Sexism in Literature
I’m beginning to think of my Literary Theory class as one of the better classes I’ve ever taken. I just got through reading feminist literary critics Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar critique of the male-dominated literary structure. I thought I’d share with you my response. The first paragraph is a brief summary of chapter 2 of their book. Everything after is my personal response. I thought perhaps this could elicit some conversation/controversy about Christian inspired gender-roles, sexism, and American society, from a literary perspective.
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar: The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar is a perfect illustration of bra-burning, patriarchal-hating, feminist literature. In chapter 2 of their book, Gilbert and Gubar rail against the male-dominated literary world. The two authors show how the Freud inspired Bloomian critical theory, the “Anxiety of Influence,” which illustrated the pressures that poets and writers have to exceed the accomplishments of their forefathers, is a blatantly sexist, male-oriented structure. This Oedipal-based structure completely excludes any way in which female writers are able to define themselves without rejecting their female qualities. Furthermore, Gilbert and Gubar assert that the Anxiety of Influence is an exclusivist literary structure that forces women into a rebellious, and often self-destructive, subculture, identified as the “Anxiety of Authorship” model. In this model, Gilbert and Gubar question the ability of the “anxious woman” writer to even contemplate her status as a uniquely female writer. Where Bloom finds competition and aggression between male writers and their precursors, women struggle just to recognize themselves as writers. For any female writer, of any significance, the effect of writing outside the patriarchal system, absolutely necessary for any distinctly female writer, is tantamount to original sin and worthy of a good ole’ fashion condemnation by a Winthropian, puritan society.
Gilbert and Gubar’s illustration of the inherently sexist quality within the Western literary structure is an appropriate critique of the American Christian gender-role doctrine. In fact, Christian gender-role doctrine may be the underlying cause of the male-dominated literary structure, and all other inherently sexists structures in American society.
As Gilbert and Gubar state, “it is debilitating to be any woman in a society where women are warned that if they do not behave like angels they must be monsters”. Or heathen, or the Antichrist, or just a loony. Nowhere is this type of thinking more obvious than in America’s Puritan society. Gilbert and Gubar recall “City on a Hill” proponent John Winthrop’s scathing condemnations towards colonial free-thinker Anne Hopkins, wife of Connecticut’s Governor. The authors quote Winthrop saying that she “has fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason . . . by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing, and had written many books.” How could she have avoided this? According to Winthrop, “if she had attended her household affairs, and such things as belong to women . . . she [would] had kept her wits.” She acted outside her boundaries as a woman, therefore she was out of her mind.
Do not blame Winthrop, entirely, because the rationale for such a blatantly sexists worldview is based on the Bible’s own patriarchal complex, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Call it the “Christian Anxiety of Influence”-the inability of the American puritan society to breakaway from its patriarchal, sexists past. This Christian model is, unfortunately, easily extrapolated from New Testament text, particularly from the ridiculously bigoted Paul. Amongst numerous other passages, this one from I Timothy is particularly illuminating of the blatant sexism inherent in Christianity: “I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man. She must be silent, for Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not the one deceived. It was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.” Although it may not always been followed exactly as many sexist, conservative theologians may wish, it provides the foundation that much of the American literary thought is built upon. This is the notion that women do not belong in the thinking world-where reading and writing activities take place-she must be SILENT! Obey this command or find yourself amongst the heathen of the world!
Although the modern-day situation may look a little less bigoted than John Winthrop’s Massachusetts society, the residual effects are strikingly noticeable. One only needs to take a church tour through the American south, where women are forbidden from ascending to the holy pulpit during the sermon. And God forbid a woman deliver a sermon or attend a seminary! Where are the female theologians and preachers? Due to a male-dominated literature structure, most present in the many books of the Bible, women are still subjugated to second-rate status. In the spirit of the great sexists (and probably homosexual) Paul, the bigotry continues to this day (where you in Chapel this morning? I was). If any woman dares deviate from this sound doctrine, they would be brining upon them the condemnations of a still-sexists society.
Imagine, Christianity without Paul. America without Paul. Literature without Paul.
“…., America, and Christianity”?
I’ve been told there wasn’t a difference. Please explain.
some American’s are mormon.
i apologize to the half of a mormon reader that probably reads the cartel
Well, there really isn’t. Especially from a more philosophical vantage. Sexism, Literature, America, and Christianity are all one in the same, for that matter.
I once called Paul an asshole in an HU bible class. Most present were not amused.
THANK YOU.
Also, what happened in chapel? I wasn’t there and am curious as to what happened.
Well, in my Chapel, we had a guest speaker talk about the addictive and destructive quality of pornography.
I left chapel after singing. I had already heard the masturbation/pornography lesson in every other male only chapel that we’ve ever had.
I meant yesterday’s chapel, since this was posted yesterday, but thanks! Masturbation and porn are always fun to hear about!
In that case, Becca, I was referring to the fact that women aren’t allowed to participate in the “period of devotion.” Ever.
Gotcha.
