The Feminine Mystique in Amor by Clarice Lispector and To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessing

MELCI – ETUDOS FEMINISTAS E ESTUDOS QUEER

The FeminineMystique in Amor

by ClariceLispector and ToRoom Nineteen byDoris Lessing

Docente: Marinela FreitasEstudante: Lorna Marie Kirkby

UP201401386

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The Feminine Mystique in Amor by Clarice Lispector and To Room

Nineteen by Doris Lessing

The term ‘the feminine mystique’ was coined by Betty Friedan

in a text of the same name published in 1963. In The Feminine

Mystique Friedan addresses the dissatisfaction of the American

housewife after what Friedan sees as a regression in American

feminism where after fighting for equal rights under the law

and in education, women found themselves back in the home,

once again identifying themselves principally as wives and

mothers. The result of The Feminine Mystique was a resurgence of

feminist consciousness among middle class women and an

understanding of how the situation of American women during

the 1950s and 60s was having a negative impact on their state

of mind, causing what Friedan called ‘the problem with no

name’ due to the fact that women were suffering in silence.

The term ‘feminine mystique’ refers specifically to the image

and definition of femininity as propagated by a patriarchal

society through education, the media, politics and even

psychiatry. The two short stories that I have chosen, Amor by

Lispector and To Room Nineteen by Lessing both have protagonists

that fit the description of the kind of woman most deeply

affected by the feminine mystique. Both Ana (from Amor) and

Susan (from To Room Nineteen) are white, middle class women, with

husbands, children, homes, domestic help and routines. In this

essay I am going to explore the representation of the feminine

mystique in Amor and To Room Nineteen, as a comparison of how the

Lispector and Lessing have used the form of the short story to

critique and problematize the identity of middle-class women

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under the pressures of the feminine mystique as defined by

Betty Friedan. Firstly I will undertake an analysis of how the

feminine mystique is evident in the lives of our two

protagonists, Ana and Susan, especially in terms of

motherhood. Secondly, I will consider the effect of psychology

on the creation of the feminine mystique and how ‘the problem

without a name’ is expressed through the trope of madness in

the short stories; and finally I will explore the use of

different narrative modes and language by both Lessing and

Lispector in order to express the voice of the feminine

mystique, and the deviant voices of Ana and Susan.

First, it should be noted that Amor, To Room Nineteen, and The

Feminine Mystique come from different societies and social

configurations however, feminist consciousness and the

progress of women’s liberation have followed similar patterns

in Britain, Brazil and America. Just like Friedan’s

description of the United States, British and Brazilian women

mobilised en masse in the early twentieth century to fight for

women’s suffrage, winning the vote in Britain in 1928 and in

Brazil in 1932. However, in America, Britain and Brazil, there

was a long period after first-wave feminism (when women had

gained the right to vote, educate themselves and work) and

second-wave feminism, (when women began to address their role

in society) during which women returned to the home to marry

and bring up children. Britain, like America, didn’t see any

significant women’s liberation action until the 1960s, when

Friedan’s text The Feminine Mystique was successful in raising

women’s consciousness of the widespread dissatisfaction

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amongst middle-class housewives in Britain as well as America.

In Brazil, there was a longer delay between first and second

wave feminism, possibly due to the restrictions to freedom of

speech imposed during the military dictatorship from 1964 to

1985. Eventually women’s liberation groups began to form and

find a voice in Brazil during the 1970s, around a decade after

the emergence of similar groups in Britain and America.

Lessing published To Room Nineteen in 1963, the same year as

Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, presenting a similar image to that

of 1960s America, yet from a slightly different perspective.

Having grown up in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and moved

to England in 1949, Lessing’s work reveals a critical distance

from the social structures in Britain. Harold Bloom describes

Lessing’s role as writer: “Doris Lessing is the interpreter,

and the power she seeks to gain over the text of life is

always reductive: tendentious, resentful, historicising.”

