The undisclosed gender of the narrator is an important aspect of the novel, one that changes the interpretation of the text depending on the way readers imagine the narrator. Many readers find that it is almost impossible to read the novel without imposing their own assumptions as to the gender of the bisexual narrator. It is easy to presume that the narrator is a woman, according to Winterson’s own gender as the writer of this novels, but this is an erroneous way of reading the novel because, as Winterson states: “I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write”. Perhaps it is too, erroneous to instinctively assign a gender to the narrator whilst reading the novel, but the need for completeness is so overpowering that as readers and as humans, we must assume, if we cannot know. Besides, it is so easy to assume, given the subtle glimmers of perhaps a male-orientated situation or of female-connoted use of language, metaphor. I have divided the gender implications into situation and language respectively because in the novel, it seems that only certain situations render the narrator male and certain uses of language renders him/her female. The over romanticised, clichéd love-language is seen as feminine, as if only women used such terms (a social conception). The over elaborate metaphors are not really “feminine”, but what we believe to be “feminine” because women are supposedly more emotional and sensual. In addition, Winterson’s repetition of certain phrases throughout the novel reminds us of Irigray’s claim that women’s language is repetitive, often difficult to discern concise meanings because they do not work in the “discursive machinery” of phallocentrism. Thus, the language is often instinctively assumed feminine. The male-implicated situations are ones such as the fight scene between the narrator and his(?) rival, Elgin. If the narrator is a woman, the violence seems socially unacceptable but as a male, the exchanging of blows is equal, man on man violence, as opposed to man on woman violence. When I read the novel, I switched between genders, rendering her female in certain parts and alternating him into a man in others. This switch however, was done unobstructively, with hardly a forced thought to the contrary. Of course, I was conscious of doing this, but not unsettled because it read naturally. In terms of the basic storyline, I believe that to do this is perfectly natural and in this way, Winterson succeeds in creating this gender-unbiased narrator.
Where Winterson chooses to create a narrator whose gender is never revealed, Lispector creates a narrator who is supposed to be male, but leaves enough room in the text for herself, a female, to penetrate the narrative. This is most obvious in her thirteen titles for the book, where her signature is inserted between the fourth title, “The Right to Protest” and the fifth title, “.As for the Future.” in place of another “or”. Cixous, in her collection of essays entitled, Reading with Clarice Lispector, argues that Lispector’s signature is the “scream” of the text (in Cixous’s translation, the fourth title is translated as “The Right to Scream” instead of “The Right to Protest”, as above). The fact that Lispector’s signature - a mark of identity personal and identifiable as only one’s own - is used instead of another “or”, shows Lispector as the “general equivalence” of the “or”. I agree with this interpretation as well as its implication of Lispector inserting herself into the text, as present and as existing as the characters within the text itself. Lispector’s presence within the text is reflected in the mysterious male narrator, Rodrigo and also in opposition (the “or”) to her protagonist, Macabéa. It is self-consciously and ironically present when Rodrigo states: “what I am writing could be written by another. Another writer, of course, but it would have to be a man for a woman would weep her heart out”. Of course, it is Lispector writing the story, not another man but a woman. Rodrigo tries, in vain, to repress his own creator, his own mother. This is in vain because we know that it is Lispector writing these self-consciously ironic words. Writing becomes the “birthing” of individuals - Lispector, who creates Rodrigo, who then creates Macabéa through literacy. Rodrigo, in order to write about Macabéa must become her: “In order to speak about the girl I mustn’t shave for days. […] I am doing all this to put myself on the same footing as the girl from the North-east.” In the passage where Macabéa sees herself in a mirror for the first time, Rodrigo sees in her reflection a mirror image of his “own face, weary and unshaven”. Lispector, who is also within the text is reflected too, in this mirror image via Rodrigo, her voice. Each character becomes the other, whilst being unaware of their other consciousness. I refer here to the passage where Rodrigo interjects: “It must be said that the girl is not conscious of my presence. [...] I am fully conscious of her presense: through her I utter my cry of horror to existence.” It is like they are split personalities of one person, unaware of the other but still existing separately.
