Patriarchal myths in postmodern feminist fiction: a select study

Abstract

The discourse of mythology is male-centered in that mythological stories have represented feats of masculine prowess. Women on the other hand remained as docile puppets with their roles being confined in as much as playing victims, gorgons, or mute observers, with no representation of feminine prowess or female heroism or even female nature as such. They were only looked at from male point of view. Feminist writers have been concerned with the complete absence or rather negative portrayal of women in literature. Therefore they seek to re-read patriarchal myths and in the process, they not only represent women from women s point of view, but tend to rewrite the literary canon. In the present study an attempt is made to compare the textual representations of gender and gender roles by the select postmodern women writers- Angela Carter, Arundhati Roy, Monique Wittig, Joanna Russ, Margaret Atwood, Fay Weldon, Ursula Le Guin and Kate Millet. It has been deduced from a cross textual analysis of their texts, that their writings, through the deliberate use of myth, tend to break the binaries of western thought system on which is found the base for women s oppression. Their method of indulging in gender subversion has been read from the French feminists (Irigaray, Kristeva, and Cixous) literary critical theory of ecriture feminine. The thesis is organized into seven chapters. The introductory chapter offers a brief survey of theories and definitions of myth. It also presents a brief overview of the use of myth in literature by writers over the centuries. It also discusses the nexus between language and myth. There is a brief survey of how women have been portrayed in literature and hence the need for reinterpreting myths by women writers towards positive representation. The chapter also gives a brief introduction to the romantic and modernist use of myths in writers like Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, Gertrude Stein, Colette, Edith Wharton, postmodernists like Cixous and the postcolonial women writers