As I brought up in class today, I was a little surprised that in Woolf's list of great androgynous writers, our dear George Eliot was not among them. I mean, come on, the woman even looks kind of mannish. But more importantly, she seems to have understood that "it is fatal for any one who writes to think of their sex" (904). In the Eliot novels that I have read, Eliot seems to strive incredibly hard to present reality and write from an objective perspective not overshadowed by gender. In her novels, Eliot presents a range of individuals that are all flawed, regardless of gender. She allows each of them the potential for redemption and also gives each of them a realistic human flaw that inhibits their ability to reach happiness and success. In reflecting on her works, I would also venture to say that Eliot strives to avoid the kind of mutually exclusive "Otherness" we talked about in class. Take the characters in Adam Bede for example. Adam Bede represents the idea of the moral and his brother Seth represents the spiritual just as much as the female character of Dinah. And Dinah represents almost no mystery: her character is one of the most open and transparent characters in the plot. When in comes to lacking in self-control, the male character Arthur seems to be the winner in that category as he knowingly seduces a poorer girl he cannot marry. Hysterical and violent moments seem to strike multiple characters, from Adam's attacking Arthur to Lisbeth's numerous frantic moments. Although Eliot does include a more traditional Other female character in Hetty, who presents several of the Other definitions such as weak, superficial and emotional, even Hetty fails to perform the role of typical woman. She lacks Other characteristics such as a maternal instinct, a virtuous manner, or an appreciation for domestic values. Hetty is ignorant and sexual, but Eliot focuses most strongly on depicting Hetty as childish, one of the Other aspects, making it difficult to even pin her into the typical Victorian "fallen woman" category. Overall, there is no standard of values that separate men and women: everyone is subject to the same potential vices and has the same capacity to achieve virtue.Eliot's other works seems to function in the same way as Adam Bede, and Eliot's struggle for realism seems to transcend her gender. She was, after all, a woman writing under a man's name, which could have opened up the male portion of her mind, as Woolf would argue every woman has. But the Bronte sisters all also published under male pen names, and their works appear to be more distinctly feminine and more focused on feminine issues than Eliot's novels. So why was Eliot able to write in a nearly genderless form? Eliot lived a unique life for a woman in her time, so is it possible that that granted her the same "freedom of mind...liberty of person [and] confidence in [self]" as men, thus allowing her to tap into that male portion of her mind while still in touch with her female perspective (901)? Or perhaps Eliot just was a writer who "used both sides of [her] mind equally," and somehow discovered the secret to doing this on her own (904).
But all of this brings me back to my original question: Why doesn't Woolf mention Eliot? In fact, in her list of androgynous authors, not a single woman is named. Is Woolf in some way thinking it is harder to women to write in an androgynous form? A male author simply has to overcome his tendency in "asserting his own superiority," whereas a woman has to overcome being subjected to this sense of inferiority and is perhaps more likely to try to make a point and gain validation after going unheard for so long (902). Then there is the issue that even in Woolf's time, men still possess a greater social and economic freedom than women, and therefore it might be easier for them to feel equal: they only have to relax their pride, whereas women are trying to gain lost ground. So perhaps women might be apt to overemphasize their femininity, or feel inclined to prove themselves by overindulging in their male perspectives? I'm not sure if Woolf thought any of this at all, I'm just throwing it out there. And mostly I just want to complain that Eliot got ignored, because I do like Middlemarch.
I don't think that lacking some "Other" qualities keeps you from being "Other". In addition, I'm not sure that I would agree that the characters in Adam Bede don't fit the usual female/male molds. I do think Dinah has a lot of mystery to her-- the mystery is "how is she so selfless? What does she gain from her occupation? Who exactly IS she behind the preacher facade she always wears?". Even if you have difficulty accepting that, consider that Seth is feminized for his spiritual qualities. He never gets married, and he is portrayed as almost soft. Dinah, whom you propose breaks the mold, chooses Adam, the strong male, over Seth for marriage. And Adam's attraction to women is always for their "womanly" qualities. Though he eventually falls for Dinah in part because she is steady, there is a familial sense about that which is made stronger by the ending scenes where Dinah is minding her children, waiting for Adam to come home (and at this time she has given up her "manly" office as preacher).
ReplyDeleteI think you are right, however, that it is interesting that Woolf doesn't include Eliot. I do think it's impossible to not think of your sex if you are writing under a pseudonym of another gender and even dressing as a man. I would guess Eliot was too aware of her sex for Woolf-- always and over aware, as manifested in her constant and seemingly deliberate male behavior.
I agree with Caitlin--that seems to be the only feasible explanation. But I do have to wonder along with you Aubrey, if Woolf didn't seem to think it is more difficult for women to write in an androgynous form. On the one hand, she might have not mentioned women writers in the list because she was already rattling too many cages and didn't want to have her ideas completely tossed out the window. (Personally, I think this is unlikely, given Woolf's outspoken nature and her mold-breaking behavior in all the other aspects of her life.) On the other hand, perhaps she truly thinks it is more difficult for women to write androgynously because of any of a number of reasons: the notorious tendency of women to succumb to their emotions, or the fact that women were only just starting to find equality in the society Woolf was in (which would argumentatively require women to write from a more feminine point of view just to get their voices out). Although this leads me to a question that perhaps those of you more well-versed in this time period can answer: I know in class it was clarified that writers like George Eliot were popular, but were they considered to be a legitimate part of the literary canon? Or were they often thought of as a so-called entertainment (or "mindless") read? Because that could have had an influence in Woolf's writings as well--if works like Eliot's were put into the more mindless category, then it would make sense that Woolf would want to draw from the "high" literature category.
ReplyDeleteAubrey,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure this makes Eliot either androgynous or neutral. I think that other feminist critics would say that Eliot was masquerading as a male and taking on male characteristics, but not nec. androgynous.
I would say that Eliot is far more likely suffering from "anxiety of authorship" and thus adapting her writing to fit into the male cannon than she was androgynous. I feel like there are a fair amount of places where she even tries to sound like a man. You could take that as writing with both sides of her mind, but to me it feels more like a mask. I do think it is weird, though, that Woolf does not cite any women writers in her list of androgynous writers. They probably do have a much harder time becoming androgynous because the subconscious "anxiety of authorship" makes them too conscious of their sex either asserting womanhood or manhood to an extreme.
ReplyDeleteMorgan,
I think that Eliot's writing was considered a product of entertainment culture, but not because it was a throwaway. Rather, the novel itself was an entertainment genre, not yet considered high art. Hence, the sense of celebrity and autograph collecting that took place within those circles (as Pam shared with us in her talk).