Miller’s Personal Critcism & Martha Moulsworth

By Frank Miller

In “Getting Personal: Autobiography as Cultural Criticism,” Nancy K. Miller first poses a question to her audience: “What’s personal criticism?” She herself defines it as “an explicitly autobiographical performance within the act of criticism” which “involves a deliberate move toward self-figuration” (1). Miller highlights that personal criticism may come in the form of high-brow academic analysis or a heartfelt personal account; yet, ultimately ponders: “are autobiographical and personal criticism the same thing?” (1). Miller states that distinguishing a difference between the two is important; however, concludes that “the effects” that autobiographical and personal criticism have on “the constitution of critical authority and the production of theory” (2) is truly what is relevant.

Miller invokes the works of several prominent feminists writers who cross the “autobiographical” and the “personal.” While reading, I couldn’t help but think of Martha Moulsworth, a British widow living in the post-Elizabethan era who seemed to interwine the personal with the autobiographical. Moulsworth’s “Memorandum,” a 55-couplet testament to her 55 years of life in 1632 has been recorded “as one of the first autobiographical English poems“; however, “the fact that it is by a woman, of course, adds to its importance.” It includes “one of the most sweeping and radical claims for the right to equal education ever issued in the Renaissance.” Yet, for the fact that the claim is made so early, only propels the significance of her statement. She writes: “Two universities we have of men, / O that we had but one of women then! / O then that would in wit, and tongues surpass / All art of men that is, or ever was” (33-36). Though the lines following these deal more with Moulsworth’s autobiographical story, these lines specifically portray her attack of “the constitution of critical authority” which in this case are Oxford and Cambridge, divine enforcers of constitutional patriarchy. Jointly, her assertion that women would “in wit, and tongues surpass, all art of men that is, or ever was” demonstrate her attempt to empower women, designating them to positions other than banal housework. Though Moulsworth’s voice might have been irrelevant at the time, I’m sure Miller would agree that incendiary works like these are indeed what is “truly relevant” to the production of future theory.

Here is the link to her work:

http://www.digital.library.upenn.edu/women/moulsworth/name/name.html

the only connection I could make

I had difficulty understanding and finding a connection between For Etruscans: Sexual Difference and Artistic Production- The Debate over a female Aesthetic and Getting Personal: Autobiography as Cultural Criticism there is one common idea I stumbled upon…

 

“Writers know their text as a form of intimacy, of personal contact, whether conversations with the reader or with the self. Letters, journals, voices are sources for this element.”

 

This statement by Hester Eisenstein and Alicie Jardin from For Etruscans: Sexual Difference and Artistic Production- The Debate over a female Aesthetic summarizes what I found to be a common threat between Getting Personal: Autobiography as Cultural Criticism by Nancy K. Miller.

 

The connection between a writer and a reader is hard to produce but seems to be especially hard for the female writer. In For the Etruscans Sara Lenox presents the idea that woman and writer have “to find a language for intuition, feelings, instincts which are, in themselves, elusive, subtle and wordless.”

 

Both writing also mention journal writing as an important source of material and connection between writer and reader. Nancy Miller says, “feminist teaching tends to produce a great deal of personal testimony”, and “Feminist theory has always built out from the personal: the witness “I” of subjective experience. The notion of the “authority of experience”

Woolf Was Personal Too

In her piece “Getting Personal: Autobiography as Cultural Criticism,” nancy K. Miller discusses the emergence of personal writing as a new genre of feminist theory and cultural criticism. Miller discusses the new genre, which emerged among scholars and academics int he 1970s and 1980s, as a means by which to deconstruct the cultural hierarchy and dichotomy between public and private, and the gender implications of this. Feminists whom we have read, like Spivak, Anzaldua and Lorde, have used personal and autobiographical subject matter to discuss throry, like how Anzaldua discusses her writing process, being nude and on her porch while the contemplates the experience of women of color. Miller asks “What is personal?” and when discussing personal, which is read sometimes as uncomfortable, “Who is uncomfortable?”. Miller also discusses how incoportating personal experience in academic theory has in the past been perceived as discrediting women’s work, like in the case of the Ph.D. candidates who have been conscious of the “profound consequences of taking the personal as a category of though and gender as a category of analysis,” (14).

