Language in Her Eye: Writing and Gender
Views by Canadian Women Writing in English
Coach House Press
308 pages
It is not surprising that the pieces in this anthology, dealing as they do with the very fabric of language as consciousness, should range through so many styles, so many forms of expression.
A variety of Canadian writers were invited to respond to the following question: What effect does feminism have upon writing and publishing in Canada. Does a distinctly female or feminist point of view exist? Can a writer legitimately take on the voice of those whose race, gender, or sexual orientation differ from her own?
The result is an intriguing collection of thoughtful, highly personal accounts, ranging from straight-forward essays to poetry which, both playful and subversive, strikes at the very heart of rediscovering language, uncovering its hidden contexts, and reclaiming it.
A fine example of this is Betsy Warland’s the breasts refuse, whose ten-page poem serves not only to express disenchantment and discovery within the confines that is used to define the feminine experience, but through its deconstruction and re-contextualization to reclaim it. She questions “proper definition,” incorporating snippets of common experience:
PRACTICE:
sit before the mirror
with chin in hand and rehearse the
look of fascination in your eyes.
nod and smile repeatedly. murmuring
‘How interesting.’
There are a number of common threads running through this book, engendering a feminine collectivity, which serves to underline and make more eloquent the individual experiences.
The authors often speak of themselves, of their own initial discomfort with a language which has failed to express their own sense of being. Many mention their struggle for self-articulation and their eventual acceptance that an inability to sink comfortably into a “gender-neutral” patriarchal form of consciousness is not due to any personal shortcoming. They speak of “overcoming” feelings of isolation, of oddity.
In a society where masculine experience is posited as “universal,” it is not surprising that an inability to share in this “universal human experience” would create a sense of alienation and self-doubt. The voices of these women writers create a refuge for those whose experiences have been denied and re-defined by language.
Many mention the self-assertion that rushed upon the heels of discovering other women writers, producing lists of authors who, by providing them with the necessity of self-recognition, enabled them to overcome their feelings of oddity, allowing them to trust in themselves. As Daphne Marlatt so succinctly states, “The struggle over reality is a deadly one that cuts to the root of being.”
The struggle over reality also manifests itself in the debate over gender/race constrictions in writing and the inevitable cries of censorship that emerge in its wake. Marlene Nourbese Philip questions the nature of white privilege within our society, emphasizing the necessity of the privileged to approach other cultures with humility.
The issue of responsibility is raised — those writers who most vigorously decry thought-censorship are often those who shrug off the idea of responsibility towards those groups they choose to depict.
Lee Maracle points out that “stories about women of colour written by white women are riddled with bias, stereotype and intellectual dishonesty.” She maintains that any book purporting to represent the consciousness of anyone who is significantly “other” cannot, by definition, do so — that inevitably, everything is filtered through the writer’s perspective, influenced by her own race and socioeconomic status.
As long as such books present themselves as insightful, as claiming to present truth about another, they cannot be anything but dishonest — even if they sincerely believe their work to be accurate. Here, however, the understanding of the audience also plays a role. People read books in order to feel connected to others, to believe that they have insight into characters, and this is most easily done when the perceptions of the characters — however remote they might be from the reader — are filtered through a similar set of presumptions and ideological frameworks. To confront the alien, the incomprehensible, is to be put off-kilter — but as the experience of the woman reader attempting to associate herself with the characters produced by male writers.
The juxtaposition of these two issues serves to give them greater meaning, for if I, as a white woman, associate myself with those women who write of their sense of gender alienation, it does not require too great a leap of the imagination to imagine a similar sensation of the part of a visible minority member, even if I cannot feel the specificity of their complaints.
By gathering these diverse, articulate responses, the editors have successfully provided a forum, an exploration of language through language which serves to both satisfy and arouse the consciousness of the reader.
