REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN AND WOMANHOOD IN THE TEXTS “THE DEAD” BY JAMES JOYCE AND “A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN” BY VIRGINIA WOOLF
Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.
Ain’t I a Woman by Sojourner Truth
(Speech delivered in 1851 in Akro, Ohio)
Introduction
Whilst reading both of these works, one could not help but think "What is a great representation of women in a book?”. As much as Virginia Woolf has tried to answer it in her essay “A Room of One’s Own” it is still quite impossible for one to answer that question. Think about it, if men, in order to represent women in the perfect way just need to think and reflect upon women, than any cisgender heterossexual writer (1) without any disabilities that were truthly interested in representing their lovers could have done it.
In spite of that, we have not yet seen in the essay written by Woolf, any comprehension of what or how a man can, truthfully and assertively, write about women’s bodies and images. In this paper, one does not intend to say that there is a perfect way of representing women in literature, but that there are multiple interpretations of what a woman is and how to represent them. Though, not all of them are going to be accurate or respectful towards women in general.
For that purpose one borrows here a short story by James Joyce (1993), called “The Dead”. This choice is not made necessarily because of the presence of the theme presented, but rather for the contemporaneity of the writers (2). Both of them have presented a very political and active perspective of their own towards a brighter future in society and in literature. Even though the main political topic addressed by James Joyce was not feminism or a way to fight against sexism, he is still able to discuss the relations between men and women at the time and show the problems in them.
One’s intention to write this paper is nothing more than to compare the texts presented by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf showing some of the similarities and differences they have. More specifically, one desires to show through this body of work, more about how the representation of women can occur in many ways that are not necessarily better or worse, but more or less comprehensive towards what women are or are not.
For those purposes one borrows here three complementary texts. “Ain’t I a Woman” is a speech delivered by Sojourner Truth in 1851 talking about the process of recognition by USA’s laws of what is a woman and what is not. “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center” is a book written by bell hooks in 1984 where she presents more interpretations and the importance of not having a single storyline or only one perspective when we talk about feminist theories. Lastly, “Exhibition and Inhibition: The Body Scene in Dubliners”, which is an article written by Sheila C. Conboy that discusses the representation of women’s bodies in the book “Dubliners” by James Joyce.
- One uses this terminology to refer to someone who is attracted to women. However, it is important to comprehend that this term has been created in the 18th century and that does not define one that has lived before its creation, but that can be understood as such with our comprehension of what nowadays we understand as one’s sexuality.
- Both writers were born in 1882 and passed away in 1941.
Body
One could start this text with a question that once seemed to be very simple, but nowadays we are unsure of its simplicity: “What is a woman?”. Though many philosophers, feminist theorists, anthropologists, historians or other professionals could discuss and have a variety of answers, there is no such a thing as a static concept of what a woman is. For instance, at the time period in which Sojourner Truth presented her speech, which later would be called “Ain’t I a Woman”, black women were not considered women, for they were black, and women was a word that would only comprehend white women at the time. However, Sojourner already confronts the idea of a woman just being this representation. Being a woman, showing what a woman is or representing one, can not be defined by only one perspective of what a woman is or can be.
Taking in consideration that nobody's perspective is ever going to be equal we can understand why the process of discussing women’s representations is such a difficult one. This is something that Woolf presents on the beginning of her essay (2002):
All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. (WOOLF, 2002, p. 4)
It is possible to justify that, by comprehending that women are not just women. Each woman has a color on their own skin; a financial income, which defines their class; a desire or a lack of it towards one or more genders, which suggests their sexuality; singularities that categorize them differently in social relationships or interconnections that are not just their gender identity or their biological sex. A woman can be represented by herself in a way, by another woman in a different way from the way she represents herself and by a man in a different way than both of them. Woolf says:
Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind this statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial—and any question about sex is that—one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. (WOOLF, 2002, pp. 4 and 5)
By reading “A Room of One’s Own” it’s difficult to say that we have seen Woolf presenting an essay that represents women in general. There is a very specific target that this text is aimed at, which is, white cisgender straight middle class women. This does not necessarily mean that what Woolf represents in her text, is not a version of womanhood. Women and womanhood can be represented in plenty of ways, some of them are going to be more comprehensive of the diversity of women and some of them are going to be less comprehensive.