Writing as an act of birthing is the metamorphosis of author into narrator into protagonist and in turn, this confusing sequence of existence renders each character incomplete. Each character in the text (including Lispecter’s insertion) is lacking. Lispector is metamorphosed into a man, Rodrigo is “so masculine that he becomes very feminine” and Macabéa is so indiscernible that she is rendered “hardly a woman”. The multiple inverse births of the characters creates a self-conscious imploding effect that relies on the other for its “almost” existence.However, this lacking is necessary for the book’s very existence because the book is always questioning, so self-conscious it is of its own existence. Thus the incomplete sexuality of each character creates a gap in the text which allows room for the narrator (or Lispector) to exist and to write and inversely, to write to exist.
Like in Written on the Body, The Hour of the Star also places emphasis on words, language and even the method of writing. Winterson’s text is self-conscious because it is using a clichéd and phallogocentric language. Her self-consciousness of the language is what renders the text “feminine”, in that it is not conventional and it is fluid. Lispector’s text, on the other hand, is self-conscious because the narrator understands the importance of words and its significant role in his own, as well as Lispector’s and Macabéa’s existence.
“As I write – let things be known by their real names. Each thing is a word. And when there is no word, it must be invented. […] Why do I write? First of all because I have captured the spirit of the language and at times it is the form that constitutes the content.”
There is a dilemma between word and thing as well as a “deeper struggle between a person writing […] and that person’s sense of writing as a mode of existence.” The art of writing the body is the immediacy of the writing, the need to write the present in order to exist. In addition to using the present tense in order to narrate the story, the book is overloaded with cuts and parenthesis. “(Bang)” is scattered throughout the book, in places where, in my opinion, show a point where another future could have happened, but instead the sequence of events as written is what has happened. The “(bang)” of the text are instances of a self-aware present, as if Rodrigo cannot change what happens because he has not yet experienced it because he is writing in the present. And because he is writing in the present, there is a dilemma between word and thing because he needs to portray everything exactly, describe it with the utmost care but without superfluity:
“[T]he word is the fruit of the word. The word must resemble the word. To attain the word is my first duty to myself. The word must not be adorned and become aesthetically worthless; it must be simply itself.”
This raises the question of how to narrate. He frequently interrupts the story in order to provide an injection of the process of writing – “The question is: how do I write? […] I only lie at the precise hour of lying. But when I write I do not lie.” To write his story, Rodrigo must deconstruct his body, in order to find the language and the truth he needs to write the story: “what I am about to write is already written deep inside me. I must reproduce myself with the delicacy of a white butterfly.” Écriture feminine is not only exclusive to women - although it is interesting to note that Lispector is the one who is ultimately writing, disturbing the thin line between being Rodrigo’s “other” and at the same time his “alter-ego”. “The action of this story will result in my transfiguration in someone else and in my ultimate materialization into an object” can be read from Rodrigo’s perspective as well as Lispector’s. The only character who does not have a voice or a chance to write is Macabéa, because her own body is so meagre, her existence cannot be supported by her own illiterate words, but words of a man, of this feminine narrator whose words are the language of his body.
In Written on the body, the narrator deconstructs Louise’s body in an important portion of the book, dividing her individual biological components in order to fit her back together again, with him/herself emerged. Here, Winterson literally writes the body, but as a poetic “love poem to Louise”. However, by deconstructing Louise down to her biological functions, the narrator removes her identity, making her no more than an object unable to change this ravaging of her body. The question of existence for Louise is significant in this novel because she does not seem to exist outside of the narrator’s own existence. Indeed, at the end of the novel, the narrator questions whether or not he/she invented Louise. The narrator asks: “It’s as if Louise never existed, like a character in a book. Did I invent her?” to which Gail, as the voice of existentialism replies: “No, but you tried to. […] She wasn’t yours for the making.” We are still left with no substantial answer to this question. It does seem that the narrator is objectifying Louise because she does not seem to have her own voice but the narrator is not only deconstructing Louise, but also reconstructing her, attempting to merge - “Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh. To remember you it’s my own body I touch” - and recreate the body in a way that embraces the old with the new. This is paralleled in the way Winterson also deconstructs language, merging the clichéd, exhausted language of love, with the new metaphors for love, creating a new, heterogenous language.
