Feminist Frustrations

Sometimes, I enjoy frightening people by carrying around thick copies of The Madwoman in the Attack along with 800 page volumes of feminist theory. Contrary to popular assumption, feminism does not always mean men-hating, bra-burning, bushy warrior princesses taking over the world. In the context of literary studies, feminism looks for the portrayal of equality and the balance of power between genders in a piece of literature.

It’s something that I’ve grown increasingly hypersensitive to over the past three years of college. When I read a book or watch a movie, bright neon signs blink in my brain: “Madonna v. Whore,” “Masculine Gaze,” “Objectification.”

While all these warning signals flash, I still want to believe in happily ever after—alright, that’s a stretch. How about just love and marriage? So when I wrote my feminist interpretation of Pride and Prejudice last week, I wanted to analyze the egalitarianism and love which champions over mercenary marriages. But feminism frustrates me because it seems to always find something wrong with the picture.

As I sat in my professor’s office, hoping for my happy ending, I watched him mark my paper and wrinkle his brow.

“But what?” He turned to me and slid the twelve typed sheets across his desk.

“What’s what?” I asked.

Then I proceeded to realize that while everything looks rosy, the pessimistic feminist could read further into the novel. Darcy fixes his male gaze on Elizabeth in ballrooms and parlors. Darcy is the real agent, orchestrating three Bennet matches from Lydia and Whickham to Jane and Bingley and his own marriage to Lizzy. And sure Elizabeth holds out for her ideal, but what’s to say Darcy won’t wake up one morning and return to being his formerly conceited self now that he’s won his wife?

The main feminist gripe with the text is that the novel never presents the possibility of achieving any happiness outside of marriage. Marriage remains the only option, so the female characters are desperate to make a good one. As feminism faulted the text again, I felt like lamenting. I wanted the marriage ending to be the happy ending. Why does it still imply some form of societal oppression?

Fortunately, my poor little paper was not a total loss. I reworked a few sections to end with a conflicted opinion of the novel, concluding that while it portrays an ideally equal marriage, it is still caught in the ideology of the time which requires a wedding for a finale.

Conclusion: feminist theory probably won’t present the most felicitous outcome. Also, it’s tricky to be a feminist critic and a hopeless romantic at the same time. 

So funny because it's true :)

Warning: Contains Graphic Content and Mild Exaggeration

My body is covered in blood. Okay, not my entire body, but my legs. Well really, my lower left leg is drenched. 

Shaving in the coffin like closet that is our school shower, I propped my right lower limb against the corner perpendicular to my trunk. Running the razor around the bandage on my ankle from the last battle, I freshly nicked the flesh. Bright red streamed into the water running off my foot. In disbelief that I had injured not a half inch from a recovering patch, I continued up. Slip! Blood now streamed from my knee. My mouth dropped open and water from the spigot sputtered in.

Then, I started up the back of my leg. Wack! Blood began to flow from the outside of the same ankle. What! Livid, I raveled up the back of my knee when Wham! The evil razor tore a sizable chunk from where the flesh wrinkles at the back of my knee. This fresh slice shone white with epidermis underneath the tan, and then blood began pouring from the continent sized patch.

My leg stung. Four spots in 2 minutes I couldn’t believe it. They weren’t just annoying nicks either. I had gaping wounds gushing the life out of me. That might be a tad dramatic, but I really began to feel dizzy and weak. I twisted the shower nozzle to off and wrapped my self in a towel.

Staggering back to my room blotting with paper towels I winced. The tide wouldn’t subside. I felt like crying. I couldn’t even curl up in bed because it would forever alter the complexion of my white quilt.

Desperate for someone to sympathize or empathize with my pain and even greater exasperation I considered calling my mom. No, I thought. She’s asleep by now. My roommate was busy Skyping her family. Though I wanted to, I couldn’t very well hoist my bleeding calf up to the computer screen and show and tell the tragedy. Next, I considered pulling the sympathy card on my boyfriend, but he was still in class.

So instead, I determined to journal. Typing wouldn’t express my misery as well as physically scratching out the vivid words, so furiously scribbled into a notebook while waiting for the blood to clot and feeling like a corpse from a gory battlefield.

Writing in the midst of a homicide scene, I began to question whether sleek legs were really worth it? Perhaps there’s something to be said for floor length dresses and stockings that cover up those wiry ankles.

At the same time, I continued to feel wounded and damaged both in my flesh and in my heart. Just as I had originally turned to tell someone about the miserable incident, I felt that the hurt would be significantly diminished if another person could recognize the tragedy and proclaim, “Yes, my dear. You have been wronged.”

