faceforradio

Nudie pic and then a paper! WEE!







I'm still exhausted, y'all, and I think I made a crappy paper for it. Oh wellers.
(revised this morning to be less craptacular)


White Ink:
Helene Cixouss The Laugh of the Medusa
And Medieval Womens Literature


A woman is never far from mother. . . There is always within her a little of that good mothers milk. She writes in white ink (285). Helene Cixous metaphor is double-edged referring both to the nurturing nature of traditional female sexuality and the invisibility of womens writing, the silence of the feminine voice. Womens voices have not been heard throughout literary history, leaving the female body a playground for the patriarchal, and often violent and oppressive, male fantasy. In a footnote, Cixous remarks, Men still have everything to say about their sexuality, and everything to write (281). She goes on to explain how the masculine practice of writing has contributed to the characterization of the feminine or female as passive and receptive to male entrance into her. Much of the literary canon is witness to this: female characters are two-dimensional, shallow, petty, and manipulative. The literature of medieval Europe is particularly troubled by this lack of realistic representation.

Female writers often chose to remain invisible, though inserting themselves in the margins, via allusions to themselves directly or via literary tools such as the acrostics used by Merecina of Gerona. With these writers, the invisibility is simultaneously chosen and defied. Perhaps for reasons of their personal safety, Marie de France and a relatively prolific Hebrew-speaking Jewish woman writing in Spain chose to remain anonymous. Their presence as female is key in shaping the voice and subject of their writings, however. White ink is not necessarily invisible if one is reading in the correct light.

Christine de Pizan seeks to remedy the lack of positive female characters in The Book of the City of Ladies. The Amazons of Part One claim their agency by taking on male-gendered violence in defense against the aggression of pillaging and colonizing male forces. The women described in Part Two all serve to rob male-written stereotypes of females; they are loyal and patient unto death in the face of extreme cruelty, defying the idea of women as fickle and petty. Part Three details the lives and spirituality of the virgin martyrs. These female characters attempt to grab at an early form of feminist agency that is sorely lacking in the literature of the time. However, to todays audience, the image of feminine power presented in the City of Ladies is problematic. In the Amazons, empowerment is still a masculinized trait as it is grasped through male-gendered violence. The women of Part Two possess stereotypically feminine traits, perpetuating the idea of the ever-patient and quiet feminine that bears up under untold and infinite abuses to remain the peaceful and beautiful (especially physically) being that she is expected to be. Part Three features voyeuristic and graphic descriptions of often sexualized violence done unto innocent women who cry out to their male God for rescue. It would seem as though de Pizan has not only failed at her task to defend and uphold femininity, but further perpetuated some of the gender stereotypes that haunt the era.

However, upon closer examination, the nourishment of de Pizan white ink becomes digestible. The violence she describes is often committed against the sexuality (rape) or the sexual markers of the women (hung by their hair, or their breasts torn off). The violence is done unto their femaleness. It is arguably for their femaleness that these women are tortured and murdered. The gross violence done to, or attempted against, both the martyrs sexuality and sexual markers is an act of violence against feminine power. The religious element of their deaths is a further feminizing aspect. Julia Kristeva, in her letters to Catherine Clement, understands the religious sacred as existing within female flesh. As the givers of life and bearers of the future, women are the gateway to the Divine. That the religious sainthood of these women is so violently played out on their bodies and to their sexual markers is an argument in favor of Kristevas interpretation.

In order to rescue the feminist agency of these women, one need only extend this analysis a bit further: the virginity of the women, especially the martyrs in the book is often stressed. de Pizan clearly values chastity. The bodily virginity of the martyrs is prized by God. A woman who remains a virgin until her death holds her body always above the corrupting influence of the masculine. Her hymen is the physical marker of her holiness: a locked gateway into the sacredher womb These women retain their purity from the masculine until their deaths by remaining virgins. They are killed for their unrelenting femaleness, and remain purely female into their deaths.

A repeated and troubling aspect of the deaths of the virgin martyrs is that, when tortured, the women bleed sweet-smelling milk. This breast milk is perhaps one source of Cixous declaration that women write with white ink. The physicality of womens writing is necessitated by this metaphor. Indeed, Cixous demand that women write their bodies, declaring their sexuality and claiming its power and beauty.

The women writers explored here come from different countries in medieval Europe and represent different cultures and backgrounds (though all necessarily privileged). Their writing seems united, though, on several fronts: the need to create female voice, characters, and agency in literature while combating negative stereotypes. Each woman writes Her Body (a universalized female sexuality): Christine de Pizan in Book Three as discussed above; Marie de Frances tales often speak of a subversive and subtle (though sometimes not) female agency and sexualitya fairy queen who exercises complete control over her happily emasculated lover, women who rescue their knights even from their trope-appropriate stone towers; the anonymous Hebrew poetess declares her sexuality and her desire in no uncertain terms.
The anonymous Hebrew poetess of medieval Spain does this quite well, expounding on both her desires and her faith (one and the same?). The poems, The Enthralled Lover and The Fifteen-Year-Old Boy are rich with sexual imagery, as is The Ideal Woman which does something to deconstruct the idealization of femininity. This expression of sexuality by a woman would strike the medieval Christian male reader as somewhat monstrous and shameful. The poetess addresses this in The Spys Promise in which she describes the feeling of being ever watched and endangered during her expression of sexual love. These poems are paired with others of religious and historical-cultural significance, a logical step for a writer of an endangered religion/culture. A female writer is doubly invested in the recording of her culture in her role as bearer of the future.

The women writers, particularly de France and de Pizan, attempt to make known the crisis of being a woman, an enthymeme that reappears throughout womens history. occurring simultaneously in many places as Cixous says (284). Marie de France and Christine de Pizan are both especially concerned with the cruelty that women face every day. Their tales serve as protestations against the violence, psychic, sexual, and physical, that the women of their time faced on a daily basis. They showcase male cruelty toward the feminine and, in effect, become monsterized, like the destroyed goddesses that their women characters are, in their practice of literary agency.

The monstrosity of women, as described in Cixouss The Laugh of the Medusa, comes precisely from their sexuality and agency. In claiming a position beyond mother or whore, women writers claim both. The patriarchal view of woman is uncannyshe can reproduce herself, a trait utterly lacking in the masculine, who must do violence (enter, colonize, subjugate) to woman in order to reproduce himself. Womens sexuality is dangerous to masculine order when viewed in this archaic way. The female writers and characters who not only subvert the male/patriarchal order in claiming subjective agency for themselves, but practice healthy human sexuality are Medusas, monsters who threaten male dominance from their place on the margins. And the Medusa is laughing. She does indeed pose a threat to violent patriarchal hegemony, but in undoing the male culture, she (breast)feeds a new generation who comes centuries later.