female writers, female writing.

Well, well it's been a while since I don't discuss™ literature here. Ah, it's incredible how much this blog has changed, and today I'm writing in English, I just feel like it, I miss writing academic essays in English so much... it's been a year or more since I don't write an essay and I feel I'm forgetting how to do it, how to arrange words to sound professional™ and how to be a literary person -- if such a thing exists.

But to the point. I'm two chapters away from finishing my thesis. I mean, it's written, but I need to rEvIsE and correct every little mistake until it is suitable to be considered a real aCaDemIc wOrk so I can get my dEgREe.

The thing is, I decided to write about Ann Radcliffe, she was the first woman to publish gothic fiction and gain respect from the critics. She was also one of the first women to be admired/mentioned/and recognized as an influence by the "fathers" of literature. (Victor Hugo, Whitman, to mention some). Keats called her "Mother Radcliffe". But along the way I've read so many feminist criticism and so many points of view and basically the history of women trying to be recognized as artists, from 1750, passing through the victorian female revolution and the first wave of feminism, the second wave, the 90's and the present day views (since I'm taking part in a course of Japanese feminism with lots of young women like me)... well, the lesson learned is that feminism has many ways to be manifested and that respect is the key if we want to progress as women, as a social group different from men.

That last part is quite heavy and would require so many paragraphs, so I will try to stick to the matter that concerns me: women and literature.

Las hermanas Brontë, por Branwell Brontë

For some reason we cannot say "writers" when talking about women. We say women writers or female writers -- which, in today's world is even problematic since the discussion about gender is so broad. But the thing is, why this difference between "writer" (implying is a man) and "female writer"? A woman who writes. What an alien image. Almost as a mistake, so we have to clarify. It is a woman, she happens to write. But women writers have been there, since Cavendish and Bhen, and Woolf and Rand and even Munro and Yoshimoto. And women have had their voices, their way of understanding the world. From here I think about the female "tradition". Byron had Milton, Milton had Shakespeare, Shakespeare had Chaucer, Chaucer knew that the first word was pronounced by God and this God was a male. So apparently men could always look back onto something and find someone. Women on the other had did not take part in this cultural history. So from where did women write? We surely had our history and stories, because when Jesus was a baby, Maria sang him lullabies (she might had even made up some). And like Maria, all the Mothers from all over the world made up stories for their children, and the first narrative we knew was the 'once upon a time' from the lips of the woman that bare us life.

The story of our lives, the narratives in our minds, couldn't possibly exist without our mothers' help. But because women have been seen as "less" or "not worthy" this other side of the story/history is not taken into account. And we've been told that tale so many times we believed it was true.
"Women don't have a voice", "women don't know how to tell a story" and so, Gilbert and Gubar asked the question... when a woman looks back in order to write, what does she find? the male word? will women ever be able to write their own words, instead of written the words male have been using over and over to tale the story of humanity?

It's confusing, and it's not that easy. So, for long, women tried to be recognized as valid, as worthy as men in the field of writing. We wanted to belong to this club of Great Minds, to the Canon, to become a Classic. Always fighting to be at the same level as men, as recognized as them, as free as them. And in many ways we've failed. The prove is that equality is still discussed and thought since it's so difficult to feel it in our everyday's life.

So women wanted to be part of this canon as a way of saying "see, I can be as good as you, write as much as you... even with kids and home duties" and "my stories are worth it, just as much as yours".

Still, women are outnumbered by men for so much. So after all, after revising all there is, after reading Reeve, Drace, Heywood, Wollstonecraft, I discovered something -- maybe a bit romantic and as way of survival in a world that oppresses my word and erases me from history.
I realized that women have this other world, different from men. Yes, and that world can be found in fiction, novels, movies, comics... a world where we dream, where we live in equality or somehow defeat inequality. From Gothic romances to the chinese Danmei, through other stuff like the loneliness Yoshimoto presents or the dailiness of life Woolf writes about.

We have our way to understand the world, our way of confronting nature -- maybe not to conquer a country but to protect our children, as Betty Flander does in Jacob’s Room. Mothers, I think of mothers and how different they are from fathers, and how pure and unique that love is, and that it is something that belong to us and that males won't ever understand. We have our little secrets, our everyday rituals, things they won't be able to take away from us, like the pleasure of giving food to a baby from our own body or blood spilling through our legs and enduring a pain, our pain, and realizing the strength it takes, the strength that comes from it.