But God is always there and desires me to come to him with my hurts.

Then, returning to my musings on stockings and long skirts, I thought of Elizabeth Bennet all alone after a disastrous proposal from Darcy and the bad news about Jane’s separation from Bingley. She remarks, “How much I shall have to conceal” about this news and the proposal.

When we are alone with ourselves we are forced to learn because no physical arms wrap around us to sympathize and validate our pain. But God has purposes for our pain, whether they are large lessons like learning to lean wholly on Him or smaller reasons like having something to blog about. Christ is a high priest who empathizes with us, binds up our broken hearts and bandages our wounded legs.

Shaving is a dangerous habit. And in the midst of my bloody shower tragedy, I wanted community to surround me. But we’re a part of the constant community of heaven and God’s kingdom. He is always with us even when He might want us to grow from being alone.

Laughter as Pain Killer

If Pride and Prejudice happened at a small American university…..Lizzy Bennet would be the super smart, bordering on nerdy girl trying to get into graduate programs. Darcy would be the quiet guy who dresses suspiciously tidy, sits in the back of class and always has headphones on when doing homework in the courtyard. But really, he is watching everything happening and secretly plotting to take over the universe.

Jane works as an RA/dorm mother and always has a cheerful word for everyone. A psychology major, her professors adore her. Bingley could also be an RA who is super involved in campus life and friends with everyone from the Dean to the gardener. Pedantic Mary is the only girl in her medieval philosophy classes, and Kitty and Lydia are freshmen. Need I say more?

Wickham is the super senior on his fourth or fifth transfer. He rolls out of bed for class and forgets to show up to his finals. Mr. Bennet is an adjunct professor who enjoys watching his students behave ridiculously more than he does lecturing to them. Lady Catherine is a booster who descends on the college regularly to survey her tax-deductible gifts at work and reminisce about her school days two million years ago.

I can’t really picture Mrs. Bennet on a college campus. Unless, she’s the flighty mother dropping her child off on move-in day and scoping out the lay of the land. Charlotte Lucas represents the student with three different jobs, working her way through school. Mr. Collins is the friendless friendly guy who talks to everyone and instructs them about anything they appear to need assistance with, such as their homework, jobs, relationships or how to play the guitar. Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley might be upper classmen who still haven’t figured out that they are no longer enrolled in high school.

Perhaps that is a rather scathing picture of people and personalities based on brutal stereotypes. But what I’ve been learning about Jane Austen lately is that her texts tend to be rather biting representations of people and society. Typically, this is the nature of social commentaries. Often, when you think about satire it seems a hurtful sort of humor.

Some philosophize that laughter acts as a mask for pain. The endorphins released by laughter help to dull painful feelings. The invariable laughter/pain connection can be observed when someone attempts to tickle you to death. Tickling causes some discomfort which, in turn, typically causes us to react with hysteria.

So the satirical vein of Austen’s work causes us to laugh at the exaggerated and sometimes painful representation of the people which it presents. We chuckle while simultaneously thanking our mothers for not acting like Mrs. Bennet. And we squirm and chortle with discomfort as we watch Mr. Collins act completely inappropriately, raising discomfort in social situations to a new level.

As readers, we find ourselves in the same frame of perspective as Elizabeth, Mr. Bennet and the text itself: critical observers of everyone else’s folly. But eventually, like Lizzy, we discover our own disillusionment or, like Mr. Bennet, our very grave oversight. Or we find ourselves caught in personal pride with Mr. Darcy. Or perhaps we glimpse our mutual awkwardness with characters like Mary or Mr. Collins. In such cases as these, perhaps it is best to realize the pain of our own folly through laughter. 

What Elizabeth Would Not and I Would

It has been a Monday in many senses of the word. So I would like to take a moment to catalog all of the things which an Elizabeth Bennet of Regency England would not have had to do on her Monday.

Elizabeth would not have been sitting in lecture at eight o’clock in the morning. She would not have spent the day behind a desk typing and intermittently teaching people how to use man-eating copy machines or tracking down tricky library books which forever attempt to escape their call numbers. 

The second Miss Bennet would not have attended a resume writing workshop this afternoon and would not have stared into the perplexity of people hiring other people.

Nor would Lizzy have been handed a map of local businesses to visit tomorrow because her spring internship requires talking to strangers in a publicity campaign.

Miss Eliza Bennet would not have spent this evening analyzing Blake and Wordsworth’s London poems because Blake and Wordsworth would not have been born (let alone their poetry about the Industrial Revolution have been invented because this too would not have occurred yet).

Elizabeth would also not be typing on a laptop (because I’m pretty sure she never learned to type) about what she would not have done when all she really hoped was to fall asleep.

