After a good start in reading To Write Like a Woman by Joanna Russ, I got distracted by other books and stalled on this one. But I am glad to say I managed to finish it on my holiday vacation before 2012 came to an end.
There are a few really stellar essays in this book like SF and Technology as Mystification, Towards an Aesthetic of Science Fiction, “What Can a Woman Do? Or Why Women Can’t Write,” and “Somebody’s Trying to Kill Me and I Think It’s My Husband: The Modern Gothic.” There is also an interesting essay about Willa Cather and another examining The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman as a ghost story. But for the most part I found the essays not all that inspiring.
While Russ is herself a science fiction writer, she is also an academic and the essays are written for a mostly academic audience in a time when SF was trying to establish itself as worthy of study. Most of the essays were written in the 1970s and 80s and come across as a tad bit dated now and then. Russ’s writing is always topnotch and clear and not peppered with academic jargon, but there was something a bit bland. I expected fiery rhetoric and controversy. Perhaps some of the topics at the time were controversial but the intended audience keeps the tone low-key.
The essay I would really have liked to feel dated was “What Can a Woman Do? Or Why Women Can’t Write.” Published in 1971, Russ examines popular plot lines and story arcs that all seem to require men to be the protagonist. She begins the essay by summarizing eight stories but switches gender. For instance,
Two strong women battle for supremacy in the early West.
Or this:
A young man who unwisely puts success in business before his personal fulfillment loses his masculinity and ends up as a neurotic, lonely eunuch.
All eight of them sound pretty absurd or at the least, far-fetched. She goes on to say,
Reversing sexual roles in fiction may make good burlesque or good fantasy, but it is ludicrous in terms of serious literature. Culture is male. Our literary myths are for heroes, not heroines.
While this has changed, it hasn’t changed all that much. Besides Lara Croft and a few others, how many kick-ass women adventurers can you name? Even women superheroes in ensemble casts get the short end of the stick and they are always sexed up. For the most part, Russ asserts, women are only allowed to be protagonists in the “Abused Child” story (think the first part of Jane Eyre, and the “Love Story.” As an alternative, women are also allowed to be protagonists in the “How She Went Mad” story. And because the myths women can inhabit are so limited, that, Russ concludes, is why women can’t write.
The essay isn’t all doom and gloom though because she suggests a few areas women might have luck infiltrating as it were: detective stories, supernatural fiction, and science fiction. Women have made great strides in detective fiction both as writers and protagonists. Science fiction still has its problems, but women are making strides there too. Supernatural fiction, if we lean toward Buffy rather than Edward and Bella, women have improved their lot there as well. In spite of improvements, I wouldn’t say everything is coming up roses. Is there a novel in which a female head of a Fortune 500 company is at the center of the intrigue? Or a female venture capitalist? Or a novel about how the husband gives up his job to stay home with the kids and allow his wife to pursue her high-powered career that doesn’t focus on how cute and unusual it is to have Dad at home changing the diapers? With a large number of people saying they don’t read or only read nonfiction these days, Russ suggests that maybe it has something to do with how the old myths are no longer working for anybody and perhaps it is time to make some new ones.
The essay on the Modern Gothic was a fascinating look at several books in the style of Rebecca none of which I have ever heard of. But Russ ranges across them pulling out similar elements between them — the exotic location with a brooding House, a missing or dead first wife and the unsuspecting second wife, a husband who may or may not love the new wife and may or may not be keeping a secret and who may or may not be a threat. Russ concludes that Modern Gothics are neither love stories nor women-as-victim stories but “adventure stories with passive protagonists.” She makes a good argument for it but I won’t outline it here. I have to leave you something to be curious about should you read the book. And you might want to read it just for the handful off essays I mention. The book is worth it just for those.
I don’t know if the situation has changed so much since the 1970s but I would think that the work of Angela Carter or Margaret Atwood or Ursula Le Guin or Jeanette Winterton and so many other writers have subverted male literary myth or/and created new mythic material.
