1995 Visions of the Self
MLS 401
Charles Strain
Synthetic Essay – Women’s Struggle to Find the Self
Grade: A-
Synthetic Essay
For many women, the search for a sense of self is extremely difficult. Women’s selves frequently get lost somewhere along the way in their attempts to fit images described by patriarchy. A woman’s sense of self comes pretty much pre-defined. Right from birth females are told how to be in the world. And how to be as a female frequently has little to do with inner reflection and contemplation of the self. It’s a package deal that usually concentrates on the outer aspects of a woman’s identity. The package tells women what they should look like, what their characteristics should be, and what their roles should be. Women internalize these definitions that serve men at the expense of women selves. The packaged self that patriarchy provides has an external focus that values outer appearance over inner reflective qualities. Our inner selves are either ignored or not valued. The oppressive patriarchally defined identity that many women adopt, becomes an invisible cage, silently draped over women’s selves. Under these circumstances, the discovery of true self is frequently accomplished through cracks in the cage of internalized oppression. Women must find ways to see around, beyond, or through the invisible cage of male-defined identity. Without a specific intention to seek a liberated self, many women may never learn who they really are; many women go through their entire lives thinking they are who they were told to be. They miss out on an exciting and uplifting journey.
Not true for the women authors I discuss. They created cracks in their cages and facilitated an inward journey of self-discovery. Each of the authors, Mary Wollstonecraft, Annie Dillard, and Maxine Hong Kingston, illustrate unique methods of cracking the cages of their selves that allow them to journey inward. Wollstonecraft’s (1792) sought her sense of self through reason. Dillard’s imagery of the instinctive weasel provided a path out of the cage and into the self. Kingston (1989) got to her core through disobedience to demands for silence, by speaking the unspeakable she empowered her journey to the self.
Wollstonecraft (1792) questioned the patriarchal notion that women could not use reason, a notion used to construct women’s cages, to disempower them intellectually. Wollstonecraft (1792) said that, “… man’s pre-eminence over the brute creation …” (1), “is found in “(1) … Reason” (1). In defining women without reason patriarchy also attempts to place itself pre-eminently over women. Her inner self-knowledge allowed her to know that reason was not testosterone dependent. The discovery of reason within herself was all she needed to start her journey to self.
[1] Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) reasoned, “Taught from infancy that beauty is a woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison” (Morgan 1991, 34). She illustrates the externalization of women’s identity. She knew that women’s compulsion to attain beauty would not free their minds; preening would never serve to gain equality for women, but reason could.
Wollstonecraft (1792) expects women to use their reason to rise above, “… the mistaken notions that enslave my sex” (2). She says women should submit to reason, not to man. Society’s order, rather than being inverted by women using their reason, would actually become balanced (Wollstonecraft 1792, p. 2). The balance would have a profound effect on human relations.
Dillard escaped the cage that imprisoned herself through the vision of a weasel, who was, “Obedient to instinct…” (11), rather than to societal directives. Her description of the weasel’s eyes actually compares quite well with the invisibility of women’s internalized selves, “… two black eyes I didn’t see, any more than you see a window” (Dillard 13). A great description of the invisibility of oppression! The weasel’s eyes did indeed reach into herself. Instinct was a way to avoid societal definitions.
Dillard also creates images that describe the shock a woman might experience when first gaining insight into the self beyond the cage, “stunned into stillness” (Dillard 13), “… clearing blow to the gut” (Dillard 14), “… it emptied our lungs” (Dillard 14), “… a bright blow to the brain” (Dillard 14). These phrases describe how the discovery of a feminist consciousness feels. It’s a profound inner insight into the unknown self.
“Brains … and secret tapes …” (Dillard 14), women’s secret tapes, internalized messages of the patriarchally defined self. “I would like to learn, or remember, how to live” (Dillard 15). Dillard realizes that something is missing, that something is a strong sense of self. She must learn how to get to a different place beyond the tapes. She seeks a self-defined self. A self that wanted the freedom to be, to experience the world at a primal natural level apart from the cage of patriarchally defined normalcy. The weasel was her metaphor for a liberated self, it gave her a way to view deep within her caged self.
Dillard longs to “… calmly go wild, Down … where the mind is single, … Down is out, out of your ever-loving mind and back to your careless senses” (Dillard 15). I love these images, they illustrate seeing beyond the cage and getting out of the encaged self’s skin. Her self also envisioned, “… the dignity of living without bias or motive” (Dillard 15), the image of a liberated free self.
