MASTER IN ADVANCED ENGLISH STUDIES: LANGUAGES AND CULTURES IN CONTACT UNIVERSIDAD DE VALLADOLID Departamento de Filología Inglesa 2013-2014 Final Master Thesis FEMALE WASTELANDERS REVISITED: GENDER EQUALITY IN THE WASTE LAND. Alexandra Paniagua Villoria VALLADOLID 2014 MASTER IN ADVANCED ENGLISH STUDIES: LANGUAGES AND CULTURES IN CONTACT UNIVERSIDAD DE VALLADOLID Departamento de Filología Inglesa 2013-2014 Final Master Thesis FEMALE WASTELANDERS REVISITED: GENDER EQUALITY IN THE WASTE LAND. This thesis is submitted for the degree of Master in Advanced English Studies: Languages and Cultures in Contact. Date. Director: V.º B.º Signature Abstract For years many critics strongly believed and defended Eliot’s misogyny in his poem The Waste Land. But under the main motif of his poetry, that of sterility in human relations, the grief appears shared by both sexes. My approach to his poem will defend that Eliot was not mistreating the female gender, but matching both genders under the mechanization of sexual relations and its consequences: lack of regeneration and communication. Keywords: Gender Studies, Feminism, Gender Equality, T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land. Durante muchos años, la crítica literaria ha considerado que The Waste Land, de T. S. Eliot, es una muestra de la misoginia del autor ,pero ambos sexos parecen estar condenados bajo el tema principal del poema: la esterilidad de las relaciones humanas. El enfoque de este análisis libera al poema de tal etiqueta, ofreciendo así una visión más conciliadora y ecuánime del poeta.. El autor retrata a ambos sexos de la misma manera, mostrando la mecanización de las relaciones sexuales y las consecuencias de dicha mecanización: la incomunicación y la falta de regeneración. Palabras clave: Estudios de Género, Feminismo, Igualdad de Género, T. S. Eliot, La Tierra Baldía. Table of contents Female Wastelanders Revisited: Gender Equality in The Waste Land ................................................ 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Marie and her cousin ....................................................................................................................... 3 The lovers in the hyacinth garden ................................................................................................... 4 The neurasthenic woman and her silent interlocutor ...................................................................... 6 Lil and her husband ....................................................................................................................... 10 The typist and the young man carbuncular ................................................................................... 11 Tiresias, the androgynous character .............................................................................................. 13 Death by Water and the end of the cycle ...................................................................................... 20 Who is the third walking beside you? ........................................................................................... 21 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................... 22 Works Cited .................................................................................................................................. 25 Paniagua 1 Female Wastelanders Revisited: Gender Equality in The Waste Land Introduction T. S. Eliot has been charged with misogyny and scholars have ventured that he tried to hide his supposed homosexuality under the mistreatment of the female gender by depicting them as victims of a male-centered society. As an example of this, Weinberg has declared that Eliot always shows a “scathing criticism of woman” (1984: 31). Miller also contributes to this idea when he talks of Eliot’s misogyny and troubled sex (2005: 314). I consider that these readings are only an attempt to demonstrate an idea that nowadays is widely accepted and that everybody is trying to change, but committing ourselves to interpretations that always place woman on the victim side may blur other possible readings. The sense of a unique imagination proper to women, and thus, a certain way to read literature, may reiterate the familiar stereotypes that the feminist movement is trying to erase (Showalter, 1977: 12). Domna C. Stanton has also called attention upon this point: “a disconnection with the real can lead to a regressive mystification of the ‘feminine’ and may yield nothing more than a new ‘lingo’, a code doomed to repetition and extinction” (1985: 73). I agree with Gilbert-Maceda, who has highlighted the way in which both men and women in The Waste Land are often described in the same “unflattering light” (1994: 107). In fact, I consider The Waste Land to be one of those literary texts that can be defined, in words of Monique Wittig, “as a war machine” (Butler, 1990: 119) – a text that directly attacks the hierarchical division of gender. My approach will be based upon mainly the combination of two works: Judith Fetterley’s The