Throughout the piece, I couldn’t help but question Miller’s assertion that personal experience as a genre of feminist theory and cultural critique as a new concept. I immediately thought of Virginia Woolf, particularly in A Room of One’s Own. Woolf is undoubtedly drawing from personal experience, and even creates an intimate scene (though perhaps not as intimate as discussing having to go to the bathroom) a Tompkin’s talking about her thinking in her stockinged feet, when she describes the scene where she takes in lunch by the OxBridge campus. Although Woolf is meant to be writing in her own genre – stream of consciousness – for which she is so famous, the discussion of the lunch, of her wandering through the library (which even resembles Foucault’s discussion of the man int he library who cannot find books to relate to), or being shooed off the grass and on to the hard gravel are all deeply personal. Though perhaps not explicitly personal, there is no doubt that Woolf experienced at least parts of the scenes she created, and that she critiques the dichotomy of public/private in her work. And though the women of the 1970s and 1980s were absolutely expanding, through honesty and their “personal” and acknowledging that their work is partially autobiographical, I would argue that Woolf contributed to this genre long before it was an acceptable means of presenting theory.

Lesbian existence

Adrienne Rich essay on “compulsory heterosexual and lesbian existence” truly made me take a closer look at what I believed towards assumptions on sexuality.  I can see why she would ask the question that she does. It is true that as babies the first bond we ever make is with our mothers who happens to be a women so why not as women be able to better identify  ourselves with such.

Rich ideas of ” lesbian continuum” and the question that arises whether lesbianism is truly defined by all the possible interactions among women or is it by erotic choice that this interactions are made. I don’t agree with society idea that the only normal relationship is between a man and a women. I have led relationship with women that are much alike to a relationship with a man.  The idea that men see any other type of relationship as deviant is ridiculous. the fact that men have had or have such power over women as Rich clearly states denying women their sexuality, or to force it upon them, command or exploit their labour etc makes me ask who are they (man) to define what a deviant or not relationship is? .

Woman’s picture

As I read Femmes Fatales,Mary Ann Doane I couldn’t helpbut think of what a femme fatale is or the role that it’s suppose to play . Immediately my mind travels to an HBO movies of a women who is desired by every man she encounters. Plays the role of the ultimate sex figure yet is also strong and able to defend herself. To summarize the movie every man she sleeps with she ends up killing and this caused for a question to arise;  is a femme fatale a super sexy murder?

” The woman’s relation to the camera and the scopic regime is quite different from that of the male”(19) I would have to agree with this idea. The role of women on camera is one that is far from the truth and times ridiculous from real world. I find that the role of woman hasn’t changed that much through history. Almost in every movie the woman is docile and nurturing and will stand by her man no matter what. Not long ago I saw a movie in which women were portrayed as this weak beings who depended on man to be happy and I feel that it’s wrong because we are so much more than that.

As I continue to read, the author states that “woman is frequently the object of the voyeuristic or fetishistic gaze in the cinema” I can’t help but ask why is this? When did women become just an object to be looked at and nothing else.

“womanliness is a mask which can be worn or removed”(25) Itotally agree with this idea, woman have to wear a mask at times in order to be able to survive and to cope with the image that we must try to fit into. I can’t help but complain that man have it to easy. The author claims that it isn’t that man can’t use their body but that he doesn’t have too while woman use their sex for gains. The feminist in me screams  ” oh the injustice”

Sacrilegious Subjectivity

By MaryKate Schwerdt

When Miller quotes Tompkins as saying the personal is the category that intrigues and satisfies woman, my inner voice immediately said …well, duh. The reaction didn’t come from a place of snobbery but one of confusion of how anyone could think otherwise. After an entire recorded history, and surely prehistory as well, of exclusion, denial, marginalization, subversion, and a bunch of other nasty verbs, how could women exist freely anywhere but inside the mind of their own person? With miniscule involvement in public politics, economics, art, religion, or the academics to even learn about them, is it really any wonder that women naturally respond to what tries to connect with and stimulate most private part of them? This isn’t Orwellian world of thought police (yet) so the mind and imagination were the only domains safe from institutionalized male agenda for women.

Miller quotes Sedgwick saying, “every mind has a body.” This brought me back towards the beginning of the semester to the Anzaldua and Cixous pieces we read. Every living woman has a mind and a body that cannot NOT experience through its senses; the experience and reaction were denied exodus into any public realm, so they remained private. The theory we have read concerns implications of that very implosion of experience. Although the bondage of women has somewhat loosened in recent years, it is just as tight for most and the conditioning for private existence is still there for the rest. Miller illustrates this perfectly when references Mary Russo’s recollection of nameless female voices saying, “She’s making a spectacle of herself,” to any woman entering the public sphere by attracting the attention of others.

Whether personal experience belongs in a critique is tough to answer. I’ve practically been indoctrinated to say “no” and have any claims I make and the evidence to prove them be independent of me. The more I think about what’s appropriate, the more I side with the personal. In my humble opinion, language is an art that can never be truly objective, and the purpose of art is to evoke feeling. In the high academia of universities where this debate is taking place, the type of writing that is being critiqued is written to be read. I don’t mean to taint or dismiss the intentions of the writer, but theory sets out to prove something and convince the reader of it. I think it’s a little hypocritical to exclusively expect objectivity in a critique when the piece itself is attempting to change the person/mind concerning things as fluid literature and human behavior. In a literary theoretical context, the personal is acceptable if it has been provoked by the author of what is being critiqued. A critique is meant to evaluate and respond, so the inclusion of genuine responses doesn’t seem so sacrilege. However, I must join Miller in her fear of the personal becoming trendy and resulting in a complete loss of objectivity and a “chummy” world of professors who in the worst case scenario incorporate re-tellings of their wild nights in college (I kid).