Kingston (1989) had to peek beyond the fear imposed by violent images used to silence Chinese women. Silence seals off the self from the truth. Silence is a barrier that blocks the validation of the self. Her mother demands silence on the first page of her book, “You must not tell anyone” (Kingston 1989, p. 1). Her mother proceeds to tell her a terrifying talk-story about her no-name aunt whose home was raided as punishment for a rape that caused her to become pregnant, an unforgivable sin for a Chinese woman. The frightening violent images serve to brand the invisible cage onto the self, ” … hands flattened across the panes, framed heads, and left red prints” (Kingston 1989, p. 4). Villagers’ red hands, dripping with chicken blood from a destructive raid on the no-name aunt’s home. Kingston (1989) thought, “… there is more to this silence: they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have” (16). By refusing to be silent she ended no name aunt’s punishment and her participation in it; she remembered her no name aunt, and she was not forgotten after death.
The image of the villagers with, “… eyes rushing like searchlights” (Kingston 1989, p. 4) on a family trying to hide an unacceptable truth. Truths Kingston (1989) does not hide. Her inner eyes also rushed for truth, she used truth to disempower the myths that caged herself.
Kingston (1989) takes the sting out of the destructive metaphors by etching them on the page. Her disobedient speech lifts the cage off of her potentially disjointed self. Speaking of the emotional imprints dilutes the potential damage to her spirit. She penetrated the fear, spoke of it, thus diluting the power of the fear, allowing her to share through her book, the torturous inner journey she traveled in search of a whole and valued self.
Kingston (1989) even develops a sarcastic voice, to express her anger at the oppression from both cultures. She sees beyond both the American and the Chinese caged selves. She uses an American slang phrase to refer to the man who got her no-name aunt pregnant, she hoped he, “wasn’t just a tits-and-ass man” (Kingston 1989, p. 9). It’s evident that her self-derived power from speaking of women’s torture, especially by speaking out in a manner that patriarchy would not expect from a Chinese-American woman.
Kingston’s (1989) fear went as deep as thinking that the ghosts of her ancestors had access to her thoughts, “… feeding on her very thoughts” (Kingston, 1989, p. 69). Exactly what internalized oppressive ideologies do to the oppressed.
Kingston’s (1989) mother actually initiated the betrayal of the silence by telling her daughter the story about cutting her tongue. Her mother told her that to prevent her from being tongue-tied she, “… pushed my tongue up and sliced the frenum” (Kingston 1989, p. 164). Despite its gruesome image, this metaphorically curative procedure did actually serve to free Kingston’s (1989) voice. Kingston (1989) carried forth her mother’s secret hope for the future by not keeping silent and breaking the spell of the crippling talk-stories. Silence her mother’s true self may have unconsciously also wanted the silence broken.
Kingston (1989) puts words to her feelings about confusing cultural messages which eloquently describe an entrapped self. “Even now China wraps double binds around my feet” (Kingston 1989 p. 48). Despite the fact that foot binding has been outlawed in China, Kingston’s (1989) imagery illustrates how one’s mind can be just as bound by oppression’s cage as by physical feet binding. Double binds around her feet describe the power of psychological mind-binding.
Auditory tortures such as: “… a sound so high it could drive you crazy” (Kingston 1989, p. 73), “… the sound tears the heart” (Kingston 1989, p. 73), “… tortured people screaming, and the cries of their relatives who had to watch” (Kingston 1989, p. 73) are diffused of power when spelled out. She combines visual and olfactory senses, “… wood dripping with blood, … the stench was like a corpse exhumed for its bones too soon” (Kingston 1989, p. 75); the broken silence provides a path toward the development of the self. Black letters imprinted on the pages of her book function to dilute the ghost stories and act as lenses to help visualization of the self within.
As an adult Kingston (1989) finally tells her mother, “I’ve found some places in this country that are ghost-free”. … I think I belong there, where I don’t catch colds or use my hospitalization insurance. Here I’m sick so often, I can barely work.” (Kingston 1989, p. 108). Here she makes a connection not only with the separation needed to discover her sense of self but between the damaging images and physical as well as psychological health.
Wollstonecraft (1792) is right, women certainly can use reason, but women also see beyond the tunnel of reason. Women who do go within to discover their self are the frightening ones in our society. For they are not obedient, they are strong and find a way to go within to find their sense of self – a self that may be separate, having nothing at all to do with men.
Dillard’s sense of self may at first appear seductive to men, they may perceive the desire to go wild in a sexual light. But the wild instinctive delight is within Dillard’s self. It can be quite blissful just to be one’s self.
Kingston’s (1989) “haunted” literary journey reflects upon her Chinese-American upbringing that disguised her true self with secret violent images. Kingston’s (1989) voice offers a glimpse into the devaluing Chinese and American images that formed her invisible cage. She finds the power of self by facing the family ghosts that served as her captors. Through disobedience to the command for silence, she frees herself to look deep within for the self.