Pensamiento - Literatura

Part II. Women Writers Dealing with Violence

§18. Violence does not only relate to physical violence, the threat of physical violence and the line of consequences it breeds. Instances of domination and discrimination are considered here oppression and therefore violence. Thus, incommunication could be violence depending on whether it occurs among equals or as a means for oppression.

§19. While some women writers' heroines refuse to be victims (or fight it), they cannot escape tragic endings. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," 1899, (#11, 154), Charlotte Perkins Gilman denounces some violence women have endured for centuries, being Man's property-he treats her as intellectually inferior and controls decision-making. The liberating process of the heroine is presented metaphorically-she will free a woman trapped in a maddening pattern which is hard to see. " El fenómeno de la violencia de género es como los dibujos escondidos ... en una primera visión, son difíciles de advertir ... Una vez que [lo] hemos localizado ... ya lo vemos siempre ." (Alberdi y Matas, 2002) "I really have discovered . The front pattern does move. The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind (165). I [D]on't want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself (166) . I got up and ran to help her" (167). "I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" (169). TYW#11 is about psychological violence and resistance, but resistance may be misinterpreted because the heroine loses her mind. However, the fact that liberation is metaphorical makes mental illness more of a dramatic literary resource than a proper warning. The story encourages rebellion while warning the process will be rough.

§20. In "Old Woman Magoun," 1909, (#14, 207), Mary E. Wilkins Freeman runs the likely risk of being misunderstood in her depiction of rebellion. But impotence elicits radical images. The story is about the comprehensive terrifying violence men subject women to, but the writer uses omission-we have to imagine the degree of violence the protagonist is not describing by contrast with the violence she has allowed to occur. Omitted violence here can only be read if we avoid the pitfall of seeing women as irrational wicked beings. The old woman (old age as wisdom) prefers to see her most loved being undergo a terribly painful death to consenting to the life-long suffering of a naïve child in the hands of abusive men-the issue of marital rape strongly pounding in underlying meanings. But the story is easily misread: an evil woman is willing to kill her child if she cannot "have her:" "The old woman is displaying a very basic human response, selfishness." ( If I Can't Have Her ) However, this story is also a metaphor of the horror women feel before men's dominance, it is a desperate statement: what you say is never listened to, what happens to you is never acknowledged.

§21. "Fleur," 1988, (#53, 728), by Louise Erdrich, is a complex disturbing story that reads poetically. She presents the main character as evil, as Society would see a woman who does not conform to its rules. At the same time, she denounces evil is on the side of those who actually abuse her. But Fleur is no helpless victim, and this is a menace for Society. She is portrayed as a woman using her wisdom to threaten and fight abusers. That wisdom connects with nature. The patriarchal fear of this connection was built in Antiquity: women's wisdom and respect for nature was mythologically related to evilness. Power in women was wisdom, not violence, and patriarchy demonized knowledge in women (a good example is found in how healers were turned into witches when "scientific" medicine begun in the Middle Ages). However, what is clearly frightening for women in this story is we can assimilate with no special alarm that a woman runs risks when she sits to play cards with men, especially if she wins. As if playing cards and being gang raped were part of the "natural order."

§22. Women cannot speak about violence, men's violence, because men would be exposed, the system would be exposed, our own minds would be exposed. When women describe rape (even unsatisfactory sexual intercourse), they are read as hard, explicit, scientific, detached -a common attitude among victims of gang rape or women who are recurrently abused. Surprisingly enough, this is seldom seen as criticism on violence. Readers seem to resort to a "superstitious traditional conception" of the evilness in women. When women write about violence, their crudeness relates to the depiction of what they are going through as victims and/or the impotence from not being listened to since the creation of Classical myths and patriarchal religion. Their points are taken as proof of the dark irrational world their minds belong to, not as the legitimate attempt to end a powerful aggression. For the system to work, women's relation to violence is only tolerable as silent victims.

§23. Joyfully, there are a few stories were writers have prevented violence in their heroines lives. In "A White Heron," 1886, (#8, 118), by Sarah Orne Jewett, the opening creates tension around the possibility of rape: " The woods were already filled with shadows. A little girl was driving home her cow" (118). Tension is sustained until a new alert signal (120-121): "[she] is horror-stricken to hear.a boy's whistle. The enemy had discovered her . trembling Sylvia . did not dare to look boldly at the . man, who carried a gun." It does not cease until we realize the "boy" has another concern: "I can't think of anything I should like so much as to find that heron's nest,"."I would give ten dollars to anybody who could show it to me," he added desperately , "and I mean to spend my whole vacation hunting for it." [italics mine] (123) The reader is led to think that Love will be first for the girl-though not approving killing, she is a woman, and her life is justified in service: "could have served and followed him . as a dog loves!" (128). The surprising turn is " Sylvia does not speak.though the old grandmother fretfully rebukes her, and the. man's kind, appealing eyes are looking straight in her own" [italics mine] (127). She avoids violence and chooses beauty, freedom, happiness. A tale of initiation for girls.

§24. In " The Storm ," 1898, (#9, 130), what might have been a tragedy unleashed by an Adulterous Woman exemplifies the importance of freedom: "As she glanced up at him the fear.had given place to a drowsy gleam that.betrayed a sensuous desire. The rain was over... Calixta.watched [lover] ride away. He turned and smiled at her with a beaming face; and she lifted her pretty chin in the air and laughed aloud" (132-33). After an outlook on the positive effect of these two people making love on their corresponding families, Chopin ends the story in an apparent fairy-tale fashion. Considering what she has actually stated on desire, it is less a tale than encouragement to cherish freedom and sensual enjoyment! "So the storm passed an everyone was happy" (135). The author presses for freedom and life in the place of violence-the violence of repression in this case, of unavoidable drama, our doomed tragic destiny.

Next: Conclusion

Please, quote the author and the site: michelle renyé, at mujerpalabra.net.
Another quotation style: michelle. "Violence & Gender. We See What We Believe In. Tracking Taboos". Mujer Palabra. 2005. Path: Pensamiento. Date of Access <https://www.mujerpalabra.net>.