The Embodiment of the Critic. L.R. Corcoran.

Nancy K. Miller in her essay, “Getting Personal: Autobiography as Cultural Criticism,” seeks to radically problematize  a notion that perhaps has served as the gold standard for writing in humanities classes from grade school to college. that is, when writing an essay, one should be objective. Feminist theory, though, seeks to destabilize the notion of subject in order to situate it in a locale that is supremely social and also marked by the body which it inhabits. Adrienne Rich exemplifies such a stance with her statement quoted in this essay: “Every mind resides in a body.” Miller then in turn elaborates on this quote, “Personal criticism, as we will see, is often located in a specified body (or voice) marked by gender, color, and national origin: a little passport.”

With a mind so firmly and resolutely inhabiting a body, this mode of criticism seems to disallow the possibility for someone to write without being affected by his or her social milieu, social standing and ethnic heritage. This certainly strikes an intuitive chord: I would not be I unless I were I. Where Miller begins her shift is to suggest that critical and theoretical writing, long seen as an off-shoot of a scientific and logical based method, should allow for personal biography in its dealings.

The impetus for such a stance seems to stem from a fundamental binary of feminist theory: the relation between proximity and distance. This division shows that the feminine is associated with the close and the personal; children associate their mother with immediate care and emotional support. On the other hand boys learn masculinity in negative relation to how their mothers act. Therefore if this distinction is then translated in multifarious modes of culture, it would stand as such: the abstract and the objective is masculine, and the close and the personal is feminine.

Thus one could see how feminist theory would take issue with such critical schools as the New Critics, who, taking a nod from Barthes, deemed the author to be dead, and the text to exist completely disembodied as if it were an autonomous object. Of course, other criticism has rejected the anti-intentionalism stance, and today it seems that, for the most part, the author’s intent is allowed, just not as the text’s supreme authority.

What is strange about such a rejection of  anti-intentionalism is that so much of feminist criticism is founded upon it. I am fairly certain that Nathaniel Hawthorne when writing  “The Birthmark” did not set himself to the task of writing an allegory for the patriarchal oppression of women, yet the story has served as text par excellence for feminist criticism. Therefore if the mind is to fully inhabit the body, the writer needs his or her intentions restored to him or herself just as much as his or her racial, class, and gender markings need to be restored. In other words, if one’s body is to count, one’s intentions should count too.

Perhaps the above rebuttal is making a straw man out of Miller’s argument, for certainly one can have a bodily reaction to reading regardless of what the author intended or did not intend. We can certainly position the proposition “All ways of knowing are personal” within an empiricist framework without a debate on authorial intention.

Intention aside, the most pressing issue of Miller’s essay is what it means for the practice of theory and criticism. It introduces a question with which all writers have certainly struggled: How much of myself should I put on the page? Miller herself proffers a continuum of possibility; the personal has become the theoretical. This concept is readily available, for as I write this as I am sitting listening to construction and worrying about my finals, and I can I certainly see myself on this page.

Hidden Lesbian

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence  by Adrienne Rich is about lesbianism being erased from history and forcing heterosexuality on woman.  the approach while intended to enlighten about lesbianism is more of an acknowledgment of woman not specifically sexual preference. With the exclusion of sexual preference the following statement by Rich seems to be somewhat confusing:

I doubt that enough scholars and theorists have taken the pains to acknowledge the societal forces which wrench woman’s emotional and erotic energies away from themselves and other woman and from woman-identified values.

Many theorists have discussed and written about the plight of woman.This statement is also weakened by Rich’s statement:

I mean the term lesbian continuum to include a range- through each woman’s life and throughout history-of woman-identified experience

Rich talks about lesbianism including all woman experiences. When the topics Characteristics of male power include the power of men to separate a sect of woman fro m things that all have to face seems useless. the binding of the feet of woman, sex trafficking, denial of sexuality including preference, history and power cannot be separated, in my mind, for any group of woman.

One the point that the “lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection a compulsory way of life”, do we truly understand the idea of forced heterosexuality (the topic of the article by Rich). The ideas Rich gives for reasoning of lesbianism

The Lie of Compulsory Female Heterosexuality

In this week’s reading of Adrienne Rich’s essay Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1980) brings light to the issues, such as freedom of sexuality, that directly affect women due to the pressure and extreme force of a male dominated society. However, what I latched onto in the essay was Rich’s notion that compulsory heterosexuality is a “lie”. What is compulsory heterosexuality? Why is it considered a lie? And how are women affected by this lie?