Ian, oh yes, I think the authors you name have done much to subvert male literary myths but it seems to remain a sort of work in progress in many ways – not that hero myths are bad – only that they aren’t and shouldn’t be the only ones going.
Too bad this wasn’t quite what you were expecting, though the essay on the Gothic and anything about Rebecca in general sounds interesting to me. I’m very curious now which book she compared it to, (or which books were compared to Rebecca!), as it is one of my favorite reads. (Oh, and it is frigid here, too, and I can sympathize with that subzero walk to the bus stop–the last two days my fingers were all but frozen by the time I got to my stop!). Next week’s 30s are going to feel balmy in comparison and I hope the forecast of snow is an early April Fool’s joke!
Danielle, she doesn’t write specifically about Rebecca, the books she does talk about though are in the tradition of Rebecca, that book being a sort of seminal work in the genre. I’d look up the books for you but I returned the Russ book to the library already! A thaw this week here too but they are promising arctic weather next week and several days that we don’t get above zero.
Heh, journalists rant and blaze, but academics like to be cool, calm and collected – it’s supposed to give them more authority, you know! On the basis (again arising from a gendered perception) that emotion goes against logic and reason. I am very guilty of this myself and find it very hard indeed to rant! There’s one novel you might be interested in, though, Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s The Home Maker, I think it is. It’s a Persephone book from the 1930s or 40s in which the husband stays home with the children (he has an accident and becomes wheelchair bound), and of course it dates from an age before it was considered cutesy and twee. But it’s very forward thinking in its approach, and shows how the mother’s overly controlling manner is much better suited to work than childrearing. A very interesting novel.
Litlove, you are right, academics keep their feathers smooth, don’t they? Also, a good point about women academics not wanting to appear emotional and therefore unreasonable. I have not heard of The Home Maker but you have me intrigued! Now, to find time to read it!
It’s sad to read something from the 70s and still find it at least partly true today. The examples you give are telling – the gender-reversed story-lines still sound strange and unlikely. In a way, of course, books often lead the way in social change, but in a way they are part of the problem – any story is part of a long tradition, and any writer is influenced by what’s gone before, and if most of what’s gone before reflects a patriarchal society then those elements will persist in story-telling today. Of course exceptions exist, but the fact that they’re exceptions is the problem.
The line about the old myths not working any more really struck a chord with me. We’re often quick to blame computers or TV or mobile phones for people not wanting to read, but maybe it’s the stories that are not compelling enough. Certainly there are a lot of books that tread familiar ground. Food for thought!
Andrew, aren’t the examples telling? I had not thought about adding in not reading at all to the old myths not working equation. But you have a very good point.
I read a different one of her essay collections last year (How to Suppress Women’s Writing) and really loved it, so I’m thrilled to hear she writes about gothic novels in this collection!
Eva, it is an interesting essay that unpacks what is going on in the novels in a way I had not considered before. I’ll have to give How to Suppress Women’s Writing a try sometime.
Fascinating Stefanie. I’m a bit mystified by “And because the myths women can inhabit are so limited, that, Russ concludes, is why women can’t write.” How is one a direct cause of another? How many “myths” does any one writer need? Can’t women write well about the myths they do inhabit? Have I missed something?
whisperinggums, as Russ sees it, women are limited to writing about themselves in the frame of the myths of the abused child, finding love, and going mad. Whereas men have a wide variety of hero myths and other sorts they can write themselves into. Therefore the limited nature of the kind of stories women can tell about themselves limits their writing and if a woman doesn’t want to write one of the prescribed stories she “can’t write.” I don’t think it has ever been a completely black-and-white issue, and I am sure Russ knows that, but I think she erased the grey in order to make a point.
Still … I’m not convinced about her point … does limited subject matter limit the quality of what you do?
No, I don’t think she is talking about the quality of the writing but rather the things women can write about, the stories they can’t tell because of the limited roles and myths that featured women.
Oh, I understand … I think!!
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Very interesting and disheartening to consider that women’s roles in fiction haven’t changed all that much.