This is important to notice, since both texts that one aims to compare in this article are capable of being understood as a generalization of women, in ways that are not necessarily respectful or comprehensive towards the variety in skintones, sexualities, class and even body types that a woman can have. Women nowadays can be understood as a much more versatile and comprehensive word than it was ninety years ago when Virginia Woolf published her essay. However, this does not mean that women nowadays are more plural than they were at the time, it just shows that nowadays, after years of fight within feminism and outside of it too, we are able to comprehend the variety of people that can be understood or described by the word “woman”. bell hooks says:
Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Its aim is not to benefit solely any specific group of women, any particular race or class of women. It does not privilege women over men. It has the power to transform in a meaningful way all our lives. (hooks, 1984, p. 26)
What one aims to show here, is that both of these texts can be read as feminist texts, but at the same time, do not show enough of what women are, or need, or want enough to be the best or the most comprehensive representation of women or of womanhood. Both of these texts, “The Dead” and “A Room of One’s Own”, just try to represent and show the importance of fighting and some of the goals or aims that this specific group of people desire and think is reasonable at the time.
For instance, in “A Room of One’s Own”, Virginia Woolf does not mention the fact that there are disabled women (or women with disabilities), that there are women who are fighting to get out of enslaved places in english colonies, that there are women who are not even being recognized as people at the time. However, she is fighting for women, who are already perceived as women who can work and study, which at the time, refers to women that are cisgender, white, straight (or that have hidden their sexualities), middle class and without any disabilities (3), to have the right to get enough money through work so that they can buy themselves a place and be able to write.
Although this may seem as a revolutionary thing, it is barely a step for a very specific group of women to be represented and to be validated to work, to have their own money for themselves and to write whatever they want. This is not a representation of what every woman wants at the time, nor represents what the majority of the women needed at the time (perhaps only if we are talking about women in England).
In spite of that, it is also important to notice how incredible and useful this essay is. It is revolutionary in a sense, because the feminist movement was not even born in Europe (it would only start around the 1940’s in France). There was no active voice of women talking about needing, wanting or fighting for more rights, because the very few that tried before were either silenced or murdered or simply forgotten.
Looking through these two points of view makes this essay fallible for the perspective of what feminism is and where it has come to nowadays. Yet, it is a masterpiece and a very important piece of writing for the feminist fight, for this shows what were the first intentions of women in Europe to get more rights, or at least, one of the perspectives of what women wanted to fight for.
If one transfers this conversation to “The Dead” by James Joyce though, one will find a much more complex process of thinking. For this purpose, one borrows the article written by Sheila C. Conboy called “Exhibition and Inhibition: The Body Scene in Dubliners” to compliment one’s point of view. It reads:
"The Dead" demands a new way of reading: if not an outright rejection of the masculine claim on desire, at least a close observation of what has been left out of viewer's gaze that might have empowered the female character or might yet empower the female reader. Only by recognizing and dismantling the seductive power of such representation can we make possible new ways of seeing a woman's body and of writing a woman's desire. (CONBOY, 1991, p. 12)
Conboy shows one, throughout this article, that despite showing women in different classes, with different political views and of different personalities in this short story, Joyce does not create enough space for these women to be full characters with stories, desires and feelling being shown. They are not noticed as people, but as part of the process of growth for the main character. It is almost as if, by giving them voices and showing their opinions, they were just there to change the opinion of Gabriel Conroy, not to be their own selves.
