Opener
Take a few minutes to put these two texts (FM and HTSWW) into a dialogue with each other--how does the novel reinforce and/or critique the essay sample, or vice versa? As always, try to be as specific as you can, situating your comments in sentences and paragraphs from both texts.

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Joyce Smaragdis:
Allright. In the above passage, I think Jael is arguing against WOMAN as other. She is undermining the notion of the objectified OTHER that men have fought for in order to perserve the woman's "purity." She is arguing against the notion the woman should be characterized as a whore/virgin. She is demanding that people see women for who/what they are. She is arguing against the canonical authors who have created this archetype of woman that has little to do with what woman are really like.

Jason Booth:
I'm functioning without FM, so I'll muddle as best I can. The passage from the assignment echoes one from HTSWW, "Women's lives are the buried truth about men's lives" (119). Let me elaborate on this. In Le Guin's essay, "American SF and The Other", Le Guin speculates on what happens when the other is either diefied (Jeannine-sexual object) or simply hated (Jael). In FM, Jeannine crosses over to become Jael, she wants Jael to "invade" her world. The hatred Jael expresses here is also Jeannine's hatred and it is the hatred of men as well. By objectifying women, men impoverish their own reality. Women then become an ever present reminder of this impoverishment; thus perpetuating the loathing. Well, let me send this before I get called out for being long winded.

Amanda Kathleen Pedersen:
When I read the example passge from FM (p. 195), I sense a feeling of desperation. "Look! Do you see me?" This is Jael's "I" speaking here. Perhaps she seems to be addressing the problem that the true woman (the I) is being suppressed. In Russ's essay, she describes the female characters that are created in most literature. Females, it is said, appear "as conveniences to the resolution of masculine dilemmas." The typical "sensuos" woman ... is not one who desires men but one who is desired by them." So, in Jael's passge, perahps she is speaking to men who do not see "true women." Perhaps she is speaking to women who do not see the "true woman" in themselves.

Marc C. Hutcheson:
I see a connection between the essay and the book regarding the population. What? Well, to start, look at the beginning og HTSWW: "But in the case of women, what has been left out? 'Merely,' says Carolyn Kizer, 'the private lives of one half of humanity.'" In FM, Russ is including that which has ben left out of much of women's writing. For example: Whileaway has no such thing as a man anymore. They (he) are(is) extinct. Although this may be a little extreme, she is still getting her point across. The whole essay of HTSWW seems to focus on the theme of how women are not recognized as much in the literary world as they could be, so a purpose (a minor one) of FM is to provide a larger portrayal of women and give them credit where they deserve (if I am offending anyone, let me know because I do not want to step on any toes).
I neglected to bring FM to class today so I regret I cannot provide any specific examples of this from the book, but I'm sure we are all familiar with Whileaway and what goes on there.
FM and what we consider to be the literary genre might be paradoxes of each other. Russ enlightens for us the lack of recognized women's writing in the literary genre and she even admits that there is more than she was aware of when she wrote the article. So whose fault is it that much of women's literature has gone unrecognized? Or can we really place blame on anyone?

Len Hatfield:
Luther in the choir...hmmm...a choir is a place where people are supposed to sing alike, mostly; usually, they believe alike. Luther was a revolutionary in the Catholic church, say, who found himself in the choir but who was forced to cry out against the views/beliefs/conformities of that group. What's interesting here though is that the speaker, appropriating Luther, also plays on the implicit claim that she's not there, doesn't exist. So the crying out like Luther is both a denial of "non sum" (I don't exist) and a differentiating from the claims to existence amongst which Jael finds herself.

But why all the stuff in the surrounding passages...dreams, childhood robbed, etc. and how does that play out against HTSWW? One thing that struck me, in rereading both these pieces, is how they seem to end by refusing to end, by propagating the revolution ("go little book. . ."). Is Jael's painful reminiscence, then, a part of the revolution, too?

Ash Downs:
"some of the areas of life denied by the dominant group are projected on to all subordinate groups" "when...women move out of their restricted place, they threaten men in a very profound sense...These things have been warded off and become doubly fearful because they look as if they will entrap men in "emotions," weakness, sexuality, vulnerability, helplessness, the need for care, and other unsolved areas" (from How to Suppress Women's Writing)
I don't get what the first quote is trying to say. How about some ideas? The second quote coincides with a lot of the themates of the Female Man revolving around power relationships, control, and accepted gender roles or characteristics, yet as a male, I have to, in turn, question the validity of Russ's assumptions about men which seem as narrow as the conceptions of women against which she is addressing.