(Bloom, 2003: 3-4) It is difficult to categorise Lessing’s

work under any one movement, but she is often described as

having used an expanded version of realism that integrates

deeper psychological realities through visionary tactics to

express her characters’ submerged dreams, desires, and fears.

Clarice Lispector published Amor in 1960, which, in contrast

to To Room Nineteen and The Feminine Mystique, was comparatively much

earlier than the growth of second-wave feminism in Brazil. So

whereas there may have been growing recognition of the

dissatisfaction and restriction facing housewives in middle

class England and America at the time, the changes to follow

this recognition in Brazil did not begin to take place until

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around a decade after the publication of Laços de família, the

collection of short stories in which Amor was first published.

Like Lessing, Lispector has also stretched the boundaries of

the short story to create accurate portrayals of social

situations of the middle class, yet she is most celebrated for

the language that she uses to aptly describe the anguish and

doubt of female characters; in particular, French feminist

critics such as Hélène Cixous have heralded Lispector as an

clear example of L’écriture féminine1

Both authors, thus, have found unique ways to express social

conditions for women through the form of the short story;

defying the perception that short stories thrive on unitary

schema in the creation of Amor and To Room Nineteen, which

represent complex narratives exploring psychological crises in

the middle class housewife in order to critique the

restrictive definition of women’s role – Friedan’s feminine

mystique – and the way in which this is propagated and upheld

by social structures. Lessing and Lispector have, thus, had to

construct the feminine mystique before they can dismantle it.

In this manner, the introductions to Ana and Susan mirror

Friedan’s description of the feminine mystique on multiple

levels.

In both Amor and To Room Nineteen the protagonists Ana and Susan

are introduced and identified primarily according to their

domestic functions as wives and mothers. In To Room Nineteen,

Susan and her husband Matthew are described together, as a

1 Term coined by Hélène Cixous as a subversive language that subverts the existing male structures of language in order to express a uniquely feminine experience.

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unit, as though Susan is only valid as part of this ‘they’,

where the family belongs to them both, the house belongs to

them both, their happiness belonged to them both. “And so they

lived with their four children in their gardened house in

Richmond and were happy. They had everything they had wanted

and had planned for.” (Lessing, 2002: 353) Whilst Matthew

continued his job as a newspaper editor, Susan did not “make

the mistake of taking a job for the sake of her independence,

which she might very well have done” (Ibid.: 355) – here,

‘independence’, or an identity outside the occupation of wife

and mother, is passed off as a frivolous pursuit whereas the

responsible, ‘intelligent’ and ‘sensible’ thing to do is to

follow the feminine mystique, and the role set out for women

by the patriarchal social structures and expectations in

middle-class Britain. Unlike Lessing’s rather lengthy account

of how her protagonist became ‘Susan Rawlings: wife and

mother’, in Amor Lispector summarises Ana’s occupation as

housewife in the very first line, in one concise gesture of

domesticity: “Um pouco cansada, com as compras deformando o

novo saco de tricô, Ana subiu no bonde.” (Lispector, 1990:

27). With remarkable concision and accuracy, we have a clear

image of Ana: a woman who has been busy yet not challenged

(‘um pouco cansada’) and who is immediately defined as a

housewife by her props (‘compras’) and as relatively wealthy,

probably a member of the middle class (‘novo saco de tricô’,

‘subiu no bonde’). So the first image we are presented with as

readers is not of a personality, or an individual woman, but a

physical description that portrays Ana’s occupation, gender,

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and class. This image is then validated as the description of

Ana continues but, again, telling us little about her, and a

lot about her position in society, and society’s definition of

success for a woman. “Os filhos de Ana eram bons, uma coisa

verdadeira e sumarenta. (…) A cozinha era enfim espaçosa”

(Ibid.). Here the focus is on what society has deemed an image

of success for a woman; good children, and a spacious kitchen

which therefore defines Ana as ‘successful’ rendering the

subsequent psychological crisis even more poignant.