Compulsory heterosexuality is a fixed and required sexual attraction to the opposite sex. The institution of compulsory heterosexuality denies the “reality and visibility to women’s passion for women, women’s choice of women as allies, life companions, and community, the forcing of such relationships into dissimulation and their disintegration” that is “under intense pressure”. (296) Woman is not free to explore and examine her sexuality in a society that strategically places her in a box (objectified) that is set-aside for a man. The lie, or lies is man’s way of controlling the female’s mind, and as a result, her body too.

According to Rich, the lie of compulsory female heterosexuality “keeps numberless women psychologically trapped, trying to fit mind, spirit, and sexuality into a prescribed script”. This script that Rich refers to is the social script, that tells women what to say and what to do. It is the script that guides our mothers, grandmothers and aunts, as well fathers, grandfathers, uncles and brothers. The men have a role to play and so do women.

Rich concludes the essay asserting a message to her audience that we must “address the institution itself… It will require a courageous grasp of the politics and economics, as well as the cultural propaganda, of heterosexuality to carry us beyond individual cases or diversified group situations into the complex kind of overview needed to undo the power of men everywhere…” (297) Woman has been given a role in society. She is referred to as a nurturer that is innately motherly. She is too the object of a man’s attraction. In order to exist in a man’s world, she must abide by the rules, which is to stay in her place Yet, what man says does not have to be so. If man will not give us options then we should create them, whether sexually or creatively. The type of discourse that seeks to control and manipulate the freedoms of women needs to be examined and challenged.

Compulsory Heterosexuality and sexual preference

In “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” Adrienne Rich explores texts written about female sexuality and sexual preference. She argues that these texts, even those written from a feminist perspective, marginalize lesbians; she asserts that, “Any theory or cultural/political creation that treats lesbian existence as a marginal or less “natural” phenomenon, as mere “sexual preference,” or as the mirror image of either heterosexual or male homosexual relations is profoundly weakened thereby, whatever its other contributions” (632). I had numerous questions about this statement throughout the article, primarily because the issues in the cited texts are explained so well, but the there was so much background and foundational information missing that the message of the article got lost in a plethora of questions. It isn’t clear what the differences between lesbian, heterosexual, and homosexual are, and why they therefore they cannot be viewed as opposites.

I agree with Rich, that assuming that women become lesbians do so to escape from masculine oppression marginalizes the position of a lesbian. However, I did not understand why viewing being a lesbian as a sexual preference is a problem. She explains why heterosexuality is not really a choice, but I did not understand how going against the norms established by a patriarchal society would not be considered a choice. There are many reasons (economic, cultural, legal) why women may feel the need to enter into a heterosexual relationship, particularly since society is not conducive to female bonds. Rich engages various article, including Nancy Chodorow’s “The Reproduction of Mothering”, which explains how heterosexuality is not a real choice, but instead decision that society guides women toward using various factors. Rich cites Chodorow’s statement that, “This heterosexual preference and taboos on homosexuality, in addition to objective economic dependence on men, make the option of primary sexual bonds with other women unlikely” (Rich, 636). While Rich realizes that Chodorow is implying that heterosexuality isn’t a real choice for women, she finds this article problematic because it aims at perpetuating a man-made system. Rich explains that arguments about sexual preference and choice assume that, “women who have chosen women have done so simply because men are oppressive and emotionally unavailable; which still fails to account for women who continue to pursue relationships with oppressive and/or emotionally unsatisfying men” (637).  I would imagine that particularly in reading Chodorow’s article, the question of why women  continue to pursue relationships with men is answered by the understanding that women have been guided into this choice.

Chodorow also implies that a heterosexual bond is counter-intuitive for females, since the primary emotional bonds are first made with the mother. Rich takes this even further by stating that, “If women are the earliest sources of emotional caring and physical nurture for both female and male children, it would be logical, from a feminist perspective at least, to pose the following questions: whether the search for love and tenderness in both sexes does not originally lead toward women; why in fact women would ever redirect that search…” (637). I find this statement to be problematic in the same way she finds the arguments about sexual preference and choice to be problematic. If the natural impulse of both men and women would lead toward women, what does this say about homosexual men?