Amanda Kathleen Pedersen:
Perhaps, if Jael is speaking to women who do not see the "true woman" in themselves (as well as to men who do not see "true women"), then the "force that is ripping out your guts" is the feeling of urest and fury that a woman would expereince if she were to take note of her suppression.

Stacey Dittmar:
"It is I, who you will not admit exists." This seems to go along well with Russ's HTSWW. I take her to mean that women "are not supposed to have the ability to produce "great" literature." This idea, according to Russ, keeps women in their places. We see what happens with Jael when she does not stay in her proper place in the instant described above. Sheis a woman, capabale of killing, like any man. She should be feared, but instead, her existence is denied or over-shadowed, because, she is, afterall, only a woman. This is not her purpose or supposed ability.

Marc C. Hutcheson:
When I read the passage outlined in the assignment, I can't help but think of the phrase "I am woman, hear me roar!" or "There is no wrath like the wrath of woman."
As far as the speaker is concerned, I think it is all the characters in FM. The whole novel has been confusing with regards to identity and gender. I agree with Joyce when she says Jael is arguing against woman as other. She is trying to knock down the pedestal that men have supposedly placed women on throughout time.

Ash Downs:
Joyce, what are women really like? And how do you know that the portrayal of women in the "canon" aren't often accurate (if it's possible to group women in a lump) or plausible?

Jason Booth:
Joyce-I agree that Jael's speech seems to be moving towards a larger "I" than just the four main women characters in the text. You say she seems to be arguing against an objectified other, but then continue to conclude that there is a real type of woman ("what woman are really like"). If indeed there are "real" men and "real" women, wouldn't this relationship still produce an "other"? And, since we are woefully inhibited by physical and mental confines, wouldn't the other always be a projected construct?

Joyce Smaragdis:
P.S. Sorry, my previous message did not make much sence. Let me try to articulate more clearly. In Russ' text, she seems to severely question traditional views of American womanhood. More specifically, she seems to question (deconstruct) all Western notions about the _place_ of women in society. More specifically, she takes apart myths about women, including the myth of woman as caretaker/dependent on man, frigid (sexually)/wants to be raped, whore/virgin, lacks reason, etc. It seems to me that in HTSWW, Russ argues that men have created and codified such Western, Victorian notions of womanhood. Russ seems to argue that woman must deconstruct (through writing) these notions of womanhood and offer a more wholistic depiction of what it means to be a woman. In short, the new woman should be an androgenous one.

Jenn Lindberg:
In the above passage, Jael strikes out verbally against the stereotype of woman. That is, as Joyce wrote, the either Virgin or Whore and that is all. Jael is struggling for acknowledgement from the outside that she is more than just the either/or person. There is an And. There is more to her, and to other women than the Whore/Virgin. By denying this And, an intergral part of female, of I, is being ignored. This ignoring of the And can be linked closely with a statement from HTSWW: "But in the case of women, what has been left out? "Merely," says Carolyn Kizer, "The private lives of one half of humanity." (Page 110) (Gee..this quote is liked)

Len Hatfield:
Ash: the groups in that first selection needn't be male/female, though they can be; Russ points to a common pattern in us/them group psychology: "they" are, e.g., lazy, overly emotional, weak, etc. The dominant group projects these values onto the subord groups, say, white middle-class (or higher) males onto people of color, women, foreigners, anyone of lower class. This projection, though, is two edged: the negative values projected are in fact felt by the projectors...even feared (eek. we might become like "them"). Thus, the other is perceived as a threat in part because it's made to embody aspects of oneself which one's been taught to deny, fear, reject.

That help?

S. L. Kermit:
I'm familiar with the Ursula LeGuin essay Jason refers to ("American SF and the Other"). In it, LeGuin discusses different types of alien (the Social Alien, the Cultural Alien, the Sexual Alien, and the Racial Alien) and how they operate within SF. Something she suggests that Jason doesn't make clear is the idea of self-alienation. By marginalizing an Other, the dominant group can only make themselves look bad ("impoverish their own reality" as Jason puts it (rather nicely)) in their own eyes because they see more and more of the Other within themselves. This not only perpetuates their loathing of the Other, but also makes them loathe themselves, hence they become alienated from themselves because they refuse to openly recognize or accept their own Otherness.

Len Hatfield:
Joyce: but is androgyny really Russ's goal? Isn't that just a merging into FeMale, rather than a search for something really other?

Lauren Moore:
Russ' arguments against canonization, or her fellow colleagues', because of what the very choices of who go into the canon are based on (a pre-set male defined system), and then her experiences in college of not feeling like, as a writer, her experiences were "real", seem to set her up to write science fiction/ fantasy, which she admits to. In the book, this seems evident that she is fighting back about not feeling real, as well as knowing this probably will not go into any canon (for myself, I think her strong points are in her ideas not her writing). Basically it seems she has taken much of her previous and present frustration out and created characters from them and wrote a book. The essay she has written seems to reinforce her reason for writing the novel even more than (reinforcing) the novel itself; the reinforcement within the novel seems to be scattered throughout; one could make all sorts of theories from the novel within a specific few from the essay.