Resisting Reader and Mary Devereaux’s article “Oppressive Texts, Resisting Readers and the Gendered Spectator: The New Aesthetics”. Fetterley’s theory basically aims to add the female point of view of a work that has been initially thought for an implied male reader. To do so, she puts on the front line the female reading of texts, resisting the imposed Paniagua 2 male interpretation of such works. Fetterley defends a reading of the text against the text itself (1978: 13-56). Following this line of re-interpretations, Deveraux points out the necessity of “re-reading, [as] reading against the grain, or [as] re-vision”. This basically consists of the reappropiation of existing works by offering an alternative interpretation (1990: 346). My analysis of The Waste Land will not be another one in which the role of the female characters are labeled as “victims”, but rather a new feminist approach. I will try to demonstrate that both genders are treated equally in the main theme of the poem, which centers on confusion and identity crisis. Besides this conciliatory feminist approach, I will also consider Eliot’s own vision of the literary process. In reading The Waste Land, one should be aware of Eliot’s own conception of poetry and criticism, not only to get the closest approach to what the poem meant for him, but also to establish a framework for future interpretations of his work. Eliot’s own notes to the poem mark those limits, and texts such as The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism shed some light to the possibilities of the different readings of his writings: What a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed, in the course of time a poet may become merely a reader in respect to his own works, forgetting the original meaning – or without forgetting, merely changing. (UPUC 1950: 130) In this way, my reading of The Waste Land would be also guided by Eliot’s own perception of literary writing and theory; since I will pay close attention to the author’s notes and intentions, but also adding a new value to his poem, regarding his treatment of gender, and a new perspective for future feminist incursions in his work. In order to do so, I will analyze the contrasts and parallelisms between the two genders. This analysis will be applied to the five couples that appear in the poem; namely Marie and her cousin (in “The Burial of the Dead”), the lovers in the hyacinth garden, the Paniagua 3 young man carbuncular and the typist in “The Fire Sermon”, the neurasthenic woman and her silent interlocutor in “A Game of Chess”, and finally, Lil and her absent husband, also present in this second section. Furthermore, I will expand this analysis by studying the figure of Tiresias, the hermaphrodite voice of the poem, who, as Eliot himself comments in his own note to l. 218, Although a mere spectator and not indeed a “character,” is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest […] and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem. I will establish a comparison between Tiresias and Madame Sosostris, the female prophet, and widen this analysis in relation to “Death by Water” and “What the Thunder Said”. Marie and her cousin In a first approach to the poem, we can clearly identify five couples who act through binary combinations, in which everything that is represented by a woman is completed by a man, and vice versa. This complementarity shows the need for a balance that, whenever is not reached, breaks the cycle of regeneration. In “The Burial of the Dead” Marie and her cousin appear as the first couple of the poem. Although her male counterpart is only seen through Marie’s eyes, we can observe that he is the one to save her from her fears by “taking her out on a sled” (l. 14). They went down the mountains, in the same direction that she takes when she goes south during winter. These actions acquire a substantial symbolism when related to the title of this section, “The Burial of the Dead”, and to the associations that the name “Marie” brings to our mind. Mary works as a double-edged (s)word: her name can represent, at the same time, the two “traditional” types of women in Western Catholic culture, Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene; the pure, motherly, submissive woman and the ‘prostitute’, the independent woman free of male dominance. She herself and the dichotomy she embodies are released when she is thrown from the heights of the mountain downwards, that is– when she Paniagua 4 is demystified. “The Burial of the Dead” also buries these old preconceptions, this dualistic image, and the new possibilities that are to come scare Mary. She finally decides to trust her cousin and, by “holding on tight” (l. 16), by getting closer to the opposite sex and reaching a balance, she reaches her liberation: “[…] And down we went. / In the mountains, there you feel free” (l. 16-17). Marie is free from labels but also from any kind of male influence, since she is the only one described without the presence of a love/sexual relationship, although the