The way in which women came to be defined by their roles as

wife or mother is examined in detail by Friedan in The Feminine

Mystique, particularly the question of how the mystique is

created and spread in society. One of the many examples given

by Friedan is the use of feminine media and women’s magazines,

such as the Ladies’ Home Journal which encouraged women not only to

accept the roles of wife and mother as enough, but to feel

pride in this role. Writers such as Dorothy Thompson in the

Ladies’ Home Journal turned the humble housewife into a heroine of

sorts, elevating the roles of mother and wife to divine

heights and making it seem like the most noble ‘occupation’

for a woman:

“The homemaker, the nurturer, the creator of ourchildren’s environment is the constant recreator ofculture, civilization, and virtue. Assuming that she isdoing well that great managerial task and creativeactivity, let her write her occupation proudly:‘housewife’” (Friedan, 1963: 36-37).

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Thus, the roles of wife and mother are elevated to a

civilizational level. The housewife’s role as life-giver is

particularly important to both Amor and To Room Nineteen as under

the influence of the feminine mystique both Susan and Ana

perceive their roles as essential to the survival of their

families. The pride of the life-giver is evident in Amor in a

passage where Lispector uses interior monologue to show the

reader how Ana sees her role as housewife:

“Ela plantara as sementes que tinha na mão, não outras,mas essas apenas. E cresciam árvores. Crescia sua rápidaconversa com o cobrador de luz, crescia a água enchendo otanque, cresciam seus filhos, crescia a mesa com comidas,o marido chegando com os jornais e sorrindo de fome, ocanto importune das empregadas do edifício. Ana dava atudo, tranquilamente, sua mão pequena e forte, suacorrente de vida.” (Lispector, 1990: 27)

Using organic language consistent with creation, Ana has

elevated her role as housewife to that of life-giver and

creator. The mythical image of a woman growing a home and

family from seeds in her strong hands, like God in the

Christian creation story, and breathing life – “corrente de

vida” – into the family unit that she has created seems to

mirror exactly the words of Dorothy Thompson as quoted above.

The words of the feminine mystique have entered Ana’s own

consciousness of her identity so that her task does indeed

feel civilizational and creative. In the feminine mystique,

the housewife is no longer that ‘Angel of the house’2 that2 The ‘Angel in the House’, a reference the poem of the same name by Coventry Patmore, was described by Virginia Woolf as the image of the ideal woman, of what a woman should be, and also claimed that in order to be a writer, a woman must kill‘The Angel in the House’ first. The picture painted of this image by Woolf in Professions for Women, resembles an early example of a kind of feminine mystique.

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Virginia Woolf fought so strongly to overcome, but instead she

has become the ‘Goddess of the house’: creator and protector

of the family. However, with the ability to create life,

necessarily comes the responsibility of protecting it and the

possibility of destroying it.

Along with imbuing pride into the role of housewife, the

feminine mystique also imposes upon women a fear of failure,

as is evident in To Room Nineteen:

“Susan’s practical intelligence for the sake of Matthew,the children, the house and the garden – which unit wouldhave collapsed in a week without her.” (Lessing, 2002:354)

Here, Lessing conveys the housewife’s fear that if she fails

in her role, the world that she has created could be

destroyed. The same sense of danger and power is also

expressed in Amor metaphorically using the stove whose ominous

presence appears throughout Amor. At the beginning of

Lispector’s short story “O fogão enguiçado dava estouros”

(Lispector, 1990: 27), and the fear of the power that this

appliance holds builds throughout the text until at the end:

“se fora um estouro do fogão, o fogo já teria pegado em toda a

casa!” (Ibid.: 36). Here, the image of the stove, identified

by its domestic function, and the danger of it exploding could

represent the destruction that Ana believes she could cause

should she give into her psychological crisis rather than

returning to her home, extinguishing “a pequena flama do dia”

(Ibid. 37). The frequent ‘estouros’ emitted by the stove,

(Woolf, 1972: 235-240)

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therefore, represent Anas occasional psychological crises3, and

work as an ominous reminder of the supposed dangers of

deviating from the feminine mystique.