Along the way I've discovered that indeed being a woman is something like magic, and maybe too marvelous, so marvelous men cannot take it, because what have they to offer? a sperm and anger. Women give love, women nourish, women can fight, and learn and write... And we write what we see, the way we see it. Even in a prison, like a gothic castle... we found ghosts, and thrilling love, and pain and tears, always pain and tears, and the possibility, the ability to be happy through all that.
That was a characteristic of us as women. Maybe that's why men make wars. To understand, to experience that which nature didn't put in them. Because we need pain to grow, to become strong, to understand how much we are able to endure and still go on.

But of course, somehow, they put barriers and walls and erased us from their history and wrote philosophic treaties where they discuss why women can't think or learn, and we believed and we forgot. And it has taken us a long while to rediscover us... it was not only Shakespeare or the Graveyard poets, it was Aphra Bhen and the Female Gothic, and our mother saying "Once upon a time, in a far, far away land..." So I think it is time to recognize that, to stop being angry --- because yes, we've been angry, we are angry and with reasons; and to start looking into our history, our so-called tradition, because there is one, and just realize that if anything, now, in this moment of life, in this century, we are free. Free from the expectations of a canon, of the word of the 'father'. We are not sons, we don't have an Oedipus complex and we don't want to kill anyone. We search our mothers, our oppressed mothers, and once we find them, we embrace them, we follow the tradition, we keep telling the stories and adding details to what happens in that far, far away land.

We, as women who write, as writers, have a land of and for our own. It's time to stop caring so much about concepts the patriarchal victorians made up, like "serious literature" or "canonic works". It's time to be more free, to let our voices be higher, to scream even if we make others angry, angrier. That's what they have to deal with, and they'll have to solve it somehow. But for us, now, the concern is saying "I'm here and this is my story, and this is what I think, and it's here whether you want to read it or not." And just write and think all we've been through, how far we've come and how far we can still go.

Mary Shelley

lo que aprendí del gato de Chesire

Estoy muy contenta, no sé cuánto dure esta felicidad — como dicen los poetas, todo es temporal y eso puede ser el mayor consuelo o un gran temor. Como quiera, en veinte años he aprendido que la vida tiene sus altas y bajas, que un día vas a amar a alguien y otros tienes que estar bien amándote solo a ti mismo, que a veces te sientes lleno de vida y otros reflexiones sobre tu futilidad. Algunos días quieres bailar, otros solo quieres estar en la cama; a veces estás al otro lado del mundo y otros días no quisieras jamás dejar tu casa. 

Pero a pesar de esos ires y venires hay algo que permanece constante y es uno mismo. Uno siempre esta consigo mismo, somos nuestros compañeros de toda la vida. La vida nunca va a dejarte hasta que tú la dejes a ella, y si bien la vida es un accidente, una casualidad, es tremendamente triste y llena de tragedias es también inmensamente bella. 

Creo que eso nos angustia muchísimo. Hablo de la humanidad. Todos tenemos una idea de que grande es esto y que pequeñitos somos nosotros. Un día leí algo de un científico. Decía que las catarinas, tan pequeñas que son y comiendo hojas no son menos esenciales que un mar o una tormenta. La gente le preguntaba sobre el sentido de la vida, de la existencia del hombre. El decía que no había ninguna, pero que, estando en el mundo, era el deber del humano apreciarlo, explorarlo, comprenderlo, pues era demasiada hermoso como para no ser notado. 

Tal vez eso es todo, estamos aquí para observar, para mirar. 

Somos esos narradores omniscientes. Esas presencias que no cambian nada, pero necesarias para brindar sentido a las cosas. Luz Aura Pimentel dice que es más fácil describir sin narrar que narrar sin describir. Y eso está bien. Esas son ocurrencias mías, que desde pequeña rondaban mi cabeza. No tengo todas las respuestas, claro, pero me parece que tengo las más importantes. 

Uno va a decidir cosas buenas y malas, uno se equivocará, eso es normal... a pesar de los errores, las equivocaciones... me parece que si uno quiere, eso no cancela la felicidad. 

