have to compare herself to her male equals? Does she speak in her own manner, disregarding her male colleagues, or does she articulate relative to her male equals? These are questions that I find very hard to answer, but I do think that one thing can be said. It seems to me that the male sex, the "Kings" of literature, provide a sort of standard for the "Queens." Whether this standard is necessary or real, I am not sure. But I do think that even if it is not "real" and there is no concrete standard as laid down by the "Kings," it is at least imagined. And even when things are imagined, if enough people put stock in them, they seem to be more fact than fiction.