In my line of work, I come across a lot of books that are widely considered "classics," things like Hamlet and The Odyssey and Paradise Lost and Gulliver's Travels and The Way of the World and The Faerie Queene and The Republic and Piers Plowman and Great Expectations and Ulysses and Lyrical Ballads and The Divine Comedy and The Unfortunate Traveller and Epicoene and Waiting for Godot and Death of a Salesman and Oedipus Rex and Heart of Darkness, just to name a few. In academic-speak, things that are "classics" are known as "the Western canon." Unfortunately, that's canon, not cannon. Most of the books I spend my time fiddling with don't really go "boom," but occasionally they do make me feel like exploding.
Now don't get me wrong. I actually *like* most of those texts I just mentioned (well, except for Heart of Darkness. Nobody can be expected to like Heart of Darkness). I have to like them, or else I'm doing utterly the wrong thing with my life by studying them over and over again, taking them apart and trying to figure out how they work, why they work, and why we should care, where they came from and what they might actually mean. I can't possibly do that with texts I don't want to spend a lot of time with - after all, you don't go into botany if you don't like dirt under your fingernails, or become a doctor if the thought of people vomiting does you in. It's just that sometimes, deep down, I get exhausted with the nonsensical insistence that these canonical works are somehow innately worthy of all the attention that's been paid to them by people like me. I get all blustery by the way some scholars present the canon as if the situation in which these texts were created has nothing to do with it, nor the way that the original copies escaped fire and worms and flood and censorship and time, and that some things we're studying simply because they're the only things we have. See, what brings me down is the dogged insistence that the reason we study these texts is that they're "good", or worse, because they're "great."
Like Frosted Flakes. Or Expectations.
And the problem with this "great" idea is the way it seems to suggest that there's some kind of meritocracy to this canon formation business: "We study Hamlet because it is the best. That is the only reason we could study Hamlet. Why waste our time studying other things, if they're clearly going to be inferior to Hamlet ?" A more accurate explanation would be "We study Hamlet because we have a fascination with the male psyche, especially in the way it constructs a self-identity in post-adolescence. It speaks directly to a large percentage of men who share characteristics with its main character, men who have the power and interest to put things into what constitutes the Western canon. We study Hamlet because men liked it enough to make it ubiquitous."
Ah. Do you know what I did just there? I veered into something called "feminist criticism." You see, gentle readers, "feminist criticism" is a kind of novelty in literature studies that happens whenever scholars try to question the social and political rationale behind the construction of the Western canon. In this line of work, questioning the "greatness" of texts gives you a special label that is meant to define the way you think about the world, so that scholars who believe in the objectivity of canon selection can better ignore and avoid you.
Some of you may have picked up on the fact that all the books I listed above are written by men. Now, don't get me wrong - I like men. Some of my best friends are men. I'm actually married to one - but what goads me ever so often is the way in which alternative viewpoints acknowledging systemic biases are segmented from the normal operations of the study of literature by the terms "post-colonial," "feminist" or "queer" theory. The second one says something like "The men who created the canon did not sufficiently like The Tragedy of Mariam to make it ubiquitous, hence we don't pay attention to The Tragedy of Mariam. Maybe we should pay attention to The Tragedy of Mariam", one immediately becomes not a scholar of literature, but a feminist scholar of literature, or worse, a scholar of "Women's Literature."
Because, you know, literature is written by men unless specified otherwise. White ones. Who are straight. And come from England.
And the men who've had most of the control of the way the world was organized have chosen a canon based upon their favourite books, books which for the most part are written by men, for men and about men. Who can blame them? If I controlled the world, I probably would have done the same thing. As I said, these are not bad books (except for Heart of Darkness), but, if you're not a man, it can get a bit dull reading yet another bildungsroman about some guy trying to find his way in the world, where most of the female characters are either good and wifely or bad and succubus-ish. There's no room for shades of grey here: women are one thing, or they are the other. No personal psychological development, no identity-fashioning, no conflict at the root of their soul driving their action or inaction throughout the text - no, women are simple creatures with simple needs. They like shiny objects, their husbands' love and maybe the odd sonnet from time to time, but other than that, women in the canon are by and large uncomplicated creatures.
Take Circe, for example. She's the demi-god in the Odyssey who trapped Odysseus and his men on her island and turned them to pigs. Homer's text calls her an evil enchantress, and presents her as a lascivious, sexually-demanding male nightmare, who needs to be defeated by the hero in order to become a non-threatening, acceptable female. With the god Mercury's assistance, Odysseus defeats Circe with her own magic and she, bewitched with his masculine prowess, falls in love with him. Beautiful story. We've all heard Odysseus' version of the story many times, and his version shows up on almost every "Literature for our Time" syllabus in every English department in the world. It, after all, is canonical.
But what about Circe's version of the story? Ah, that, gentle readers, is women's literature. That will be covered (maybe) in a course on modern women poets, or maybe American woman's writing, or perhaps even in a "Revisionist Feminist Literatures" class. It will be a part of a course that's offered as an elective, not as a requirement. It will be taught by a tenured prof who can afford to "take such a risk." Administrators approving the course will pat themselves on the back for being so open-minded and progressive in their elevating of non-canonical works to the same status as canonical texts. "Aren't we post-modern!" It will be a secondary, not primary, specialized, not universal piece of knowledge, one that is separated from the nominal literatures by virtue of its status by, about or for women. Nobody will call it "great," because post-modernity doesn't allow the term, not even for Frosted Flakes.
And we all lose out.
So here, in the interest in disseminating untold stories, is Circe's:
Circe's Power
I never turned anyone into a pig.
Some people are pigs; I make them
look like pigs.
I'm sick of your world
that lets the outside disguise the inside.
Your men weren't bad men;
undisciplined life
did that to them.
As pigs,
under the care of
me and my ladies, they
sweetened right up.
Then I reversed the spell,
showing you my goodness
as well as my power.
I saw we could be happy here,
as men and women are
when their needs are simple.
In the same breath,
I foresaw your departure,
your men with my help braving
the crying and pounding sea.
You think a few tears upset me?
My friend every sorceress is
a pragmatist at heart;
nobody sees essence who can't face limitation.
If I wanted only to hold you
I could hold you prisoner.
From Meadowlands, 1996. Hosted on Artstop.
'one immediately becomes not a scholar of literature, but a feminist scholar of literature, or worse, a scholar of "Women's Literature."'
I can totally relate to this. It's really frustrating to hear that what you have to say is not relevant enough, it's part of a "fad".
"if you're not a man, it can get a bit dull reading yet another bildungsroman about some guy trying to find his way in the world, where most of the female characters are either good and wifely or bad and succubus-ish."
Amen, sister. How to describe the void one feels when reading flat female characters?
"But what about Circe's version of the story? Ah, that, gentle readers, is women's literature. That will be covered (maybe) in a course on modern women poets, or maybe American woman's writing, or perhaps even in a "Revisionist Feminist Literatures" class. It will be a part of a course that's offered as an elective, not as a requirement."
I took a Peruvian literature course last semester and it was a disaster. No women anywhere. I was beginning to wonder if Peruvians had found a way to get males pregnant. I had to do separate research, and yes, there were women in Peruvian lit. Two examples: Florinda Matto de Turner and Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera. Did my paper on them :)
I liked your thoughts and the Gluck poem. Made me feel less alone in the world. Greetings from Puerto Rico.
:)
Posted by: Alex | August 02, 2005 at 02:02