Women have been left out of culture
and history because history is considered to be a male centered term. Again
there are some places where men cannot enter. In defining female culture,
historians make a clear distinction between the male considered appropriate
roles, activities, tastes, behaviors for women and the reality of women’s
lives. Women’s sphere is defined and maintained by men. By this, women
constitute a muted group.
To redefine the relationship between
the “dominant group” and “muted group” Showalter takes help from Ardener’s
Diagram. By the term “muted” Edwin Ardener suggests problems both of language
and power. Both muted and dominant group (male) unconsciously generates beliefs
but the dominant group controls the forms or structures which make the muted
group bound to express their beliefs through the allowable forms of dominant
structure. Ardener shows a diagram on the relationship of the dominant and
muted group.
In the diagram, much of the muted
circle “Y” falls within the boundaries of dominant circle “X”, there is also a
crescent of ‘Y” which is outside the dominant boundary and is called “wild”.
This wild zone is considered as women’s culture specially which means literary
no man’s land, a place forbidden to men. The opposite thing happens to man’s
“X” zone. Experimentally, it stands for the aspects of the female lifestyle
which are outside of men. “X” zone of male alien to women. But
metaphysically it has no corresponding male zone because all of male
consciousness is within the circle of dominant structure and female knows all
about male. Here from the male point of view, the wild “Y” is always
imaginary. In terms of cultural anthropology, women know what the male crescent
is like but men do not know what is in the wild.
In some feminist criticism, the wild
zone becomes the place for the women-centered criticism, theory and art. It
makes the invisible visible, the silent speak. French feminist critics would
like to make the wild zone the theoretical base of women’s difference. In their
texts, the wild zone becomes the place for the revolutionary women’s language,
the language of everything that is repressed. Many forms of American radical
feminism also romantically assert that women are closer to nature or
environment. So, they should build the place fully independent from the control
and influence of “male dominated” institutions- the news media, the health,
education legal systems, art, theatre and literary worlds.
But we must admit that no writing is
possible without dominant structure. No writing, no criticism, no publication
is fully independent from the economic and political pressures of the male
dominated society. The most important implication of this model is that women’s
fiction can be read as a double voiced discourse containing a ‘dominant” and “a
muted story.”
The concept of a woman’s text in the
wild zone is a playful abstraction. Women’s writing is a “double voiced
discourse” that always embodies the social, literary, and cultural heritages of
both the muted and the dominant. Every
step that feminist criticism takes toward defining women’s writing is a step
toward self- understanding as well. Women writing are not then inside and
outside of the male tradition, they are inside two tradition. Indeed, the
female territory might well be envisioned as one long order, not as a separate
country, but as open access to the sea.
The more important aspect of Ardener’s
model is that there are muted groups other than women such as the blacks in America. In America the
blacks belong to the muted group and the white dominant group. The dominant
structure may determine many muted structures. For example a black America woman
poet may be affected by both racial and sexual politics. So, cultural situation
should not determine women’s writing, but women’s writing should be considered
in the background of cultural pattern.
This reminds Alien Showlter about the
duty and responsibility of female writers. A female writer who writes under the
influence of the male dominated culture is more or less influenced by that
culture. Now the duty of gynocriticism is to precisely map out the cultural
field of women and prevent the influences of the dominant look on the muted
group.
Regarding the major literary
movements, Elaine Showlter says, in the history of literature women also have
no place. The movement Renaissance was not a movement for women. The Romantic
Movement was also not for women. Now it is the duty of “gynocriticism” to
provide women with a respective place in the history of literature.
In order to make the rule of muted
group more clear Alien Showlter says, from female perspective a text is not
only mothered but also parented. A women’s text confronts both paternal and
maternal forerunner and must deal with the problems and advantages of both
lines of inheritance.
Thus, women’s text is rich in the
experience of both muted group and dominant group. In this way, she uses Ardener’s
model to show the condition as well as the possibility of women.
