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Desire and the Female Protagonist: A Critique of Feminist Narrative Theory

2000; University of Arkansas Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

2374-6629

Honor McKitrick Wallace,

Contemporary Literature and Criticism

When, at beginning of Fay Weldon's Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), Ruth decides she can no longer endure her husband's infidelity and emotional abuse, she articulates her desires and forms a plan of action to fulfill them. want revenge, she states, want power. I want money. I want to be loved and not love in return (43). In moving from passive acquiescence to active desire, Ruth breaks several rules. First, and most obviously, she breaks rules of feminine behavior, what she herself describes as The Litany of Good Housewife. Secondly, she alters a fundamental tenet of traditional narrative: that female principle be passive, rather than active. And, finally, her behavior breaks with feminist theories of narrative that see in Ruth's aggressive, even destructive activity a repetition of patriarchal norms as they are traditionally articulated by narrative. Stories such as Ruth's, in which female protagonist emulates masculine narrative tropes, pose serious problems for femi nist narrative theories. In this article, I will trace such theories, exploring their rationale but arguing that they prescribe a narrative form that precludes female and action. story of Weldon's she-devil has been read as a reworking of Faust legend, [1] and, indeed, that narrative, particularly in Goethe's Romantic version, provides a rich contrast between how masculine and activity relate to narrative and how Ruth's claim to and activity initiate narrative. [2] Faust, like Ruth, lays claim to and in fact predicates his life narrative on ability to endlessly. As Peter Brooks points out, Freud refers to Faust in Beyond Pleasure Principle as pre-eminently representation of man's unquenchable (54). According to Brooks's theories of narrative, this Faustian striving creates narrative; as he explains, desire is always at start of narrative, often in a state of initial arousal, often having reached a state of intensity such that movement must be created, action undertaken, change begun (38). Faust's articulation of his desires and of his will to translates into narrative action, striving forward according to a linear, teleological movement. If Ruth shares with Faust this intensity of, and commitment to, desire, should her story not take on same qualities--an active striving towards a goal? Unfortunately for Ruth association of and action with masculinity (in linear model Brooks describes) means that narrative movement is suspect--doubly so, insofar as it defies both conventional assumptions of how female protagonists behave and certain feminist assumptions of how women's stories should be structured. According to such assumptions, conventional narratives such as Faust legend, and indeed, narrative itself, are incapable of expressing feminine and thus must be rejected in favor of other forms, most specifically, lyric. In contrast to masculine, linear narrative Brooks describes as the arousal that creates narratable as a condition of tumescence, appetency, ambition, quest, and gives narrative a forward-looking intention (103), feminist theory posits a lyric timelessness connected to women's bodies and feminine desire. For example, Julia Kristeva suggests that there are cycles, gestation, eternal recurrence of a biological rhythm which conforms to that of nature and imposes a temporality whose stereotyping may shock, but whose regularity and unison with what is experienced as extra-subjective time, cosmic time, occasion vertiginous vision and unnameable jouissance (191). derivation of lyric from pre-Oedipal, that is, from before subject's entry into linear time of history and narrative further emphasizes lyric timelessness. Thus, as Susan Stanford Friedman explains, lyric discourse replicates for imagined early mother-child bond while narrative discourse reflects later story dominated by father. …