This fear of not living up to the feminine mystique, meant

that women developed guilt complexes as they interiorised the

models set out for them by the patriarchy. In The Feminine

Mystique, Friedan attributes this guilt partly to feminine and

child psychology describing how, thanks to the feminine media,

women in the 1950s and 60s were spectacularly well-versed in

psychology. In particular, Freud’s theories on infant

psychology and the development of neuroses became well-known

internationally, and were subsequently integrated into the

feminine mystique as an incentive for women to focus their

energies on child-rearing and home-making. Freud claims that:

“it has been possible to confirm, what has often alreadybeen suspected, the extraordinarily important influenceexerted by the impressions of childhood (and particularlyby its earliest years) on the whole course of laterdevelopment.” (Freud, 2001: 183)

As the so-called ‘dominant parent’, according to Freudian

theory, the mother becomes almost entirely responsible for any

neuroses that a child may suffer in infancy or adulthood. Many

of Freud’s theories focus on the role of the mother, but

especially his theories of infantile sexuality in which it is

the mother’s duty to ensure the ‘normal development’ of a

child’s sexuality, where the child should grow out of his

3 The tone at the end of the story along with the husband’s comment “Deixe que pelomenos me aconteça o fogão dar um estouro” seems to suggest that the husband is usedto seeing his wife this way, as does his seemingly practices gesture of “afastando-a do perigo de viver” (Lispector, 1990: 36, 37).

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desire for his mother and those who remain involved in their

infantile sexuality develop neuroses. Friedan describes the

effect of the spread of Freudian theory on the feminine

mystique:

“And singled out for special attention was the ‘mother.’It was suddenly discovered that the mother could beblamed for almost everything. In every case history oftroubled child; alcoholic, suicidal, schizophrenic,psychopathic, neurotic adult; impotent, homosexual male;frigid, promiscuous female; ulcerous, asthmatic, andotherwise disturbed American, could be found a mother”(Friedan, 1963: 180)

This blame-culture centred on the mother became interiorised

by women, who began to blame themselves and feel guilty for

the slightest deviation from the feminine mystique. This is

also clear in both of the short stories where Lessing and

Lispector demonstrate the mothers’ feelings of guilt. In Amor,

when Ana realises she is late home we see a reaction of

intense guilt “quando se lembrou das crianças, diante das

quais se tornara culpada, ergueu-se com uma exclamação de

dor.” (Lispector, 1990: 33) here the phrase ‘diante das quais

se tornara culpada’ reflects exactly Friedan’s description of

how the role of ‘mother’ became almost synonymous with guilt

and blame according to Freudian psychology. The mere existence

of her children renders Ana guilty, but especially after

having deviated from the feminine mystique during her

psychological crisis. In To Room Nineteen Susan Rawlings also

demonstrates an awareness of the Freudian role of the mother:

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“Children needed their mother to a certain age, that bothparents knew and agreed on; and when these four healthywisely brought-up children were of the right age, Susanwould work again.” (Lessing, 2002: 355)

This sentence exemplifies the way that the heavy

responsibility of the mother according to the feminine

mystique and Freudian psychology are accepted as fact by men

and women, and how following the model of femininity as

prescribed by patriarchal society was seen as the ‘wise’ or

‘intelligent’ decision.

Throughout To Room Nineteen, the words ‘intelligent’, ‘sensible’,

and ‘choice’ appear with noticeable frequency, especially in

the initial description of Susan’s marriage and motherhood.

Equally, in Amor the narrator repeats the sentence “Assim ela o

quisera e escolhera” (Lispector, 1990: 28, 29). Friedan claims

that women’s identification of themselves solely as wives and

mothers was not so much a choice, but was imposed upon them by

images in the media of women beaming with satisfaction with

large houses, families, appliances, domestic help and hard-

working husbands. The repetition of the words ‘choice’,

‘quisera’ and ‘escolhera’, call into question the nature of

this supposed ‘choice’ as described by the feminine mystique.