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The Hazardous Dilemma of Postmodernist Blurring

By MaryKate Schwerdt

“Just as the term parenting serves to conceal the particular and significant reality of being a parent who is actually a mother, the term gay may serve the purpose of blurring the very outlines we need to discern, which are of crucial value for feminism and for the freedom of women as a group.” (Rich 349)

Although the notion of “blurring” quoted above is quickly mentioned in the edited version of Adrienne Rich’s article in our textbook, it grabbed my attention and brought me back to last week’s Kaplan piece. In her article about the televisual apparatus, Kaplan speculates that the blurring of various dichotomies by television (tv/movie, male/female, private/public, fiction/reality) could result in a postmodernist world where these dichotomies are so blurred that they don’t exist. This is particularly worrisome and relevant to our class because if this comes to fruition, Kaplan says, “postmodernism would eliminate gender difference as a significant category.” She goes on to say, “a new postmodern universe arguably makes impossible the critical position itself, making then irrelevant any feminist stance.”

Through the first quote above, Adrienne Rich seems to have already picked up on the postmodernist changes already upon us. “Parenting” is a potentially harmful term while it’s understood that the majority of child rearing in conventional families is done by the mother. This is a perfect example of how it’s hard to take a feminist stance on blurred identities. Someone criticizing parenting methods with a sexist bias can hide behind the fact that the term “parenting” encompasses the behaviors mothering AND fathering without dividing those behaviors along gender/sex lines. The same can be said for the term “gay” encompassing all homosexual behavior. How can there be such a thing as feminist societal critiquing when the concept of the female/feminine is stifled and cunningly removed from the vernacular before the antagonism towards it?

This unprogressive blurring brings us feminists to a sort of identity crisis.  To confine something as fluid as human behavior and desire into a tiny static inflexible box is limiting and frankly unfair to those who do not meet exact criteria. For example, the rigid, or academic as Rich calls it, term “lesbian” suppresses women in three of the eight ways listed in the article. It denies women their own sexuality (#1) by excluding those who don’t fit the academic definition, it cramps woman’s creativeness (#7) by establishing a certain criteria that needs to be met in order to call oneself a “lesbian”, and it also withholds from woman large areas of societal knowledge (#8) by keeping women who are experiencing various, not necessarily erotic, feelings along the lesbian spectrum ignorant and isolated from other women experiencing the same, unable to make vital connections about that part of their lives. On the other hand, give these desires free reign is to erase all boundary, causing them to slip through the fingers of identity, leaving them nameless and defenseless.

Rich attempts to resolve this conflict with the term “lesbian spectrum,” which is effective in establishing gentle, flexible boundaries but still employs a loaded word. However, I cannot help but worry for the other aspects of female identity that are being blurred out of a definable existence, like what it means to be feminine and what it means to be a mother, in this burgeoning postmodernist world that seems to be eager to ditch titles before the prejudice.

Lesbian Continuum

I was surprised to see Adrienne Rich’s philosophy of lesbian continuum within her essay because she seems to see heterosexuality and male homosexuality as so opposed to lesbian existence. Rich seemed to come up with a plethora of examples for how women are obligated to be heterosexual, but she also seems to have as many ways that a woman could be on her lesbian spectrum. Given that there is a boundless notion of woman’s attraction to woman and that her sensuality is so multi-faceted, she draws harsh divisions between the heterosexual world and the lesbian world. She reminded me of Irigaray’s theories in that sense, with the complicated views of female sensuality, but a view of the masculine presence as threatening. However, Irigaray writes on a largely symbolic level, and Rich seems to have more complaints about societal binarisms she sees are true and dangerous.

I had a difficult time sorting through the two tensions of a unique lesbian existence and a lesbian continuum. I was especially confused based on how extraordinarily broad her definition of the lesbian continuum is:

” many more forms of primary intensity between and among women, including the sharing of a rich inner life, the bonding against male tyranny, the giving and receiving of practical and political support… marriage resistance,” (292)

This puzzled me because virtually every feminist would fall under this category. If you are a person who supports female freedom of expression and equality and who feels a strong kinship towards women, you are a lesbian, according to this definition.

I thought her definition of lesbian existence might make the lines between lesbianism and heterosexuality and highlight how lesbianism is a specific issue in the feminist community. However, I became more confused when she defines it as “breaking a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on male right of access to women,” (292). If given this definition out of context, this could easily be identified as the definition for the feminist agenda.

This brings me confusion to a head. According to these definitions it seems that all feminists are automatically on the lesbian continuum. This does not personally bother me as a conclusion, but based on Rich’s assertion that lesbians have a very unique existence that needs to be celebrated, I feel that I should not be included. I wonder why Rich constructs much of her essay as a cry for rising up against an opponent, when by this very definition, it seems that a feminist man, who is attracted to men could even be a lesbian as well.

I hope to puzzle through this more during class, but I am at least pleased to find that the issues and confusion I am having are because of issues of blurred divisions between binaries. I found this argument to be a far more compelling aspect of the compulsory sexuality discussion than the Rich’s additions to Kathleen Gough’s descriptions of how men impair the sensual rights of women. It was intriguing and compelling because it was so difficult for me to reason through.