I sometimes wonder if Regency women ever felt truly bone-tired. Honestly, how exhausting can it be to walk into town and then spend the rest of the day sitting in a sitting room? What is a sitting room anyway? I’m pretty sure they don’t build those in houses nowadays.

This probably sounded like the snarky tirade of an ungrateful senior, and it kind of was. But sometimes, despite the fact that you have the greatest most fairy-tale-like life, you can still have a really long lugubrious Monday.

At any rate, the third week of school has descended, and I’m wondering if it is possible to feel farthest away when you’re actually the closest you’ve ever been. I hadn’t imagined until this semester how emotions like “Yah! I’m ecstatic! and “Help! It feels like I’m drowning over here,” could possible live together in the same twenty-year-old girl. But, mysteriously, they can. (I could be the poster child for coexist right now.)

Pride and Prejudice Turns Two!

My life is currently comprised of the contents in this three ring binder.

About four months ago (when I spontaneously started this blog and decided to post on Mondays because the first day of the work week is always a good idea), I had no idea that the bicentennial of Pride and Prejudice’s publication was about to occur on January 28, 2013—which happens to be today.

A few weeks into the project, I had discovered that this celebration of 200 years since the novel’s first appearance was about to take place. And just last week, I read that the exact date would fall on a Monday which is coincidentally blog-posting day. Jesus has such perfect timing and concern for even the littlest things.

The beginnings of my senior project began to come together this week. I have a binder brimming with highlighted articles, a pile of critical anthologies littering my desk, inter-library loans surprising me every day, and, as of this week, ten whole pages of my paper written. And along with other courses like sociology and philosophy, I’m learning how to say “no” sometimes and how to wait.

I’m also beginning a new internship this week which is my current excuse for a rather short post. So Happy Birthday, P&P!

Week #1 of Spring 13

School began again this week. My last first week of the semester before graduation this spring. Homework already piled around me after the very first class.

Typically, I am the exact opposite of a procrastinator. So for me, the first few weeks of school prove more traumatic than midterms or finals. I see the work pile up and gulp at how much needs doing.

During these times of relative stress, I tend to react in existential crisis. Overwhelming situations often cause me to reel back and question the meaning of my very existence. Why am I doing this? How did I get here? What do I really want?

The problem with these questions is that they focus on me, myself and I, and such a self-focus probably only magnifies the problem.

Friday, I flew (not literally on an airplane, just walked very fast) from an internship interview to a senior project meeting with my professor. From across the desk piled in papers, my professor cocked his head at me and asked if everything was alright. Startled by the question, I rushed past it into my thesis ideas and questions about the paper.

But the truth was—and still is—that things don’t seem quite right.

Compiling research for my Pride and Prejudice project, I’ve been pouring through linguistic studies, Marxist criticism, psychoanalytical critiques, feminist analyses, Austen biographies and histories of Great Britain. Something that keeps recurring is the exercise of choice.

For Jane and Elizabeth Bennet and the other women of the time period, marriage provided the most significant choice available. Beyond the selection of a partner, marriage represented an economic and social class decision. Critics highlight marriage and courtship as the one significant choice granted to single women of the time. Of course even this can be argued because economic, family and other social pressures influenced women, not to mention that their decisions were dependent on  men asking them first. But in Pride and Prejudice, at least, we do see young women choosing: Lydia chooses to elope, Charlotte chooses Mr. Collins, Jane chooses Bingley, and Elizabeth eventually decides on Darcy.

A part of this power of choice manifests itself in the ability not to choose. The grammatical negation not appears often in the text. Elizabeth most frequently practices this form of negation when dismissing unwelcome marriage proposals. Lizzy reveals emotional intelligence, knowing when to say no as well as when to say yes.

Choices are hard. Would you like a large or small? Peach or raspberry? Paper or plastic? Sometimes I feel paralyzed by the infinity of choices. And as school winds up once more, careers loom in the near future, relationships grow, and life dynamics shift, I’m not sure when to say yes, when to say no or when to just hang on. Maybe the constant changes and decisions are just a part of this season of life. But I suspect that they are just a part of life.

So after crying about the who’s and why’s, what’s and how’s, if’s and when’s last night, I woke up this morning to Ephesians chapter 2 and the comfort that I don’t need to know everything right now. Verses 8-10 read, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Everything worth worrying about has already been done. And it is ridiculous to act as though any of my decisions can destroy what God has planned. God values choice, but he does not abandon us to make decisions alone.

So while some truly daunting decisions lie close ahead, all I need to choose today is to finish typing this blog, do more homework and keep breathing.