Response 7: "Infection In The Sentence"

Several passages stood out to me, so I decided to list them and my observations/responses below.

 “On the one hand…the woman writer’s male precursors symbolize authority; on the other hand despite their authority, they fail to define the ways in which she experiences her own identity as a writer” (668). Perhaps one reason “they fail to define the ways” is because they (male writers) don’t really even attempt to understand the struggles and experiences of a female writer. However, the question is, even if male writers attempted (during this time period) to define how females experience their identity as a writer would it even be accurate? While women were considered the outsiders and the aliens during the time this reading was written, would males and the patriarchal structure that was so used to being the norm be entirely successful in accurately defining the struggles and realizations of the female writer?

“…like most women in patriarchal society, the woman writer does experience her gender as a painful obstacle, or even a debilitating inadequacy… Her culturally conditioned timidity about self-dramatization, her dread of the patriarchal authority of art, her anxiety about the impropriety of female invention” (669). This quote reminded me of something I learned in an Abnormal Psychology class: researchers wanted to determine whether or not that was any bias in how males versus females were diagnosed by a psychologist. So, they sent a list of symptoms to various psychologists; each psychologist received the same list of patient symptoms. Only the gender was changed (male/female).  A majority of the lists where the gender was manipulated to female were diagnosed with Historonic Personality Disorder (which is where one is diagnosed to be an attention seeker, overly emotional and dramatic). However, the lists where the gender was manipulated to be male were determined to be narcissists. Thus, this disadvantage and stereotyping that females face, not only in the field of literature, but also in the field of science. 

“In the nineteenth century, however, the complex of social prescriptions these diseases parody did not merely urge women to act in ways which would cause them to become ill; nineteenth century culture seems to have actually admonished women to be ill” (671). That sickness wasn’t a “byproduct” but rather the desired goal (671). This passage was probably my favorite, just because it seems to be quite absurd, and also the fact that it was “’considered natural and almost laudable to break down under all conceivable varieties of strain—a winter dissipation, a houseful of servants, a quarrel with a female friend, not to speak of more legitimate reasons” (671). This idealized frailty reminds me of Lacan’s mirror stage, something that is always aspired to but never quite achieved. In addition, it seems to be a way of almost silencing not only the female authors but the entire female gender. Perhaps if one is struggling to survive because they are so sick (here, on purpose), how will they ever find the time to question this established patriarchal structure?