The Lesbian Continuum: A Personal and Historical Timeline

In Adrienne Rich’s article, “Compulsory Sexuality and the Lesbian Existence,” the writer claims that it is necessary to examine the “Lesbian Continuum” and “Lesbian Existence” instead of looking at compulsory sexuality in terms of “lesbianism.” As she writes, “the term lesbian has been held to limiting, clinical associations in its patriarchal definition, female friendship and comradeship have been set apart from the erotic, thus limiting the erotic itself.”(349) After all, If we’re looking at nonscientific explanations for compulsory heterosexuality, i.e. societal or historical, then we cannot consider the homosexual experiences between women on merely scientific or clinical terms.

I found the idea of a lesbian continuum particularly interesting because it is a medium of analyzing history as well as the personal lesbian experiences of a woman. Since this experience is profoundly feminine, it is necessary too look at it in only a woman context. This means that in investigating the lesbian experience, we must separate if from that of gay men or other “against the grain” oppressed groups because by blurring their differences, we lose our ability to recognize “the particularly oppressions, meanings, and potentialities”(349) of woman as a group. Thus, a lesbian continuum and not a gay continuum.

It is important not to think that a continuum somehow denotes that there are levels or degrees of lesbian experiences. It is harmful to think of the lesbian experience in this way because it suggests that there are ways to be less lesbian and therefor more socially acceptable.”Lesbian existences comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is a direct or indirect attack on male right of access to women…an act of resistance.”(349) All woman exists on this continuum because it is a central fact of history that woman have always resisted the tyranny imposed upon them by men. (351) Therefore, women have existed in and out of this continuum for hundreds of years. Therefor, the experiences of the independent female communities of the 12th and 15th centuries(350) are no less a rejection of patriarchal domination than the Indian wives in Fire who take control of their own sexuality and reject the compulsory heterosexuality of their community.

Rich’s “Lesbian Existence/Continuum” & The Color Purple

By Frank Miller

In her essay, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Adrienne Rich introduces her audience to what she perceives as the commonly practiced travesty that is heterosexuality. She begins with a quote borrowed from Alice Rossi’s “Children and Work in the Lives of Women”: ”biologically men have only one innate orientation–a sexual one that draws them to women–while women have two innate orientations, sexual toward men and reproductive toward their young” which she offsets with her argument. She explains that the dismissal of the lesbian perspective is commonplace in literature; subsequently arguing that some texts may have greatly benefited from the author’s acceptance “with lesbian existence as a reality, and as a source of knowledge and power available to women; or with the institution of heterosexuality itself as a beachhead of male dominance.”

Touching on several influential psychological texts, including Nancy Chodorow’s The Reproduction of Mothering, she determines how closely the lesbian has been integrated and appropriately judged, deeming nearly all of the texts as insufficient. Her psychological analysis leads her to propose an essential question: “If women are the earliest sources of emotional caring and physical nurture for both female and male children, it would seem logical [to ask] whether the search for love and tenderness in both sexes does not originally lead toward women.” She confesses that she is not a believer that lesbian relies on the mother’s unconditional love unto the child; yet, explains that she has seen a significant increase in fathers tending to children. She claims that as some believe this may deplete machismo, she believes that the transition could continue “without radically altering the balance of male power in a male-identified society.” From this point she highlights Kathleen Gough’s “The Origin of the Family,” a compiled list of the unwritten rules of archaic machismo expressed upon women, rules which seem “innate” for men engaging in heterosexual practice.

However, the core of Rich’s argument lies within the coined term: “lesbian continuum” which may be defined as “a range–through each woman’s life and throughout history–of woman-identified experience.” The lesbian continuum also includes “the sharing of a rich inner life, the bonding against male tyranny, the giving and receiving of practical and political support.”

Though published in 1980, it seems as if “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” had Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982) in mind during the process in which it was being written. Celie is made an example of by nearly all of Gough’s points by several of the men of the novel. One heterosexual male in particular, Alphonso, the man who she believes to be her father “force[s] [his] [male sexuality] upon [her],” “den[ies] [her of her own sexuality],” “command[s] or exploit[s] [her] labor to control [her] produce,” “control[s] or rob[s] [her of her] children,” “cramp[s] [her] creativeness,” and “withhold[s] from [her the] large areas of the society’s knowledge and cultural attainments” all by keeping her prisoner in his home, perpetually raping her, and forcefully removing the children they conceive. Her submission to heterosexuality continues when she becomes an ”object in male transaction” when Alphonso trades her to Mr.____. Yet, her luck changes when she encounters Shug Avery, Mr.____’s mistress who comes to live with him. As Rich proposes the two share “a rich inner life” as their bonding leads the two to begin “sleeping[ing] like sisters, me and Shug” (126). However, Celie’s relationship with Shug transcends a “desired genital sexual experience with another woman.”  Shug, who is “practical[ly] and political[ly] independent on her own” appropriately gives Celie such “support” by informing her to stand up to Mr.____’s attacks, as the two end up “bond[ing] against the male tyran[t]” that is Mr.____. Being insulted in the most heterosexually driven manner possible: “You black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman…you nothing at all” (168), Celie fully encompasses Rich’s argument. She demonstrates the strides of practical and political support of the lesbian continuum and her liberation from heterosexuality as declares her and Shug’s departure from Mr.____’s heterosexually-dominated oppressive home: “I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly…But I’m here” (169).