John Milton escribió el Paraíso Perdido estando ciego. Ann Radcliffe se volvió la escritora más reconocida de su época a pesar de ser una mujer casada... le admiró su amor por el conocimiento, su entendimiento, incluso su docilidad... una docilidad inteligente que le valió un lugar en el mundo cuando las mueres no podían ni salir de su casa. Nos dijo Raquel que uno no elige a los autores, los autores lo eligen a uno. Tal vez Ann me eligió por eso, creo que en el fondo necesitaba estudiarlo con lupa, leer los testimonios de tantas mujeres desesperadas en el encierro de la “feminidad”, en la ansiedad de la autoría, para entender que escribir es resistir, es existir, y no es menos esencial que la catarina.

Las mujeres hemos tenido siempre mucho poder, aunque la historia, la política, el sistema o como quieran llamarlo se ha esforzado en hacer que lo olvidemos o no podamos verlo aunque esté frente a nuestros ojos. Pero que no dar vida sería el poder más grande? Y no lo digo con romanticismo ni como falso “consuelo”, porque no lo es. Es un tremendo poder y es una tremenda responsabilidad . Sin vida no hay vida. Sí, la primera casa — que Bachellard menciona— es en realidad el vientre de una madre. Con Ann he aprendió mucho: sobre escribir, sobre ser mujer, sobre ser fuerte. 

No hay nada por casualidad. Yo creo que la vida me la puso enfrente para aprender tantas cosas, cosas que me han cambiado la forma de ver el mundo y verme a mi misma. 

Yo no imagino vida sin literatura, vida sin lenguajes. La palabra es nuestro poder más grande, es Dios pues al principio no había nada. Con la palabra inicia la historia de la humanidad, una historia complicada, una historia de dolor y supervivencia y de numerosos errores y desesperación terrible. Pero aquí estamos y tenemos suerte, y creo fírmemente en que algo de estos debemos devolverle al mundo. 

Cuando decidí estudiar letras no sabía que encontraría, si podría, a lo que me enfrentaría ni a donde iba a llegar. Pero como dice este gato risón a Alicia “si no te importa a donde vas sólo sigues caminado e indudablemente llegarás a algún lado” Hoy he llegado a estas cosas tan bonitas.

Si ahora mismo saliera corriendo aún llegaba a la clase de Zumba Fitness. No. Abro Mad Woman in The Attic y me encuentro con Anne Sexton justo de pensar en lo que hago con mi tesina sobre Ann Radcliffe. Cuando escribo de Radcliffe escribo sobre qué le paso a las mujeres. Porque en las dos antologías de poesía que llevé en la carrera todos los editores eran hombres (¿había poetisas?), por que en cuatro años de carrera sólo leímos a seis mujeres: Woolf, Emily y Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Christina Rosetti (sólo el poema Remember me, para una tarea) y a Jean Rhys. Y bueno, Eliot quedó fuera del programa porque "no daba tiempo" y porque, finalmente, parecería que las mujeres no existimos en la historia. El canon occidental de Bloom, es un canon masculino "de padres contra hijos"... but as a woman you feel motherless. En fin. Regresando a Sexton: a los 19 se casó y fue madre. La depresión post-parto le pudo y casi se suicida. Después la poesía la salva y escribe sobre la experiencia femenina:

and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime.

La calle que no puede encontrar es Mercy Street. Is there mercy for women? Bueno. Cuando leo a Sexton pienso en mi. Ella estaba enojada pero también confundida y  no pretendía mas que confesar esos sentimientos, qué se sentía ser mujer y que nadie te escuchara. Personalmente no me encanta Sexton como poeta, así como no me gusta Bukowski ni nadie que escriba párrafos, quiebre sus lineas, las agrupe en estrofas y decida llamarlas "poesía" --pero como alguien que se confiesa y habla de lo cotidiano, de las calles y la desesperación, sí.

Ahora: Do women talk back to men? Ese hombre/voz masculina que dicta como es una mujer: o Blanca Nieves o Reina Malvada. Le dice: no, espérate...yo no soy como tu dices que soy...yo soy más, tanto que nunca me entenderías del todo. Y por eso la mujer se vuelve "otredad". Anyways, divago. Mejor leo a Gilbert y Gubar y releo el italiano. He decido: en dos semanas volver a escribir de él. Udolpho puede esperar a las vacaciones navideñas junto a Simone de Beauvoir. Eloisa: no pienses en la tesis solo piensa en que otras cosas dice El Italiano, la respuesta de Ann a Matthew.