Where vwould you put Wuthering Heights?


At 11:52 AM 1/12/2003 +0000, you wrote:
>Alison's mention of the novel here is very apt, as, I think, there are more
>clear examples of both successful and failed imaginative explorations of the
>Other in that genre than in poetry, SuperPoet from the Planet Stratford
>excepted (wink).
>
>Maybe Euripides too but let's be wary of Greeks for the moment.
>
>I am thinking here of whole catalogue of examples, just to mention a few:
>Conrad was almost incapable of portraying a female character without
>sentimentalisation, vide Nostromo, and Mrs Gould, with the singular
>exception of Verloc's wife in The Secret Agent, which character I have
>always had the suspicion ( a horrible one) is based on Conrad's own wife;
>George Eliot could certainly portray male characters convincingly, except
>when romantic interest was involved, then something would go oddly wrong,
>her portrayals of supposedly male preserves like bar-rooms and horse-fairs
>were also much more convincing than most male novelists of the time; James
>Joyce The Prurient managed, despite his foibles, to give voice to women's
>experience better than almost any novelist of the last century in the
>Nausicca episode and of course Molly Bloom's soliloquy; while in Jane Austen
>although the portrayals of males are limited by the bounds of the writer's
>concerns within those limitations they are convincing, so the walking
>marriage propositions and wise uncle-likes do succeed artistically as long
>as one accepts the conventions.
>
>I also a remember a very fine novella by an Australian woman which is
>profoundly concerned with feminine experience but switches in its last
>chapter to a male narrator. I felt no disjunction in this but rather a
>simultaneous sense of aesthetic pleasure and awareness of the heightened
>dramatisation of the questions the book asks via this tactic.
>
>Best
>
>Dave
>
>
>
>David Bircumshaw
>
>Leicester, England
>
>Home Page
>
>A Chide's Alphabet
>
>Painting Without Numbers
>
>http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 12:13 PM
>Subject: Re: Skivvy
>
>
>Hurriedly - I remember years ago reading Madame Bovary, and being
>knocked out by it; a wonderful portrayal of a woman being stifled,
>from childhood on, of enormous sensitivity.  I was always puzzled by
>the  division of sex in writing - that is, when I first fell over it
>as a young woman - it never occurred to me that I couldn't imagine
>being a man.  What's an imagination for?  It's the barriers of
>imagination we ought to argue against -
>
>Best
>
>Alison
>
>
>
> >It has been said that a male could not have written the poem,
> >now I'd mention here Anne Carson's 'Autobiography of Red', a sequence by a
> >woman which deals with male homo-erotic desire and does so to my mind with
> >considerable success. Likewise a male writer can speak in the female voice,
> >if the writer has the imaginative capacity.
> >
> >_you_ said that Dave - I disagreed with you.  And I think you have
>clarified
> >the elision here - being able to write in the voice of a man or a woman is
> >one thing.  Of course it is possible, though there are dangers and
>pitfalls.
> >The most glaring being the easy assumption that the poet knows all about
>the
> >other and can write from their position without ever having to question
> >his/her own.
> >
> >But the assertiont that the resulting text could have been written by a man
> >or a woman only makes sense if you completely erase gender from
> >consciousness.  Even DB  cant do that I think!
> >
> >I have been following the discussions on gender through the whirlwind of
> >this first week back at work - like others I am very grateful to Alison,
> >Jill and Rebecca for articulating some thoughts that I am very much in
> >agreement with.  I particularly liked your comments about sub/dom in the
>CAD
> >Jill!
> >
> >Liz
> >x
>
>--
>
>
>
>Alison Croggon
>Home page
>http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
>
>Masthead Online
>http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/