Download representations of gender in the fiction of alice munro

Cristina Nicolaescu, 2nd year PhD student University of Bucharest
Teaching assistant
REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER IN THE FICTION OF
ALICE MUNRO
Abstract
"Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the
magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural
size." (Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own)
This paper is an attempt at demonstrating the close relationship between
gender and human agency as mirrored in the fiction of a renowned feminist writer, in
the context of contemporary Canada. Characters’ subjectivity in making choices and
taking sides as opposed to the social restrictions, in search for a constant balance, is
another major issue of my analysis. My choice of the topic was determined by the
increased interest of gender studies in the Western culture and its revival in my
country. Furthermore, I noticed a scarcity of comprehensive criticism of the two
writers on this topic, particularly from this angle. In order to pursue my aims I will
employ the arguments provided by psychoanalytical feminism, social theory and
cultural studies in my approach on the main research corpus of short stories.
For this, I have two principal aims in view: first, to see whether the ways in
which gender is regarded at the theoretical level and at the level of everyday
representations, went through major changes and second, how influential gender
could be on human agency in connection with their thinking, behaviour, attitudes and
other components of gender identity construction. Further, I may find it intriguing to
analyze how the country’s identity determines the personal, social and cultural
identity of her people.
The selected books are the most representative for the topic I propose,
illustrating gender difference best of all, which serves my demonstration and provides
me with the elements necessary for a thorough argumentation, by making reference
to the innovative narrative structure (The Lives of Girls and Women), or portrayals
with the gradation and variety of feelings and sensations (The Progress of Love),
opening of the plot into new spatial and temporal coordinates (The Moons of Jupiter),
all this being distinct from the other collections of short stories by Alice Munro.
Keywords: gender, feminism, agency, identity, relationships, difference
In Canada, Munro has received three Governor General's Awards for Englishlanguage Fiction (the most for any author), two Giller Prizes, the Trillium Book
Award and the Canadian Booksellers Award. Internationally, she has won the WH
Smith Literary Award in the UK; the National Book Critics Circle Award and the O.
Henry Award for Continuing Achievement in Short Fiction in the U.S.; the
PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction; the Rea Award for the Short
Story; and the Libris Award. She has also won the Canada-Australia Literary Prize
and the Commonwealth Writers Prize Regional Award for Canada and the Caribbean.
Gender identity
Gender is a fundamental aspect of personal and social identity and a biological,
psychological, and cultural category of paramount importance. In addition, gender is
often a criterion for social stratification and different political treatment, as well as a
favored symbol for expressing values and beliefs. The purpose is to foster awareness
of the importance of gender in personal and public life, and how public policy is
shaped on a regional, national and international level. I will include herein the outputs
of my gender-related research on economic, social and humanist issues.
Sandra Harding suggests that the study of gender involves three dimensions, gender
symbolism (culture), the socio-sexual division of labor (social structure) and gender
identities (action and agency).
Within sociology different theoretical traditions conceptualize gender in
different ways, usually emphasizing one or another of these dimensions. Social roles
are associated with particular positions in the social division of labor and provide
scripts of femininity and masculinity that are learnt through the process of
socialization. With the advent of postmodernism attempts to explain apparently
universal gender inequalities of power were abandoned and the focus returned to
gender as an attribute of individuals constructed through cultural practice. Instead of
analyzing gender in terms of social structures and social systems the construction of
gendered subjectivities of self and identity became important. This can be seen as part
of the ‘cultural turn’ within sociology whereby culture displaced society and the
economy as a focus of theoretical concern. This shift can be understood as a move
from studying socio-sexual divisions of labor to studying gender symbolism and
gender identities.
Michel Foucault’s theorizations of discourse and power have been very
influential in the way gender is conceptualized. The process of construction of
subjectivities within gendered discourses and the ways that individuals engage with
this construction have become an important focus for studies of gender. Butler
conceptualizes gender as a system of signs that is infused with power. Gender,
sexuality and identity are all elements of the discourse of heterosexuality and it is
within discourses that power is constituted. The only way of challenging or resisting
this power is to disrupt the elements of the discourse by doing gender in a way which
challenges the assumed link between biological bodies and social gender (queer
theory). Conceptualizations of gender as performance or as part of the discursive
construction of subjectivities has been criticized for its lack of attention to systemic
power relations which, it is argued, derives from Foucault’s apparent denial of an
extra-discursive, material reality in which power is based. Many feminist sociologists
continue to assert the importance of a materialist analysis of gender and sexuality.