Winterson and Lispector engage the concept of écriture feminine in their texts and questions the writing process. In The Hour of the Star, Lispector/Rodrigo is self-consciously cutting into the narrative, refusing to tell the story without her/his presence/present. Lispector writes the body to exist and to diminish the gap between writing and reading. Her text is one that exists now, whereas Winterson’s text is timeless, being on the subject of love. By incorporating the scientific language of biology with the poetic elaborations of love, Winterson reconstructs the physical body in parallel to her reconstruction of language. Both texts question the binaries that separate activity and passivity, reason and body, man and woman, often merging the two dichotomies to create a new way of writing, of existing and even a metamorphic gender.
Bibliography
Winterson, Jeanette, Written on the Body (London, Vintage Books, 1993).
Irigray, Luce, "The Sex Which is Not One", In Conboy, K., Medina, N., Stanbury, S., (eds), Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory (Columbia University Press, New York. 1997), pp.248-256.
Winterson, Jeanette, “The Semiotics of Sex”, In Burrell J., (ed), Word: On Being a (Woman) Writer (Feminist Press, New York. 2004), p. 102.
From
Cixous, Hélène, “The Laugh of the Medusa”, In Eagleton, M., (ed), Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader (Basil Blackwel Ltd, Oxford. 1986), pp. 225-231.
Dallery, Arleen B., “The Politics of Writing (the) Body: Écriture Féminine”, in Jagger A. M., Bordo S., (eds), Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist reconstructions of Being and Knowing, 3rd ed, (Rutgets University Press, New Jersey. 1992), pp. 52-67.
Lispector, Clarice, The Hour of the Star, trans. and afterword by Giovanni Pontiero (Great Britain, Carcanet Press Ltd, 1992).
Cixous, Hélène, “The Hour of the Star: How Does One Desire Wealth of Poverty?”, in Hélène Cixous, Reading with Clarice Lispector, Ed., trans. and introduction by Verena Andermatt Conley (London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), pp. 143-163.
From Literature in Question: Issue 3 Course Pack
Fitz, Earl, E., “Characterizations, Relationships, and States of Being: Feminine, Masculine, Androgynous, and Nongendered”, in Earl E. Fitz, Sexuality and Being in the Poststructuralist Universe of Clarice Lispector, pp. 88-121.
From http://books.google.com/books?id=OeZ51YdBN_4C&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=fitz+earl+Characterizations,+Relationships,+and+States+of+Being:+Feminine,+Masculine,+Androgynous,+and+Nongendered&source=bl&ots=oCEQIsiry8&sig=8v4y6ypirsEApykRbsp97VQvbYg&hl=en&ei=BpHLSdHeIcWrjAesq-jkCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA121,M1
Cixous, H., “The Laugh of the Medusa”.
Dallery, A. B., “The Politics of Writing (the) Body: Écriture Féminine”, p. 53.
Cixous, H., “The Laugh of the Medusa”, p. 225.
Winterson, J., Written on the Body, p. 89.
Winterson, J., Written on the Body, p. 10.
Winterson, J., “The Semiotics of Sex”, p. 102.
Irigray, L., “The Sex Which is Not One”. p. 253.
Cixous, H., “The Hour of the Star: How Does One Desire Wealth or Poverty?”, p. 146.
Lispector, C., The Hour of the Star, p. 14.
Fitz, E. E., “Characterizations, Relationships, and States of Being: Feminine, Masculine, Androgynous, and Nongendered”, p. 111.
Lispector., op cit, p. 19.
Lispector, op cit, p. 33.
Cixous, The Hour of the Star: How Does One Desire Wealth or Poverty?”, p. 148.
Pages 76-78 of The Hour of the Star feature the phrase six times alone.
Lispector, op cit, p. 20.
Winterson, J., Written on the Body. p. 111.
Winterson, J., Written on the Body. p. 189.