The Madwoman in the Attic - 4718 Words

Asia-Pacific Science and Culture Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3, 23-41 OPEN ACCESS ISSN 2220-4504 www.ieit-web.org/apscj Women’s Secret Language: the Madwoman in the Attic in a Cultural and Psychological Context JIA Shi 1 1 The University of Iowa E-Mails: daisy-wreath@hotmail.com Received: Apr. 2011 / Accepted: May 2011 / In Press: May 2011 / Published: Jun. 2011 Abstract: As an outstanding representative of the second-wave feminism, The Madwoman in the Attic is still useful in handling the relationship between women and language, especially when it is in comparison with other strands of theory. Culturally, women writers’ revision of the existing male discourse that the book suggests bears remarkable resemblance with de Certeau’s†¦show more content†¦Gilbert and Gubar’s suggestion is no less than building a female language by tactically maneuvering the existing conventions of patriarchal language through women writers’ own practices and the practices of their foremothers. Under the disguise of patriarchal discourse, women writers are telling stories of their own – one may deem it as women’s duplicity. Two of the typical maneuverings are palimpsest and parody. As Gilbert and Gubar put it: â€Å"women from Jane Austen and Mary Shelley to Emily Brontà « and Emily Dickinson produced literary wo rks that are in some sense palimpsestic, works those surface designs conceal or obscure deeper, less accessible (and less socially acceptable) levels of meaning.† (Gilbert Gubar, 73) Taking the double bind of stereotypical female figures for example, the split between the innocent, quiet, selfless, good women (â€Å"mother goddess, merciful dispensers of salvation, female symbols of justice†) and the vicious, evil women (â€Å"witches, evil eye, menstrual pollution, castrating mothers†) is a male construction that women writer can never escape. Rather than demolishing the binary, women writers redefine themselves by travelling between the two extremes through â€Å"alternately defining themselves as angel-women or as monster-women† (Gilbert Gubar, 44) and through â€Å"creating dark doubles for themselves and their heroines† (Gilbert Gubar, 79). In so doing, they simultaneously Asia-Pacific ScienceShow MoreRelated Exposing the Role of Women in The Madwoman in the Attic Essay1701 Words   |  7 PagesExposing the Role of Women in The Madwoman in the Attic  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚   In their book The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar address the issue of literary potential for women in a world shaped by and for men. Specifically, Gilbert and Gubar are concerned with the nineteenth century woman and how her role was based on her association with the symbols of angels, monsters, or sometimes both. Because the role of angel was ideally passive and the role of monster was naturally evil, bothRead MoreThe Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar560 Words   |  2 Pagesand flood the socio-political orders that be. This was particularly true for the nineteenth-century female writer who was â€Å"enclosed in the architecture of an overwhelmingly male-dominated society† (Gilbert and Gubar). 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