On the contrary, Lessing and Lispector go on to describe their

protagonists who most certainly aren’t ‘beaming with

satisfaction’. Ana is described as sitting “num suspiro de

meia satisfação” (Ibid.: 27) and the narrator in To Room Nineteen

describes a certain ‘flatness’ which elevates to ‘bitterness’

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as Susan is left at home to care for the children whilst

Matthew Rawlings conducts extra-marital affairs in the city.

To begin with Susan dismisses her feelings as ‘absurd’ and

‘ridiculous’, as they do not comply with the fact that she

should be satisfied with her life: “her intelligence continued

to assert that all was well” (Lessing, 2002: 357). For Ana,

too, “havia aos poucos emergido para descobrir que também sem

a felicidade se vivia”, “Criara em troca algo enfim

comprensível, uma vida de adulto.” (Lispector, 1990: 28). Thus

both Ana and Susan, have assumed the model of the feminine

mystique as the sensible and best decision, Susan dismissing

her feelings of dissatisfaction as ridiculous, and Ana

assuming that a life ‘sem a felicidade’ was normal, and part

of being an adult woman.

The perception that the feminine mystique is normal, gives a

sense of ‘abnormality’ or ‘wrongness’ to anything that does

not conform. Aside from the aforementioned guilt complex that

women developed out of fear, women also began to believe that

they had psychiatric abnormalities if they deviated even

slightly from the strict model of femininity propagated by the

mystique. Susan Rawlings, in To Room Nineteen questions her own

sanity, saying to her husband “I think there must be something

wrong with me” and the narrator describes Susan as “filled

with emotions that were utterly ridiculous, that she despised”

(Lessing, 2002:364, 363), ridiculous that is, compared to the

frequently referenced ‘intelligence’4 of the story that means

anything in line with the feminine mystique. Friedan explains4 The word ‘intelligently’ appears fifteen times in To Room Nineteen.

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how women began to seek psychiatric help, believing themselves

to be abnormal:

“Of the growing thousands of women currently gettingprivate psychiatric help in the United States, themarried ones were reported dissatisfied with theirmarriages, the unmarried ones suffering from anxiety and,finally, depression.” (Friedan, 1963: 20)

In Amor the idea of abnormality or wrongness is expressed

physically through Ana’s body which displays signs of

sickness: “Ana respirava pesadamente”, “uma vida cheia de

nausea”, “pernas débeis”, e “não conseguia orientar-se”

(Lispector, 1990: 30, 31). These physical manifestations of

un-wellness are consistent with vertigo and the physical

sensation of disequilibrium mirror’s Ana’s perception of

herself as mentally unbalanced, linking the character to the

concrete to the spatial.

Spaces are used in both Amor and To Room Nineteen in order to

differentiate between the feminine mystique and deviation from

the mystique. The most obvious reference made by Lessing is

the fact that Susan Rawlings feels she needs a ‘Room of her

Own’, which brings to mind Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.

Despite Woolf’s original lecture being centred on the

conditions of women writers5, the reference to Woolf’s text

implies a separation from the world of domestication that is

controlled and ‘owned’ by the patriarchy. Susan’s search for a

space where she can escape the roles of wife and mother under

the patriarchal rule of domesticity is particularly telling

5 “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (Woolf, 2000: 6)

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and is reflected in her choice of spaces. First, she chooses

the spare room, which works well until “The family and Mrs

Parkes knew that this was ‘Mother’s Room’” (Lessing, 2002:

366). When the room becomes defined as a space for ‘mother’,

it loses its anonymity, and Susan feels just as restricted as

before: “she felt even more caged there than in her bedroom”

(Ibid.). In this sentence and in the multiple other references

to cages and prisons in the story, Lessing demonstrates the

way that the patriarchy’s control over women’s roles is a way

of denying them freedom.