S. L. Kermit:
Joyce: Might Russ be arguing not for a new woman but for a new human? An androgynous human? I think the gender deconstruction you point out might well lead to this. What do you think?

Amanda Kathleen Pedersen:
Jael says that "Mommy never shouted, 'I hate your bloody guts!' She controlled herself to avoid a scene. That was her job." Then she says that "I've been doing it for her ever since."Does that mean that she's been shouting for her mother, or that she's been controlling herself to avoid a scene. If the latter, then it makes sense that "she murder[s] because she is guilty." When I think of the women writers who wrote under the pen-names of men, I think that (even though I'm sure they did not have a choice) they are avoiding a scene. In doing this, they wrote within the "canon" that was not intended to include women writers.

Jenn Lindberg:


Amanda : To play Devil's advocate, what about men who write under female names?

Len Hatfield:
Lauren: perhaps one can think of many theories; why not think of one and develop it a little. How does the novel undercut or challenge the essay sample?

Ash Downs:
Joyce, it seems that yes, in order for men and even many women to question their limited assumptions about women and their roles (on the whole), that more women need to communicate, via literature, the realities of being a female in a traditionally male dominated society/world. Yet are men even attentive to these issues. Or are men, as Kizer asserts, too scared to even examine the possibilities? Isn't that the largest part of the problem. Without a male audience, which is ready to reevaluate their assumptions, it seems that all the writing in the world wouldn't actually create an effect (except perhaps within the larger female community).

S. L. Kermit:
Marc's "wrath" quote reminds me of another phrase/cliche (which may have been the one he was shooting for): "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." Something tells me Russ' characters would have a problem with this, because it indicates woman as passive--responding to outside forces, but only capable of responding, not active searching.

Len Hatfield:
Ash: maybe so, but drag yourself back to these texts, if you would? How would Russ respond, in HTSWW, for instance?

Marc C. Hutcheson:
Ash brings up a good point that I have to agree with. "I have to, in turn, question the validity of Russ's assumptions about men which seem as narrow as the conceptions of women against which she is addressing". Of course this leads to another series of debates that another semester of class time can be devoted to and which is highlighted in Delany's epitaph preceding The Tale of Gorgik (sorry about jumping ahead). "If one is always bound by one's perspective, one can at least deliberately reverse perspectives as often as possible, in the process undoing opposed perspectives, showing that the two terms of an opposition are merely accomplices of each other" etc. etc. It is sometimes distressing how hours and hours of debate on a subject can sometimes be fruitless. Ah, everything in life is moot. NON SUM, NON SUM!. And if I really do then I don't want to!

Len Hatfield:
Amanda: so what, in summary, would the novel's quintet of voices say in response to this notion of avoiding a scene? How does the essay respond?

Lauren Moore:
Ash-
the first quote (my ideas)--denied as in trying to suppress qualities in themselves b/c they (dom grp) dont consider them to be worthwhile, but somebody's got to have em therefore the subordinates; as a female , as a human, I have to question the validity/results/the anger in Russ's "narrow conceptions" of the two halves, which I prefer as one whole.

Len Hatfield:
Hutch: isn't this also called "evasion"?

Drew Zwicke:
Amanda: What kind of "scene" would a woman avoid by using a pseudonym? Isn't Russ arguing that women writers have not been included in the canon due to the emplacement of white males within the hierarchy of publishing.? If men work so hard to suppress women's writing then there can be no "scene", since the chance of being published is so unlikely.

Len Hatfield:
Drew: what if we thought of HTSWW and/or FM as a "scene"?

Joyce Smaragdis:
Well, I hardly know who to respond to first. In my response, I tried to outline what I though Russ was arguing for, and I could be wrong. I do agree with you Stacy...I tend to think that Russ is arguing for a new type of human who does not have to deny or supress her traditionally "male" characteristics. However, it does not seem to me that there is any room for men (biological ones) in her text. If Whileaway is in fact the ultimate objective of Jael's struggle, then men (that is human beings with a penis) have out lived their usefulness. This is the impression that I get after reading her text. Lastly, I want to distinguish myself from Russ' point of view. I am a feminist, and I think that there is a lot to be learned from Russ' text. However, I don't think that it is fair to assume that I agree with everything that she writes. What I was trying to do in my previous messages was make some sense of her text.

Drew Zwicke:
Hatfield: In the sense that these are part of a greater whole? Or their impact upon an audience?