male presence is also present in this liberation. The reference to the descent from the mountain also evokes Dante’s liberation after his descent to hell. Marie’s liberation is, therefore, both literary and real, sacred and earthly, and represents the purge from old (hi)stories and traditions, establishing, at the same time, a connection with them. The lovers in the hyacinth garden In the scene referred to as “the hyacinth garden”, we find a girl recalling a previous year’s event with the hyacinths: “You gave me hyacinths first a year ago” (l. 35). This reference to the past implies that the fertility cycle, both the spiritual practice and the sexual relationship, has already come to an end and that it needs to start over again: “first a year ago”. It presupposes a necessary repetition that the male speaker in the hyacinth garden seems not willing to perpetuate, or at least not able to do so. Right after this erotico-mystical encounter, he remembers: […] I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. (l. 38-41, emphasis added) Paniagua 5 We should remark the way in which we have access to the hyacinth man’s feelings: he does not speak. The girl tries to communicate with him but she finds silence. Traditionally, silence “belonged” to women, and it was a silence imposed by the superior status of men in the patriarchal system. Here, we find the opposite thing: although it may seem that it is the hyacinth lover’s choice not to speak, it is actually a silence required in order to make the gender system work. These requirements are what Judith Butler referred to as “performativity of gender”, or how gender is constructed through society’s different speeches and how we help to perpetuate it through the performance of assigned roles (1990: 15-16). Thus, the hyacinth man consented to establish a relationship with this girl, not in a natural way and because he wanted to, but because he is trying to fulfill what is expected from him. This behavior can also be found in the typist and in the boudoir scene, which I will analyze later. Another reason to believe that both male and female genders are treated in the same way is the gender ambiguity detected in this passage by Cyrena N. Pondrom; namely, the homoerotic connection of the girl with the myth of Hyacinth. This connection, Pondrom argues, “forces a construction of gender” (2005: 426). The possibility of finding ambiguity in this part of the poem means that the gender roles are not clear. Therefore, one could consider that one gender is being submitted to the other, and vice versa: it would not be just one gender which is mistreated, but both and none at the same time. I will reinforce this reasoning by providing a very basic and symbolic interpretation of Hyacinth’s death: it is said that Apollo killed his lover Hyacinth when the discus he had thrown accidentally struck the young boy. Apollo wanted to demonstrate that he was better at throwing the discus, and Hyacinth wanted to impress Apollo (Ovid, Book X, 162-219). Giving more importance to one of the two sides destroys a relationship, since it destabilizes the equality inside it. A balance between the two parts is necessary for regeneration. Paniagua 6 Eliot’s text is also ambiguous regarding the presupposed failure of the sexual encounter and the amorous relationship between the girl and the speaker. Relating the scene to that of Tristan und Isolde, which closes this section with verse 42: “Oed’ und leer das Meer.”, we can see how the insufficiency of response before such a situation is shared by both the girl and the speaker. As Marja Palmer argues, The Wagnerian frame of expectation and abandonment surrounds its context, consisting of an ambiguous relationship between the hyacinth girl and the speaker. . . Was the hyacinth girl failed by the speaker, or has he been deceived by her? The text provides no clear answers. (Palmer, 1996: 164) The girl’s memories seem to be full of melancholy. The speaker’s thoughts are full of deception. Both are facing a situation that none of them are able to control: but who is the one to blame? Both the girl and the male speaker are powerless before a disconnected communication and forgotten rituals. The neurasthenic woman and her silent interlocutor In “A Game of Chess” we find the couple formed by a neurasthenic woman, described only by the objects that surround her and who directly addresses her partner in what is almost a monologue; and the partner himself, who does not appear described in any way and has no voice. The woman’s attributes are transformed into something artificial, and the man’s memories also refer to the artificiality of perception: he only remembers the Shakespearean quote “those are pearls that were his eyes”; therefore, perception in both genders is lost, especially when regarding the capacity of empathy (Palmer, 1996: 178). It is important to remark, as Carol Christ does, that “Eliot associates carefully composed female image with an insufficiently articulated male voice” (1981: 36). Especially in this section of the poem,