Eventually Susan decides to rent a hotel room, the ‘Room

Nineteen’ of the title, thus removing herself completely from

the domestic environment where she is defined by her function

as wife and mother. Lessing’s decision to give Susan an alias

whilst using the hotel room foregrounds the question of

identity.

“She was no longer Susan Rawlings, mother of four, wifeof Matthew, employer of Mrs Parkes, and of Sophie Traub(…). She was Mrs Jones, and she was alone, and she had nopast and no future” (Ibid.: 376)

In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan identifies the feelings of

dissatisfaction and abnormality in women as a kind of identity

crisis. “The core of the problem for women today is not sexual

but a problem of identity – a stunting or evasion of growth

that is perpetuated by the feminine mystique.” (Friedan, 1963:

65). Friedan’s thesis that women are suffering identity crises6

6 An important and controversial assertion as the identity crisis was generally perceived as a male affliction, generally associated with the figure of the tortured male artist.

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is supported by Susan’s need and desire to escape her

identifying function in order to seek out a new identity.

Lispector, however, chooses to criticise the feminine

mystique’s control over women’s identities not by staging an

escape from this identity, but by demonstrating the effects of

mystique upon a woman who is afraid to reject the identity

giver to her by patriarchal society. Unlike Susan, Ana feels

safe and secure under her functional identity. However, when

she leaves the domestic space at that “Certa hora da tarde

[que] era mais perigosa” (Lispector, 1990: 28) when she is not

occupied with the chores that validate her identity as

housewife, she is most vulnerable to crisis.

Amor can be seen as a critique of or dialogue with Sartre’s

Being and Nothingness where Sartre describes people as being mere

functions, just as in the feminine mystique where women are

identified only as wives and mothers. “Those ‘people’ are

functions: the ticket-collector is only the function of

collecting tickets; the café waiter is nothing but the

function of serving the patrons.” (Sartre, 1956: 495) This

form of identity is, however, insufficient and the binary and

essentialist nature of both Sartre’s work and the

prescriptions for women under the feminine mystique is

challenged in Amor through the removal of the objectifying

gaze. This happens when the blind man chewing gum appears,

sending Ana into crisis. Not only is her function removed by

the fact that she cannot be objectified and defined through

the gaze of the other, but she is also confronted by two

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functionless items: “O cego mascava chicles… Um homem cego

mascava chicles.” (Lispector, 1990: 29)

Therefore, both To Room Nineteen and Amor highlight the

limitations of a system that identifies people solely

according to their functions. Both Ana and Susan’s identity

crises, caused by the limitations of the identities conferred

upon them, are defined in their respective stories by imagery

consistent with madness. This imagery is most striking in both

stories in the garden scenes. In Amor, Ana sits in the Jardim

Botânico and surrenders to her psychological crisis. In this

section of the narrative, the tone changes drastically,

appearing as a grotesque nightmarish scene dominated by fear,

paranoia, and hallucinations.

“Inquieta, olhou em torno. Os ramos se balançavam, assombras vacilavam no chão. Um pardal ciscava na terra. Ede repente, com mal-estar, pareceu-lhe ter caído numaemboscada. Fazia-se no Jardim um trabalho secreto doquale la começava a se aperceber” (Lispecto, 1990: 32)

This passage highlights paranoia which is supported by

grotesque and nightmarish imagery. Separated from her role

defined by the feminine mystique, Ana enters a world of

freedom, yet this frightens her, and the sudden “ausência de

lei” is a world that she is unable to comprehend. Susan

Rawlings has a similar encounter in her garden in Richmond:

“But she was filled with tension, like a panic: as if an enemy

was in the garden with her.” (Lessing, 2002: 360). The enemy

that Susan and Ana fear in the gardens is the absence of law,

the freedom from the feminine mystique which represents the

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private identity that they have been denied. This enemy

represents their inner anguish and the possibility of

realising identities outside of the feminine mystique.