“In the spirit of the great sexists (and probably homosexual) Paul, the bigotry continues to this day (where you in Chapel this morning? I was).”
From the wording of that sentence I thought something especially wretched had happened during chapel Thursday morning or something.
I agree, though. It bugs me every day. Even today, in our all-girls chapel, the subject was how women can best serve in the church. The term ‘leader’ was never applied to women’s roles, not even in reference to working with other women. It was all ‘Service, girls! Service!”
I wanted to punch something by the end of it. I can’t wait until my ‘THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE’ shirt comes in. I have a feeling I may never take it off.
Hmm… I’m surprised no one’s defended the institutionalized subjugation of women yet. That normally happens… maybe in a few more comments?
So, they have split chapels now? Anyway, I like your post, but I would take issue with your perception of Paul. I don’t believe that Paul was as horrible as you might think. The real issue is how his writings have been interpreted. Your example from Timothy is good. Women in the Roman world were subordinate to men in secular society, and Jewish women were not allowed to study or worship with men. Christianity was revolutionary in that it was equitable – no Greek, no Jew, no slave or free. The new freedom in Christ also made new members and uneducated open to manipulation and “false teaching,” i.e. worshipping angels. So, I think Paul was attempting to protect women, though I don’t doubt he struggled with the equity concept. But I think it’s important to appreciate the conflicts that emerged from acceptance of people of a different gender, race, and class to worship together. That was huge in the 1st century. I think a lot of Paul’s letters were attempts at compromise, trying to reconcile different views. I don’t think he was a sexist. Otherwise, why would he commend Timothy’s mother and grandmother by name? Why would he repeatedly appeal to the churches to care for widows, the most vulnerable of society? Paul tells a husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church. To me, that’s demanding a husband respect, love and protect his wife. I don’t know if Paul was gay, going blind or whatever “thorn in the side” Bible scholars want to speculate it was this week. Paul was speaking to a new radical group that was trying to exist in a volatile world. Unfortunately, over the centuries, men have used his words to relegate women to 2nd class status, missing the point entirely in my view. Now, secular society reluctantly embraces gender equity, but some in the church do not and distort Paul’s meaning to justify it. Remember, that some, even at Harding, used Bible verses to justify Jim Crow. I’m sure those views were changed more from legal persuasion, than enlightenment. Legally, HU is obliged to extend the ministerial housing allowance to female professors and administrators. Perhaps with more pressure, this might translate into actual recognition of women’s equality. Wow, this is long.
“Paul’s letters were attempts at compromise, trying to reconcile different views.”
I have heard this theory before, and I largely accept it as true. However, I think the cultural compromise has been subverted in favor of male dominance in the church. I think you’re probably right in saying that “men have used his words to relegate women to 2nd class status, missing the point entirely….”
I think the biggest issue people need to come to gripes with is the fact that the Pauline doctrine is very old, and in many regards, very outdated. People need to realize that no sensible author/theologian would call for egalitarianism amongst sexes in religion in the 3rd/4th century AD–that would be even more radical than the message of the Gospels.
Paul was probably trying to provide stability and structure to a hectic religion. Unfortunately, many churches and denominations are unable to see Paul’s writings as anything other than a divine mandate to exclude women from leadership roles in the church.
Thanks for you reply Karen; I think you have a good view on the subject. This has, in my respectable opinion, been one of your better replies–in respect to influence on the author.
Joanna Russ, feminist critic and science fiction writer has a great essay called “What Can a Heroine Do? or Why Women Can’t Write.” In it she argues that in our patriarchal culture women cannot even serve as heroines of their own life stories. “Patriarchies imagine or picture themselves from the male point of view,” she explains. “There is a female culture, but it is an underground, unofficial, minor culture, occupying a small corner of what we think of officially as possible human experience.” She further claims that, because all accepted and valued cultural myth is patriarchal and women are represented only as images, women therefore have no pattern, no culturally acceptable way to represent their lives in fiction. In fact, the only acceptable plots for women as protagonists, she explains, are the “Love Story” or “How She Went Mad.” Russ proposes two alternatives to the traditional male plots, two ways women can write without falsifying the female experience. These alternatives are lyricism (a technique mastered by Virginia Woolfe) and life, or the structure of female experience (Brontë’s Villette, for instance), both techniques which are often denigrated by male critics. She ends with a discussion of three genres that have possibilities for women writers because of their “sexless” possibilities: detective stories, when limited to true intellectual enigmas; supernatural fiction, because horror is common to both sexes; and science fiction, because new worlds are created and explored, and it is possible to rewrite the myths of these worlds.
Oh, and here’s my favorite definition of feminism: “Feminism is the radical idea that women are human beings.
Your summary of Gilbert and Gubar’s stance in “Infection of the Sentence” seems too reductive and off. _Madwoman_ offers a feminist critique of Bloom, to be sure, but it doesn’t invoke “bra-burning,” as you put it. Your tone of voice sounds condescending in regards to the feminist perspective, which I’m guessing hinders a more accurate understanding of it.
Just my 2 cents.