Debates In Feminist Research Weblog

Provisional Abstract for Pearce Article (As a Practice on Writing Abstracts)

 

This chapter examines whether it is possible to find a position for oneself in the complicated navigation of author/text/reader that literary critics and feminist readers/writers undertake. Who or what is responsible for the meaning of a text? The writer attempts to explain these difficulties and how it may be possible, as feminist readers and critics, to both be aware of the positioning of the reader within the text and also finding our own meanings located in the text. To illustrate these difficulties, the writer provides a detailed example of her own forages into reading: both as an academic seemingly unaware of her positioning as woman within classical male authored texts and therefore not the intended reader, and also as a feminist reader and critic criticising texts authored by men that exclude women readers. The author argues that we may be empowered and yet disempowered by a text, because it may have many interpretations. We must try to reconcile the personal demands of reading a text with the professional demands of literary criticism. The author concludes that, for her, the text has renewed authority; whilst we, as readers, have a dialogic relationship with the text, we are still positioned by it. As feminist readers, we must therefore be more reflexive in our methodological leanings: we should admit our lack of control in the reading process when writing.

 

 

My Own Reading Autobiography

 

My reading autobiography has been a long and interesting journey. It started when I was young and my parents used to read Winnie the Pooh to me at bedtimes. My most recent recreational book was ‘Eclipse’ by Stephenie Meyer, a book about vampires and werewolves. My reading tastes have changed and expanded considerably; although these have tended more towards specific authors rather than a particular genre. I have read books from both less ‘well known’ authors (Joanna Russ, Trudi Canavan etc) and ‘well known’ authors (such as George Orwell, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, The Brontes, and Anne Rice et al).

 

Up until two years ago I read a large selection of writing from male authors. However, with my changing ideas about how I wanted to escape and how I felt I needed to relate to characters, whether this is by some personality characteristic or whether they were a woman, my reading became much more selective and defined. I began to read much more writing by women authors, in particular, Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin, Trudi Canavan, Anne Rice and Kelley Armstrong.

 

‘My’ genre tended to skirt along the edges of science fiction and fantasy, and many of these women authors fed my addiction for women positive science fiction and fantasy. It is not the only genre I read from, but it is the one that I find myself most drawn to. Most of the books have a strong emphasis on independent, strong and interesting women characters. Some of these books did not concentrate particularly on women characters, but I felt more at ease because the writer was creating a perspective that smashed those stereotypes of male ‘macho’ mentality or female ‘femininity’.

 

One such book was ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ by Ursula Le Guin. This particular book imagined a world where the inhabitants could change their gender according to particular points in their lifespan or culture even, and the political and social limits are pushed when a missionary arrives from another world in order to learn about their culture and ways of living (and to ask if they are interested in trading with this other planet). I had a hunger for books that intellectually stimulated and interested me. It seems that both the text and the reader give something to the experience of reading: the text ‘speaks’ to us but nobody can have exactly the same experience of one text.

 

The problem with the genre of science fiction and fantasy is that, obviously, it has been a genre closed to women in the past. The realms of science fiction have been associated with the supposed ‘masculine’ traits of adventure and exploration, but I am quite sure that women also find exploration and adventure interesting! Feminist writers found that science fiction and fantasy can be a fulfilling and useful genre for writing as it allows the writer to imagine worlds where anything could be possible, which is evidenced in feminist dystopian and utopian writing. The most famous of these are ‘Woman on the Edge of Time’ by Marge Piercy and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood. Reading from this genre of feminist science fiction and fantasy has shaped the way I feel as a reader, and how I approach other texts. I am less interested in books that do not seem to speak to me as a feminist and as a woman.

 

Books that I have previously read I now recognise as not ‘addressed’ to a woman reader, therefore being exclusive, and have stereotypical and narrow ideas of what it means to be a woman; and although I recognise that the historical context of a novel is important, as a recreational reader I feel that we are allowed to be selective. In academic areas however, if you need to read a book that does not address you as a reader, it may be that reading feminist texts and being critical will allow us to recognise (as Pearce has) that we are both positioned by a text and we have a dialogue with it.

 

Reflections on Session

 

Thinking about the ways in which our readings of texts is subjective and influenced by our identities is something that I previously had not thought about so much. Where we are in our lives and what our experiences have been have influenced how we read texts, what we choose to read, why we read them and what we hope to find within a text.

 

My own experiences with reading and the type of texts I am familiar with influence unfamiliar and new texts that I read, or will be reading. For example, it is a popular pre-conception that science fiction and fantasy writing do not have much to offer a feminist reader, due to the mostly male presence and patronage of these genres. However, the genre can be said to have offered exciting possibilities for the portrayal of feminist issues and women - as can be seen with Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series and Charmed.

 

 My searches for new and interesting science fiction and fantasy books have meant that I have found many books that may be considered feminist in some ways: central women characters, feminist themes and so on. I have also thought about how science fiction and fantasy genres could be a useful tool for feminist utopian writing or feminist issues; indeed, it already has been, with such books as Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy, and Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

 

However, I am wary of stating that science fiction and fantasy (and horror) can be a catalyst for exploring feminist issues. It has been the case that the majority of science fiction and fantasy has excluded women and addressed a ‘male’ reader, as Pearce (1995) says about her own reading experiences. It has been my experience that women writers of science fiction and fantasy often seek to address this silence and exclusion – as can be witnessed by Kelley Armstrong, Trudi Canavan, Ursula Le Guin and Marge Piercy.

 

Bibliography:

 

Hennegan, A (1988 ) ‘On Becoming a Lesbian Reader‘ In Radstone, S (ed) (1988 ) Sweet Dreams: Sexuality and Popular Fiction. London: Lawrence and Wishart.

 

 Pearce, L (1995) ‘Finding a Place From Which to Write: The Methodology of Feminist Textual Practice.’ In Skeggs, B (ed) (1995) Feminist Cultural Theory: Process and Production. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.