Feminism: The Newly Born Woman by Helene Cixous and Catherine Clement

FEMINISM:

Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in women's studies and gender studies by "third-wave" authors. In the most general and simple terms, feminist literary criticism before the 1970s—in the first and second waves of feminism—was concerned with the politics of women's authorship and the representation of women's condition within literature.

SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_literary_criticism

Feminist criticism is concerned with "...the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women" (Tyson). This school of theory looks at how aspects of our culture are inherently patriarchal (male dominated) and "...this critique strives to expose the explicit and implicit misogyny in male writing about women" (Richter 1346). This misogyny, Tyson reminds us, can extend into diverse areas of our culture: "Perhaps the most chilling example...is found in the world of modern medicine, where drugs prescribed for both sexes often have been tested on male subjects only" (83).

Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization such as the exclusion of women writers from the traditional literary canon: "...unless the critical or historical point of view is feminist, there is a tendency to under-represent the contribution of women writers" (Tyson 82-83).

SOURCE: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/11/

SYNOPSIS:

  In her 1975 essay “The Newly Born Woman, Hélène Cixous asserts that thought has always worked through opposition, namely opposed pairs, or the couple.  Each side of the opposition correlates to male or female and is arranged by hierarchy.  In the hierarchy she describes, the male attribute always wins out.  This maleness is described in terms of activity, while femaleness in terms of passivity (349).

            Cixous further articulates that because of this hierarchy, the placing of male as superior to the inferior female, a place for woman has been eclipsed.  Cixous analyzes the place of woman in philosophical models and finds that women are removed:

            She does not exist, she can not be; but there has to be something of her.  He keeps, then,   of the woman on whom he is no longer dependent, only this space, always virginal, as           matter to be subjected to the desire he wishes to impart (350).

Following this, Cixous argues “philosophy is constructed on the premise of woman’s abasement” (350).  By her analysis, one sees that knowledge is constructed based on the absence and exclusion of the feminine. 

            After laying the groundwork which explains the problem with the current system, Cixous imagines a new framework of knowledge that could be constructed without the close bond between logocentrism and phallocentrism.  Under this new framework, “all the history, all the stories would be there to retell differently; the future would be incalculable…” (Cixous 350).  She continues, explaining that we are not yet working under this new framework and presently

            One can no more speak of ‘woman’ than of ‘man’ without being trapped in an ideological theater where the proliferation of representations…constantly change everyone’s   Imaginary and invalidate in advance any conceptualization (350).

In other words, the possibility for rewriting history to include the feminine is real, but not yet achievable because we have yet to discard the myriad representations that currently prevent conceptualization.  In discarding these, we would both occupy our physical bodies and experience the world differently.

            After she explains the current dilemma, Cixous begins to explore one possible exception: bisexuality.  The bisexuality she is concerned with is that of “the location within oneself of the presence of both sexes…[and] the multiplication of the effects of desire’s inscription on every part of the body and the other body” (Cixous 352).  Through the simultaneous presence of one’s own body and an other body within one form, Cixous envisions that difference would not be repressed, but rather celebrated.

            Cixous then articulates the idea that “today writing is woman’s. …woman admits there is an other” and explains that, for her (and some others) writing is the point of access for bisexuality (352).  After all, in writing, the author in some way purports to be an other leaving an author’s self somewhat vacated.  This representation and acknowledgement of both self and other is part of Cixous idea of bisexuality.  By both being oneself and granting permission to other selves, one can reevaluate difference.  It is in reevaluating difference that Cixous claims the feminine (and the masculine) will emerge.

            Cixous’s idea of the possibility for rewriting all the stories and the histories with a new language of differences reminds me of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.  In this novel, Rhys retells Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyrefrom Bertha’s perspective.  In Jane Eyre, Bertha is Mr. Rochester’s wife who is kept locked in his attic in England.  Rhys, in her reconception, writes from the childhood perspective of Bertha in her native Caribbean home.  By reconfiguring this historical figure, Rhys is able to reconstitute her from merely the madwoman in the attic to a full female.   Although I’ve not read Jane Eyre, it is my understanding that Bertha is neither a particularly sympathetic, nor a main, character.  She is the obscured feminine.  Her presence serves mainly to prevent Mr. Rochester from marrying Jane.  Bertha herself does not really exist in the world of the novel.

Rhy’s work reconfigures Bertha’s circumstances to make her both sympathetic and present in the novel.  While the very fact of this novel evokes Cixous’s idea of the rewriting of histories, the particulars of the novel also deploy Cisoux ideas of bisexuality.  In one early instance, Tia, a childhood friend of Bertha’s throws a rock at her face.  Bertha explains that after Tia threw the rock “we stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers.  It was as if I saw myself.  Like in a looking-glass” (Rhys 27).  In this passage Bertha acknowledges the presence of an other in herself; she sees her face in that of Tia’s and Tia’s face in that of her own.  While the duality represented here is not one of gender, the idea remains: within each of us lies a multitude of others.  While Cixous seems concerned mainly with the male/female binary, her argument resonates for all conceptualizations of self/other.

SOURCE: http://thowe.pbworks.com/w/page/35680081/Summary%3A%20The%20Newly%20Born%20Woman

ANALYSIS:

It discusses the masculine structure that has been imposed on women. It shows how women is being passive with the duality of activity. This text seeks to uncover the ''imagery zone'' veiled on women in the society. The story is about a dialogue of two authors exchanging thoughts regarding the similarities and differences they view a woman.