This new materialism sees gender as a constitutive part of the material basis of society
and, like Judith Butler, argues that sex, as well as gender, is fundamentally social and
that sexed bodies are socially constructed. Gender has also been conceptualized in
terms of social practice and here the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, particularly his
concepts of habitus and disposition have been influential. Bourdieu’s theory provides
a materialist alternative to the idealism of Michel Foucault and post-structuralism. For
him social reality exists, notwithstanding its social construction. This sets him apart
from the idealist formulations of those who argue that social reality has no existence
outside discourse.
His concepts of disposition and habitus can be used to understand how it is
that gendered social actors come into being and are predisposed to maintain (or to
challenge) social relations as they have become familiar to them. These concepts can
also be used to understand how gender differences are embodied through the
acquisition of a gendered (and classed and ‘raced’) habitus. Thus a gendered habitus
is reproduced through daily social practices such as sharing food and learning how to
sit, move, dress and talk; gender is thereby conceptualized as embodied practice. And
it is through social practice that gender relations are reproduced and/or transformed.
This sort of approach can be found in the work of Cynthia Cockburn who explores the
way in which gender identities, as well as having cultural meaning, are dependent on
the continued existence of particular material social relations, and shows how
gendered social actors reinforce or challenge gender relations through the social
practices of their daily lives.
Feminist becoming
In order to remain useful to feminists one must stress its deliberate agency and the
worth of lived experience. Feminist becoming, then, is a term to describe the complex
process of women's diverse lived experience as women live it and as women structure
it. Sociological theorizations of gender are therefore marked by a tension between
idealist and materialist theories and between those which see gender as difference and
those which take gendered power as fundamental to gender relations. For all,
however, sex, sexuality and the body as well as gender have come to be seen as
socially constructed.
Interaction and influence
In
terms
of
relationships
with
the
opposite
sex
(couple’s
factors
of
stability/instability), less concern has been devoted to the effect of a person’s gender
on the ability to influence other people. Being more influential, men exert their power
on women’s agency through the roles they typically fill in a certain context of
interaction. I will also analyze the communication style of interactants.
Identity and Positioning
A fundamental point is that each embodied female subject represents a complex
network of identities and positions, and must be conceived of as a process in a
constant state of dynamic transformation rather than a static entity. People interact
and are influenced in their decisions on how to act/react, particularly when emotions
are involved. I will address Hutcheon's, Butler's, and Irigaray's pioneering "notions of
positionality".
The social body
As Turner (1991: 5) argues, forming the backdrop to sociology is an assumption that
“the body is the central metaphor of political and social order”. Thus, talk of the body
is always a talk of the social context, social practices and ideological processes that
produce bodily matters. Cultural inscription models moved as far as possible away
from biological explanations that were viewed as essentialist, reductionist and
universalistic in the attempt to overcome the dualism between the mind and body and
support the idea of the self as constituted through symbolic interaction. One of the key
proponents of a view of the body as a socially constructed body is the French poststructuralist philosopher, Michel Foucault. As Turner (1984) argues, in the work of
Foucault, we see a central commitment to a view of the human body as an effect of
power and discourse. Now, the collection of work that Foucault produced throughout
his life is vast, and shifted and changed from his earlier work on the disciplining of
the body through to his later work on self-production contained within the three
published volumes of The History of Sexuality. The concept of subjectification is
linked to the work of Michel Foucault, which we will explore later in this chapter, and
refers to the processes through which subjects are made, and make themselves into,
particular kinds of subject. This leads discussion to the role of social structures in the
formation of human subjectivities. As Shilling (1993: 81) argues, ‘the body is affected
by discourse, but we get little sense of the body reacting back and affecting
discourse’. There is assumed to be a tight fit between what is often termed the social
body – that is, the body that is constructed within ideological and social processes –
and the physical body. The social body is seen to mesh tightly with the physical body
to the extent that they are seen to be copies or mirrors of each other. The term that is
often used in the literature is ‘homology’, meaning that there is no separation between
self and social identity. Because of the homology assumed within the literature a
problem is set up: how to theorize agency? The concept of agency refers to the
individual’s capacity to resist, negotiate or refuse the workings of disciplinary power,
for example. This is usually spoken of as the structure/agency dichotomy and is often
the starting point for contemporary work on the body across the humanities that are
attentive to the body’s capacities for agency. I will explore different responses to the
structure/agency dichotomy in the corpus under analysis. separations between the
biological and the social, structure and agency, passivity and activity and the body
and the self will be envisaged throughout the presentation, denying to view the body
as socially determined in a way that removes from it any sense of agency or
affectivity. The study of the body involves the use of its related key terms, such as:
embodiment, corporeality, affect, emotion, materiality, discipline, process, practice
and technique.