Even if one perceives the representation of these women as a very accurate one to the time and place they are related to, one shall not disagree that they are not active enough as characters to be considered sufficiently important for the story. The only character that one can judge as vital for the story is Gretta Conroy. Even so, Joyce still takes the most emotional and descriptive part of her story as not something that is fully hers. Conboy says:
[...] Any reconstruction of Gretta's active desire is left for the reader, for Gretta goes to sleep, allowing Joyce to privilege Gabriel's re-view of her, his attempt to create a new frame for her containment. [...] In effect, "The Dead," through its use of two characters' perspectives, achieves a "double-identification" for the female reader, thus uphold-ing, in de Lauretis's words, "both positionalities of desire, both active and passive aims: desire for the other"-through Gabriel-"and desire to be desired by the other" (143)-through Gretta. (CONBOY, 1991, p. 11)
Yet the representations that one sees in the short story seem to be a very accurate representation of women at first (specially women of the time), in depth, it turns out to be just a repetition of a pattern of sexism that has existed for a very long time. One may read “The Dead” and think that the womanhood presented is a fine representation for the times, and it may as well be, for this is probably one of the most liberal interpretations of womanhood of that time. Still, this is not a representation that is comprehensive enough of womanhood to not disrespect or exclude specific groups of women.
One avoids here to speak so much about Gabriel Conroy since he is not the main focus of this paper. However, even if he is able to comprehend in the end of the story how Gretta is a human being, that he should respect, listen and understand rather than just put his emotion first and ignore her, he is still not able in the end to put her first or in the same level or place as him. It reads:
He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.
Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love. (JOYCE, 1993, p. 275)
At the end, he is not able to listen to her or to put himself in the same place as her. He feels defeated. Defeated because he can not be considered to be on the same level as Michael Furey when it refers to love or to think about another person. He notices his egocentrism and tries to lose it by repeating Michael’s actions. He knows he is fallible, but he doesn’t want to grow from his actions and change them, he wants to repent them. That is why one maybe can read the story and take as an understanding that it is focused on the women. It is not. It is focused on the way a woman can make a man feel. Which is why it is not even anti-sexist in practice or in theory. It only shows or allows to show that men suffer from the idea of reproducing comportments of gender without thinking of it or reflecting upon it, but it does not dare to go beyond it.
However, if both of these texts are not representing women or womanhood with true accuracy of what women are fighting for, of feminist desire or of anti-sexism fights, they still are a great representation of women in some perspective. One does not desire here to present to you a perfect way of describing women, but of comparing why both these texts are fallible in the representation of these women by similar situations.
For there is no such a thing as texts that are going to be perfectly able to represent a specific group of people inherently of how much time has been passed after these texts have been written. People change and times change too. Still, how can one talk about feminism or about women or womanhood without disrespecting women? How can one write a text, inherently of one’s gender identity, that is not disrespectful or harmful to the development of a movement or for fighting for one’s rights? Woolf says:
Even so, the very first sentence that I would write here, I said, crossing over to the writing-table and taking up the page headed Women and Fiction, is that it is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. It is fatal for a woman to lay the least stress on any grievance; to plead even with justice any cause; in any way to speak consciously as a woman. And fatal is no figure of speech; for anything written with that conscious bias is doomed to death. It ceases to be fertilized. Brilliant and effective, powerful and masterly, as it may appear for a day or two, it must wither at nightfall; it cannot grow in the minds of others. Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness. (WOOLF, 2002, p. 87)
Possibly, there is no such a thing as writing without thinking of gender as Woolf shows in this piece of the essay. That is because one is being marked by time, space, gender, sexuality, race, body, psyche and many other things. If one is not able to actively understand that humans are not only feeling and can not only be defined by how they (the writer) have felt in their lives, then, they are not able to write about different people or different characters with different characteristics from who they (the writer) are.
For it would be an illusion to think that anybody would have the empathy, comprehensiveness or mindfulness to understand and respect the lives and experiences of other people, especially if they are in a position of power, out of true nature. As much as one can expect a white cisgender straight man without any disabilities to understand what a white cisgender straight woman without any disabilities and what she has experienced in life, one is doomed to know that the man will not and has not experienced the same things as her. If one does not listen, read or talk to someone with different experiences, how would one be able to create and write about that?
That is one of the reasons why it is doubtful to think, for example, that James Joyce wrote “The Dead” with the idea of sexism being something that affected both women and men. It does not mean that it would be impossible to assume so by just reading the story. However, it is difficult to imagine, with the process of thinking and of writing presented in other projects by Joyce, that he was really interested in just exposing sexism in Ireland.