 

The Shared Existence of the Lesbian and Homosexual Man.

Adrienne Rich makes a strong case for the lesbian as the ultimate marginalization within feminist culture in her essay, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” She writes of a “male power” that not only “deny women [their own] sexuality,” but also “…force [male sexuality] upon them.” (291) This is a system so rigid that it makes for a society where deviant sexuality is nearly impossible to conceive of.  Rich seeks to expand the term “lesbian”  into a word that includes any woman who have at any time engaged in “primary intensity among women” and asserts this group to be one that “bonds [sic] against male tyranny.” (292) In doing this, Rich removes the lesbian from the GLBTQ community, and reappropriates them as representative of the female struggle, albeit on a sexual extreme. This reappropriation is made, however, at the expense of the male homosexual; further, in defending this decision, Rich engages in the very of stereotyping of homosexual men that she loathes being done to women who act outside the compulsory frame.

In order to strengthen the association between lesbians and women at large, Rich describes what she calls “a lesbian continuum, we can see ourselves as moving in and out of this continuum, whether we identify as lesbians or not.” (293) Rich is adamant in her assertion that lesbianism need not describe the kind of physical/emotional/sexual relationship as the ones seen in the society of compulsory heterosexuality. One can include themselves within the lesbian continuum whether one seeks to live the life of a Beguine, “who ‘practiced Christian virtue on their own, dressed and living simply and not associating with men’” or even simply if one remembers “the impudent, intimate girl friendships of eight or nine year olds.” (293)

Women like Emily Dickinson and Zora Neale Hurston, according to Rich, lived outside of the world of compulsory heterosexuality and instead within the lesbian continuum:

Dickinson never married, and had tenuous intellectual friendships with men, lived self-convented in her genteel father’s house in Amherst, and wrote a lifetime of passionate letters to her sister-in-law Sue Gilbert and…her friend Kate Scott Anthon. Hurston married twice but soon left each husband…her survival relationships were all with women, beginning with her mother. Both of these women in their vastly different circumstances were marriage resisters, committed to their own work and self-hood…Both were drawn to men of intellectual quality; for both women provided the ongoing fascination and sustenance of life.”
Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (Rich, 293)

By being “committed to their…self-hood,” Dickinson and Hurston eschewed one of the principles of male power, and refused “to cramp their creativeness” for the sake of living within the frame of compulsory heterosexuality. (293, 291) These women, who didn’t (to our knowledge) engage in openly homosexual behavior, instead represented those women who shared an aforementioned “primary intensity” and passed in and out of the lesbian continuum as a result.

These women, Rich asserts, are considered to be (among other things), “emotionally and sensually deprived,” and as creative women, “the work…is undervalued, or seen as the bitter fruit of ‘penis envy’ or the sublimation of repressed eroticism or the meaningless rant of a ‘man-hater.’ (293) Rich is calling upon all women, regardless of sexual identity, to rise up against these stereotypes, for they subjugate all women for their gender as much (and according to Rich, if not more) than they subjugate lesbians for their sexuality. In this sense, lesbianism for Rich is a symptom of greater discrimination, one that can only be overcome with the help of all women.

Immediately before this “rich” text is a passage that, in analyzing anachronistically, serves to first separate the bonds between lesbians as members of the “gay” community so that what comes after can cement the bonds between lesbians and women at large. Rich, however, breaks the bonds of sexuality unconvincingly. She claims that because lesbians are tethered to gay men, they are “deprived of a political existence through ‘inclusion as the female versions of male homosexuality.” (292) Without going further, this statement provokes many questions. For one, is Rich implying that lesbians are denied the rights they deserve because of their connection to male homosexuals? Or are lesbians perhaps pushed to the background while male homosexuality is given comparatively greater political freedom?

Rich seems to be implying a little of both:

“…there are differences: women’s lack of economic and cultural privilege relative to men; qualitative differences in female and male relationships – for example, the patterns of anonymous sex among male homosexuals, and the pronounced ageism in male homosexual standards of sexual attractiveness.”
Rich, 292

What Rich fails to articulate (purposefully or not) is the great dichotomy inherent in the very pairing of “male” and “homosexual.” While men may have more economic freedom on paper, there were many decades (certainly at the time Rich penned this essay) that men could not claim such high paying jobs were they to openly admit their homosexuality. This secrecy extends to Rich’s point about level of anonymous sex, beyond it being a well-worn argument by the religious right against the immorality of homosexuality in both sexes.