However, whilst Ana ends her ‘episode of madness’, returning

to her domestic function for the sake of her family, Susan

confronts the ‘enemy in the garden’, and takes on the

‘madness’ that, according to the mystique must surely be the

root of such rebellion.

“Susan looked at him thinking: who is the stranger? Whatis he doing in our garden? Then she recognized the manaround whom her terrors had crystallized. As she did so,he vanished. (…) so I’ve seen him with my own eyes, soI’m not crazy after all – there is a danger because I’veseen him” (Lessing, 2002: 367-368)

In recognising the enemy in the garden and accepting his

existence, Susan realises she is not crazy, just as Friedan

assures women in The Feminine Mystique – it is not the woman, or

women, who are crazy, but there is a problem with the system.

It is just after this passage, after accepting the existence

of the enemy in the garden that Susan begins to consider

renting a room outside the home to search for a true identity.

“She brushed thick healthy black hair and thought: Yet that’s

the reflection of a madwoman” (Ibid.: 372). At this moment,

Susan becomes the madwoman, a trope that has long been used in

women’s writing as a means of expressing repressed anger and

anguish against patriarchal systems.

Gilbert and Gubar famously brought the madwoman to the

forefront of literary criticism with their text The Madwoman in

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the Attic, where the nineteenth-century female writers were said

to “obsessively create characters who enact their own, covert,

authorial anger” (Gilbert and Gubar, 2000: 77). Gilbert and

Gubar’s theory was that the madwoman character acted as a

double for the author who did not want to go against the

strictures of a patriarchal society on whom they depended for

publication. In this case, however, the madwoman and the

heroine are one and the same character. Lessing was able to

use the figure of the madwoman in a much more subversive way

by allowing her protagonist to become the madwoman, accepting

the role of deviance, and using it to her advantage, to

distance herself from the restrictive role set out for her by

the patriarchy: “‘Yes, I think it would be a good idea on the

whole,’ she said, with the cunning of a madwoman evading the

real point.” (Lessing, 2002: 373)

Lessing uses the figure of the madwoman from literary history

in order to firstly question the definition of ‘madwoman’, and

secondly she gives the madwoman to her protagonist as a tool

to use against the patriarchy that defined the madwoman as mad

in the first place. Lispector, on the other hand, doesn’t take

her character as far as Lessing’s. Whereas the time span of

Lessing’s story allows a gradual development of Susan into Mrs

Jones, the madwoman, Lispector’s story takes place in less

than one day. Instead, Ana is only beginning to notice the

feminine mystique, and has not yet realised that the family

won’t collapse without her. When Ana is confronted with her

‘mirror’, in the form of her son, she is frightened by what

she has become, as opposed to Susan’s calm acceptance of the

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madwoman. Upon returning home, Ana frightens her young son,

and is able to see the changes in herself through the way he

looks at her, “A criança mal sentiu o abraço se afrouxar,

escapou e correu até a porta do quarto, de onde olhou-a mais

segura. Era o pior olhar que jamais recebera.” (Lispector,

1990: 34). This sends the protagonist back into the guilt

complex of the feminine mystique, and ultimately back towards

her role as housewife, unlike Lessing’s protagonist who

gradually phases herself out of her domestic function, giving

more duties to the housekeeper, and eventually hiring a German

au pair who moves into ‘Mother’s Room’ and “plays mistress of

the house” (Lessing, 2002: 374) when Susan is in room

nineteen being Mrs Jones.