Whichever way it is, we can assimilate the characters presented in “The Dead” with the main character in “A Room of One’s Own”. They have a very similar class (being that both have had the possibility to study and to work with things that they have liked), they have a very similar way of thinking, same color of skin, desires, intentions, etc. Nonetheless, for both of these stories it lacks depth in knowledge about women, in different ways and from different perspectives. Both of them are still able to present womanhood in a sense that may be accepted and respectful to some, and not accepted or disrespectful to others. That is because both texts lack comprehensiveness of the diversity of what women are or can be.
bell hooks says “Narcissistically, they (referring to white cisgender women) focused solely on the primacy of feminism in their lives, universalizing their own experiences” (1984, p.34). For this is the difference in writing about your own experiences only and writing about plural experiences. You have experienced specific things in your life which you can speak with property. Still, there are things, that if you decide to talk about, you shall understand, listen and comprehend more, for there is not only one way of living life or experiencing it.
There is no such a thing as right or wrong when we talk about writing, however, it is important to keep in mind that not all the things that are written can represent every person that can be associated with those categories or words. Not every woman will feel represented by Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” or by “The Dead” by James Joyce. Whichever way it may be, we shall understand that writing needs to be comprehensive, to listen, to study and to pay attention first. If not, there is only going to be a part of the total that is going to be represented and shown, if it is, by the writing of an author.3.
3. Most of these terminologies are not time related. They were created after these texts one is analyzing were produced. However, we use these words with the meaning they have, even though we understand they are not time comprehensive or accurate.
Conclusion
Though one was not able to answer the question presented while reading both of these works, "What is a great representation of women in a book?”, one can conclude that there is no such a thing as a complete representation of women. All representations of women and womanhood are going to refer to a specific idea of what a woman is or what womanhood can be. By doing that, one is always going to exclude other types of women and womanhood from it if not actively thinking about including those.
One was able to assert that there is a danger in referring to women and womanhood as just a single story, and that every way of representing women and womanhood needs to listen, reflect and comprehend that all experiences related to women are going to be different. As it is in between women and women or in between men and women or any other gender identity and women.
It is also possible to conclude that both of these texts, “The Dead” by James Joyce and “A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf, are great representations of women and womanhood in one hand but are fallible to represent the diversity of women and women experiences in the world or even in England at the time these texts were written. Even so, both texts remain important texts to understand and comprehend about specific perspectives upon the topics of feminism and sexism.
One was also able to show how women are represented in a very similar way in both texts, even though they have different problems in their interpretations of showing it. With Joyce, on one hand, there is the problem of not recognizing women in general as people and giving them the ability to feel and to be full and main characters, on the other hand, Woolf refuses to acknowledge other women for different characteristics such as class, race or different body types.
For it, one brought texts from different authors to compare and analyze how different in the way they are expressing or developing women characters and their womanhood can be. None of the representations are necessarily better or worse as one was able to see, but rather, lacked comprehension about the description and development of the stories and characters involved. However, the question presented in the beginning still remains unanswered. What is a great representation of women in a book? How can one represent women and womanhood with accuracy? One does not know. One can only reflect upon it and hope to one day achieve an answer.
References
- TRUTH, Sojourner. Ain't I a Woman. In: SERVICE, National Park. Sojourner Truth: Ain't I A Woman?: Women's Rights National Historical Park. [S. l.], 17 nov. 2017. Available at: https://www.nps.gov/articles/sojourner-truth.htm. Last access: May 31, 2023.
- JOYCE, James. Dubliners. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. 371 p. ISBN 978-0-14-018647-5.
- WOOLF, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. 1. ed. [S. l.]: Gutenberg, 2002. 96 p. Available at: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200791.txt. Last access: May 31, 2023.
- hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. 1. ed. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press, 1984. 186 p. ISBN 0-89608-222-9.
- Conboy, S. C. Exhibition and Inhibition: The Body Scene in Dubliners. Duke University Press, 1991. 16 p. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/441654