Fettered to Feminisms
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 2 I think it is really hard to pin down one particular text from this course that will be carried forth because several of the texts speak to me on so many levels that range from my own personal teaching experiences to the theoretical lenses I typically engage with on a regular basis. That being said, I can pretty much, without question, admit to a sincerely strong desire for including Sara Ahmed’s “Feminist Killjoys” chapter from The Promise of Happiness into my own archive. I am currently writing a paper on working women in nineteenth century America in relation to the novel, Fettered for Life, by Lillian Devereux Bake. This novel is considered a radical feminist text because it asks readers to question the space women occupy outside of the home during industrialization in America. There are no women working in the factory system in this novel, as one might expect, and this goes even further to highlight the radical nature of Blake’s text. There is an older female character in the novel, Mrs. D’Arcy, who works as a doctor, and operates as a mouthpiece for some of the fundamental principles of feminism that Blake is attempting to promote, but beyond the feminine sphere, she is not seen as respected among her male counterparts. Ahmed mentions that her own involvement in feminism has educated her to the typical expression of “rolling eyes” (Loc. 934) whenever she decides to delve into a feminist remark or argument. This image of rolling eyes is powerful in that this very same thing is happening in Blake’s novel by the men who encounter Mrs. D’Arcy, but is never really explicitly stated. The interesting thing, however, is that Mrs. D’Arcy does not even realize that the men are doing this behind her back.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 In one episode in the novel, Mrs. D’Arcy goes to inquire about a job opening for one of the women she knows, and to her face, the businessman tells her he will consider this young woman as a prospect for the job opening, but what we uncover later is that this businessman was only trying to be nice to Mrs. D’Arcy so that she would leave him alone and not pester him about the women at work issue. In other words, the businessman was figuratively rolling his eyes at the cause Mrs. D’Arcy is working for and representing, and had no intentions of considering a woman for the job opening to begin with. One must consider why the businessman performed this type of eye rolling to begin with and did not actually demonstrate this action in front of Mrs. D’Arcy? Or even another question would be to consider if Mrs. D’Arcy did, in fact, see a physical eye rolling, but failed to understand its intention? As a modern reader, we can surmise that there was a lot of eye rolling going on where the men are concerned in this particular novel, and there is a reluctance, or even a denial for the women to notice this. Some of the younger women in the novel, however, have some different experiences with the male characters that demonstrate their awareness of masculine disgust for the feminism project, but this eye rolling can become a useful image, or possibly even a symbol of the male response to feminism, and not taking the issue seriously.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 1 Ahmed, however, moves even further beyond this image of eye rolling to state something extremely insightful about the feminist in that “However she speaks, the feminist is usually the one who is viewed as ‘causing the argument,’ who is disturbing the fragility of peace” (Loc. 938). As a disturber of the peace, a feminist can never really occupy a respectable position because this disturbance usually negatively affects someone nearby, and they can be either male or female. There are still a lot of women and men who subscribe to the “happy housewife” mindset, but there is no reason why both camps cannot see the vantage points between one another. My mother has spent her entire married life from the age of twenty as a housewife, and I strategically leave happy out of the description because I am not sure she would categorize her early years of marriage as that. While she raised five children and was always there for us when we needed her, she also never really taught us that marriage was the most important thing to strive toward in life. She always stressed education and exploration as a way to uncover and unveil what our life’s work and path would be. And if that discovery led us to marriage and a family, then so be it, but as Sheila asked in our last class: can a housewife be feminist, I could only think of my mother and how she simultaneously played the role of dutiful and mostly happy housewife, but downplayed the happiness part, which allowed for her children (including myself) to see this occupied space as something indeterminate. Is my mother a radical feminist? Certainly not, but she never would be seen rolling her eyes when I decide to start commenting on the lack of female participation within the Orthodox Church that my fiancé belongs to. Instead, her eyes encourage me to see the commentary and argument through to completion. Do I disturb the peace sometimes with these moments? Of course, but is that not the point? But this point is almost always missed by those who misunderstand the stance of the feminist, and Ahmed eloquently remarks on this when she writes, “My point here would be that feminists are read as being unhappy, such that situations of conflict, violence, and power are read as about the unhappiness of feminists, rather than being what feminists are unhappy about” (Loc. 957). I find this to be an important revelation because it clears up the misconception of what feminists have always been trying to do; it is not about our own, individual unhappinesses, but about the things which cause the unhappiness and concern. I would rather be a “feminist killjoy” who is trying to create some change in the world than an eye rolling spectator that is cemented in a fantasy of reality.
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Ahmed’s text not only speaks to me at this personal level as a feminist myself, who is interested in writing about feminist areas of concern, as evidenced in my Fettered for Life writing project, but as a teacher of literature as well. I really like how Ahmed uses the feminist lens to look at canonical texts like Mrs. Dalloway and non-canonical works in film like The Hours. I want my students to be able to explore, identify, and make connections between those moments where feminist killjoys interact and unveil themselves within a text. To experience this form of exercise is important to literary study, not just for the English scholar, but for the non-English scholars as well, in order that they might see things differently. Most of the texts we looked at for this course asked me to look at things in a different way and to consider topics and archives I never would have thought to delve into like depression, happiness, and unhappiness, etc. If we want to lead and survive in academic life, we are taught to not really discuss feelings or emotions within our own writing, let alone include these themes within our own teachable archives, but this class calls me to question: well why not?
Hello my dear Jaclyn, Can I have your iup E-mail address, since I didn’t receive any comments from you so far.
Thanks a lot.
Kamal.
Sure, Kamal: j.s.sullivan@iup.edu
I am planning on making some final comments to everyone the final writing project 🙂