Conclusions
The discourse of psychoanalysis uses sexuality as the means by which we discover
our true selves – of course just as these discourses promise to liberate, they set up
strata of normalizing forces which inevitably restrict. Feminism’s early relationship to
psychoanalysis was largely a critical one. The image of women as ‘castrated’ men
who must prepare themselves for a passive sexual role conveys the idea of their
secondary status to men – that their lack of the penis is translated in social terms as
lack of power, status and authority. Luce Irigaray’s work on Freud, as well as Julia
Kristeva’s, picked up on a more maternal model of psychoanalytical thinking and
their appropriations of Freud owe a debt to the work of Jacques Lacan. They were
drawn to Lacan’s reworking of Freud and then possibilities for theorizing identity
within the sphere of language and challenging the phallic order. They suggest that one
can be freed from the patriarchal stranglehold of the symbolic order through the use of
poetic language, more associated with the unconscious, and therefore challenging to
the male-identified symbolic. Several feminist readings of Munro have likewise
described her narrative structure in terms of l'ecriture feminine. Rasporich, for
example, states that her resistance to linear narrative gives rise to "multiple climaxes"
and multiple epiphanies: a denial of the transcendent One through the divergent many
(461-62). Her emphasis on alternating perspectives and contingent arrangements
undermines any definite position, among those being the authority of patriarchy and
its gender stereotypes.
The reference to the ‘feminine’ principle of the unconscious at least suggests a
space beyond the phallus and the possibilities of resistance, if not transformation o
social realities based on the positioning of woman as other. Kristeva’s concept of the
‘abject’ represents that which is marginalized in society in the pre-Oedipal stage,
which she calls the ‘semiotic’. Her emphasis on the maternal as against lesbian or
other female identities has, however, led to some criticisms of her work. Theorists
such as Irigaray are especially interesting because of the way they attempt to
destabilise the masculine imagery of the phallus by using imagery based on the
female anatomy. For Irigaray, female sexuality is seen as hidden and multiple in the
experience of jouissance of the whole body rather than genitally expressed. (50 Key
Concepts in Gender Studies)
Munro’s stories persistently explore the ways in which contemporary society
confers adult status on women and men as they accomplish certain tasks like finding
jobs, getting married, having children, and accumulating property. She uses the old
meaning of life as a journey, using as metaphors terms related to travel: arrival,
destination, progress. "What are those times that stand out, clear patches in your life what do they have to do with it? They aren't exactly promises. Breathing spaces. Is
that all?" (The Progress of Love 273).
Many of Munro’s stories involve issues of love and sexual relationships that
sweeps women’s private lives away, a good reason why they can be called
psychological fiction. Munro is of the intricate interplay between desires and external
forces the characters cannot really control. Mystery and surprise are basic components
of every single story and Munro of the mystery in women’s emotional life. In
Munro’s stories, you don’t know what’s going to happen next. She is interested in
questions of authenticity. Lives of Girls and Women, is a coming-of-age story. Munro
demonstrates what happens when the gulf between the sexes is such that each is
isolated in its own discrimination both personally and socially. The Moons of Jupiter
is an artistic achievement by the use of flashbacks in approaching the acts of loving
and letting go, between connection and separation.
Bibliography
Primary sources
Munro, Alice. Lives of Girls and Women. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971.
-. The Moons of Jupiter. Toronto: Macmillan, 1982.
-. The Progress of Love. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1986.
Secondary sources
Bourdieu, Pierre (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Butler, Judith (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
Routledge: New York.
Connell, Bob (2005) Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Durkheim, E. (1960), ‘Le Dualism de la nature humaine et ses conditions sociales’
translated in K. H. Wolffe (ed.) Essays on Sociology and Philosophy. New York:
Harper.
Rasporich, Beverly. "The Short Story Writer as Female." Dance of the Sexes: Art and
Gender in the Fiction of Alice Munro. Edmonton: U of Alberta P, 1990. 159-92.
Shilling, C. (1993), The Body and Social Theory. London, Thousand Oaks, CA and
New Delhi: Sage, 2003 (2nd ed.)
Turner, B. (1984), The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. 1st edn.
Oxford and New York: Blackwell.
Turner, B. (1991), ‘Recent Developments in the Theory of the Body’ in M.
Featherstone, M. Hepworth and B. S. Turner (eds.), The Body: Social Process and
Cultural Theory. London, Newbury Park, New Delhi: Sage.
Turner, B. (1996), The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. 2nd ed.
London,Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.