“I struggle to keep writing as much as possible in male hands as much as possible as I distrust the feminine in literature.” (T.S. Eliot). Discuss with examples.

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“I struggle to keep writing as much as possible in male hands as much as possible as I distrust the feminine in literature.” (T.S. Eliot). Discuss with examples.

        

Both T.S Eliot and James Joyce are acknowledged by critics as modernist writers. The Wasteland by T.S Eliot is, like Ulysses, concerned, to varying degrees, with humankind and early twentieth century society. Both Joyce’s novel and Eliot’s poem utilise a range of different voices in order to convey a sense of fragmentation and incoherence. It is interesting therefore that their views on the feminine in literature should oppose each other so violently. At first glance, Ulysses, with its two male protagonists – Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, may appear to oppress the feminine voice in favour of the masculine. A closer reading of the text however soon emphasises the opposite, as Joyce’s constant interweaving and conflicting of the masculine voices with the feminine can be recognised as the basis of the novel. Feminist critics such as Cixous have argued that modernist writing as a genre embraces the feminine aspects of literature in its characteristic flow and textual fragmentation. In order to write Ulysses it is impossible for Joyce to disregard or distrust the feminine in literature as, despite his obviously male perspective, both masculine and feminine voices are essential if Joyce is to create a convincing portrayal of a single day in Dublin in 1904. While Joyce is concerned with the male anxieties regarding identity and paternity,  (“He proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father”), he rejects the Freudian obsession with the artist and masculinity by simultaneously examining the feminine psyche. Joyce weaves these two strands in amongst the other elements of Ulysses in an attempt to form a representation of humankind as a whole.

In order to assert the essential nature of the feminine as an object and as a distinctive register within the novel, Joyce structures Ulysses in a particular way. I think it is extremely significant that both the opening chapter and the final chapter of the novel are concerned either overtly or on a more subtle level with femininity albeit in different and contrasting forms. The motif of mirrors appears and reappears throughout Ulysses and it is significant that it is first drawn to the reader’s attention in Telemachus - “It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a servant. The distinctively feminine register of Penelope contrasts and is subverted by (almost like looking in a cracked mirror) by the lack of, yet omnipresence of the feminine in Telemachus. This motif is echoed again in Ithaca when Stephen and Leopold are alone together – “Silent, each the other in both mirrors of the recipricol flesh of theirthisnothis fellowfaces” – seemingly reinforcing the link forged by feminine influence upon the two men. Joyce draws further comparisons between the two women when the description of Molly’s smell in Calypso -  “her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves next day. Like foul flowerwater” - seems to echo in sentiment the repeated descriptions of the smell of Mrs Dedalus’ rotting corpse in Telemachus –

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“her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes”.

 The presence of the ghost of Stephen’s mother symbolises another connection in the text, the deliberate intertextual reference to the Ghost Of Hamlet’s Father links Stephen to Leopold and Molly before they have even met (and in fact, significantly, Stephen and Molly never meet) through the theme of adultery and betrayal.

.In Telemachus the reader is immediately confronted with the ghost of Stephen’s mother, and in ...

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