Jenn Lindberg:
Ash : I think to try and lump men into "scared versus attentive" would be to do the same injustice that Russ sees happening to women. While yes, the arguement that more women need to communicate the realities of being female is valid, I could also support that women have been writing (and men) feministic novels for a while - and no great changes have happened - or has it? This class focuses largely on gender issues, specifically the FeMale. I have attended panels at conventions that are based soley around "Woman in X field."


Amanda Kathleen Pedersen:
Drew: Actually, I had considered the chance of not being puiblished the "scene." Rather than having to fight the battle to attempt to have your story published, if you are a woman, you sign the book with a man's name and it is published due to its content and not its author.

Ash Downs:
Lenny, I think Russ would argue for a larger communication, not just limited to literature, and I think she would agree that males, in general, aren't responsive enough to the desire to be heard by women.

S. L. Kermit:
Jenn and Amanda: The issue of pseudonyms is one close to my heart. The problem with Jen's comment, I think, is how often have men written under female names and for what purpose did they do so? Now, consider how often women NEEDED to write under either male or gender nonspecific names in order to get recognition. I can think of no men off-hand who used feminine pseudonyms, but lots of women writers who "posed" as men: George Sand, George Eliot, James Tiptree, C. L. Moore, Lewis Padgett (a C. L. Moore pseudonym), are just a few that come directly to mind. The case of Tiptree is especially important since she (and I forget her "real" name) fooled the entire SF community for many years before being unmasked.

Len Hatfield:
Drew: well, both really--how can we think of Russ's writing as strategic scenes in a struggle to overcome male hegemony?

Lauren Moore:
I think Russ may be jumping when she says "women are not supposed...to produce great lit" and that that keeps women in their places. That theres few great lit by women out there have a lot to do with the history of lack of women being allowed to be educated and reading........ then you've got all men reading and writing and making decisions as to who's the best.....then the system of decision stays and when women finally can write, well. and there's also the intimidation that one might feel when finally "able" to write? but the system of the canon still remains and a mode of decision making changes very very slowly in time, maybe especially in writing.

Amanda Kathleen Pedersen:
Jen, You've got me there. I didn't know that men signed women's names on books. Did they do that when the chances of a woman's book being published were slim? Maybe they did it, then, because they thought it might make the book more popular because a book written by a woman might be more daring? Or of better quality? I just don't know!

S. L. Kermit:
Lauren's comment on the long tradition of women's lack of education brings Virginia Woolf's fictive "Shakespeare's Sister" to mind. What happens to the intelligent, artistic, talented woman who lives in a time and place that won't allow her to pursue her talents?

Jason Booth:
Joyce-How would you deal with Jael's revelation to Janet that her (Jael's) present is Janet's past? I don't have my book, but if I remember correctly, this upset Janet to some degree. If indeed Whileaway exists on the concealment of the fact that women destroyed men in a war, isn't Whileaway impoverished in a similar fashion that Jeannine, Joanna, and Jael's worlds are impoverished?

Ash Downs:
Lauren, thanks for the insight. Now the quote makes some sense, but do males (as the supposedly dominant group) automatically deny themselves attributes they typically assign females, or are their larger biological and sociological reasons and causes for the seemingly opposed "traits" specifically designated to males or females. In addition, we have to question what we see as traditional assumptions, because modern assumptions tend to be dificult to link to historical patterns of gender roles.

Jenn Lindberg:
As a final note, I'd like to divert for a moment and ask, "Why is it we 'see' more prominent women in the 'soft PMSF' versus the harder core books?"

Lauren Moore:
Kermit--they aren't found out about until theyre long dead and they meanwhile "suffer" or nearso thru life

Marc C. Hutcheson:
Len Hatfield: I guess it could be. And it most likely is. I'm not saying that our effort here is unfulfilling, it's just that it seems to be the trend with less educated people, not us.

Joyce Smaragdis:
Ash and Marc,
It seems to me that Russ' is arguing (in FM) for a Marxist type (revolutionary) overthrow of men (period). As such, I don't know that she is concerned about men's point of view or limited depictions of what it means to be a man. After reading HTSWW, I get the definite impression that Russ is a Marxist critic. If this is true, I find myself asking, perhaps those men (in the proletariat) would be able to question their superstructure and the role it has played to acculturate them in a specific way. I must go now.

Amanda Kathleen Pedersen:
Oh, real quick, I would say that the quintet of voices, as well as the essay react against the notion of avoinding a scene. Have to go!

S. L. Kermit:
Lauren: Actually, my question was rhetorical, but Woolf asserts that such women simply lived out their lives as housewives or whatever and died--we never ever hear about them.