Lesbianism may be “a profoundly female experience,” but Rich doesn’t admit an important reality: gays and lesbians are marginalized for the same reason, that being their divergence from heterosexuality (compulsory or otherwise). The fact that women are subjugated regardless of sexuality does not make her plight any more important, or the plight of male homosexuals any less relevant. (292)

Women support

    Adrienne Rich’s article, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existance” brings forth many familiar ideas that we have discussed throughout the semester. From the idea of “women as gifts” presented by Gayle Rubin in “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex” where she discusses the argument presented by Levi-Strauss, women and their relation to the exchanging of gifts, to the idea of women as entertainers which can be seen through Sarah Jane.  In the beginning of the article Rich states that, “women are the earliest sources of emotional caring and physical nurture for both female and male children… why in fact would women ever redirect that search” (290).  From this early statement and Rich’s desire to change our sexual perceptions lead me to think that she is comparing the emotions women derive from lesbian relations to the emotions she gets from a heterosexual one. This lesbian relation is, in my opinion, not literal as in two women being physically attracted to one another but overall the relationship between women. If the first relationship both sexes encounter is one with a woman then it is natural for women to seek out other women for support, the support which a man cannot give. She verifies my idea with the example of the poet H.D who states, “I knew that this experience, this writing-on-the-wall before me, could not be shared with anyone except the girl who stood so bravely there beside me….for without her admittedly,  I could not have gone on.” (292-293)  This support, of course, is ridiculed by men since the grouping of women is a threat to the “establishment”

       Rich presents many examples such as the Beguines, Emily Dickinson and Zora Neale Hurston. each of these women support the endeavors of other women and sought support from them, “women provided the ongoing fascination and sustenance of life”(293).  She shows that heterosexuality is not the”natural emotional and sensual inclination of women” (293) because women that live this way are deprived emotionally and sensually. Of course, if a woman is not defined by this relationship she is then defined by negative words such as, bitch and man hater. This idea is often presented in the work place when woman hold a position of authority. 

Deviant

Adrienne Rich’s essay “Compulsory Heterosexual and Lesbian Existence”, composes a strong challenge to some of our sexual assumptions. Rich exposes familiar arguments that may arise in women’s heads: If the first erotic bond is to the mother, she asks, could not the “natural” sexual orientation of both men and women be toward women? Her radical questioning has been a great force in feminist reorientation in sexual matters. Her conception of “lesbian continuum” arises the question whether lesbianism is defined by all interactions among women or is it an erotic choice?
What I understand from Rich’s assumptions is that the phrase “compulsory heterosexuality” refers to the idea by male dominated society that the only “normal” sexual relationship is between a man and a woman. In her essay she argues that heterosexuality is not innate in humans.
“If we think of heterosexuality as the natural emotional and sensual inclination for women, lives such as these are seen as deviant.” (Rich,233) The quotation refers to the description of both Emily Dickinson’s and Zora Neale Hurston’s “life styles”. Adrienne Rich argues that patriarchal, male dominated society insists on “compulsory heterosexuality” because men benefit from male-female relationships not only in the physical but in the emotional. Therefore, she argues that since the heterosexual relationship is romanticized men see any other type of relationship as deviant.

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

Jackie Torres

In the essay Compulsory and Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence by Adrienne Rich, explains the bewilderment the author feels about the negative outlook society has on love between two women. Rich mentions the innate love that women offer as mothers to men and women, the female is innately nurturing, “why in fact women would ever redirect that search”. Rich says that there are more other things that should be disturbing like, “wife beating; father-daughter, brother-sister incest ;”( pg. 349). These ideas are what should be stopped, yet they are accepted in many places because they involve heterosexual relationships.

Lesbian continuum is used in this essay to represent the ongoing existence of lesbians. Lesbians will still be present in the future just like they were in the past. Rich compares the experience that most humans have had which is breast feeding, to the relationship between women to women helping each other. The examples Rich mentions are women who share businesses, friendships between teenage girls, and women who raised schools to help young girls. These are all bonds between females which can be relatable to any women whether lesbian or not. Rich explains that if all of these bonds and works are just seen as life styles we are emotionally and sensually depriving the work of women. To most the support amongst women is usually because they are bonding over male hate or penis envy. However, this is not necessarily accurate, though women can feel they must abide to each other surrounded by this male-dominated society. Rich says society should go beyond the norm and “examine women’s lives, work, and groupings within every racial, ethnic, and political structure.”