The distinction between Mrs Jones and Susan Rawlings is not

only played out through the literary trope of the madwoman,

but also through voice and language. I would like to suggest

that in both Amor and To Room Nineteen there exists both the

language of the patriarchy and the feminine mystique as well

as the subversive and distinctly feminine voice and language

of the female psyche in defiance of the patriarchy and the

mystique. Virginia Woolf wrote in A Room of One’s Own that when a

woman began to write she might find that “there was no common

sentence ready for her use” (Woolf, 2000: 76), in my opinion

both Lispector and Lessing find ways to create discourses

within their narratives that subvert and counteract the

language of the patriarchy. The language and voice in Amor

change when Ana surrenders to her psychological crisis upon

entering the botanical gardens. This change is played out

21

through the dichotomies of gender that help to show a distinct

change in the narrative voice. The gender dichotomy that I

believe to be most present in the language used by Lispector

is the ‘reason/ emotion’ dichotomy: “‘Rational’ suggests a

comparison with ‘emotion’, and also with ‘body’, ‘passions’,

‘nature’, ‘experience’ and the ‘irrational’” (Prokhovnik,

1999: 1). This dichotomy is perfectly exemplified when

Lispector writes:

“(…) seu gosto pelo decorative se desenvolvera esuplantara a íntima desordem. Parecia ter descoberto quetudo era passível de aperfeiçoamento, a cada coisa seemprestaria uma aparência harmoniosa; a vida podia serfeita pela mão do homem.” (Lispector, 1990: 28)

The phrase ‘a vida podia ser feita pela mão do homem’ is

especially significant; firstly it implies that the ‘mão do

homem’ is a model for perfection and order, and secondly it

shows how it is the models created by man, such as the

feminine mystique, that Ana (and other women) are trying to

conform to.

Even after her crisis begins on the tram, the narrative voice

still appears to express the crisis through language

consistent with the patriarchy and maleness, as defined by the

reason/ emotion dichotomy, for example, “perceber uma ausência

de lei” (Ibid.: 30) gives a description that is defined by its

relationship to the patriarchal restrictions When Ana sits in

the Botânical garden and, in a symbolic gesture of rejecting

the identity conferred upon her by the patriarchy, “depositou

os embrulhos na terra” (Ibid.: 31), the narrative voice

22

changes from one side of the dichotomy to the other. Once the

voice of the feminine mystique has been silenced, there erupts

a language that seems to subvert all male structures such as

law, language, reason and the patriarchy itself. Hélène Cixous

wrote of Clarice Lispector:

“There are women who speak to watch over and save, not tocatch, with voices almost invisible, attentive, andprecise like virtuoso fingers, and swift as birds’ beaks,but not to seize and mean, voices to remain near bythings (…)” (Cixous, 1979: 8)

This description of Lispector’s voice is extremely accurate of

the voice used in the botanical gardens scene, where Lispector

is not following the rational patriarchal language of men to

‘seize and mean’, but is instead expressing that uniquely

feminine voice of l’écriture feminine. For example, during the

narration of Ana’s crisis, Lispector uses emotionally charged,

oxymoronic and chaotic language: “A crueza do mundo era

tranquila.” or “uma exaltação perturbada”. The oxymoronic

language subverts the male narrative structures and their

insistence on order and rationality by challenging the

accepted sequence of words and meanings as they are

constructed into a sentence. This subversion of the structure

of language, is supported by the natural and libidinal

language that seems to express something essential and

primordial, pre-existing the male domination of feminine

being: “Nas árvores as frutas eram pretas, doces como mel.

Havia no chão caroços secos cheios de circunvoluções, como

pequenos cérebros apodrecidos.” (Lispector: 1990, 32). This

23

voice, however, is once again quietened as she “agarrou o

embrulho”, returning home to her role as housewife.

Whereas in Amor the distinction between the two voices and

discourses is relatively clear cut, in To Room Nineteen Lessing

presents us with a longer, more drawn out battle between the

voice of the feminine mystique and the voice of the rebellion

against the mystique, where both voices are present throughout

the short story. We can link the two discourses and voices to

their relevant personages; the narrative employs a voice

consistent with the viewpoint of the feminine mystique for

Susan Rawlings, and the voice that subverts and questions the

feminine mystique, is that of Mrs Jones. The power play

between the two voices is expressed through a relatively

complex and ruptured narrative voice where one is always

trying to subvert the other. Early in the narrative, it is the

voice of the feminine mystique that is prevalent, and the

second voice is just beginning to question the mystique and

the discourse:

“For it was inevitable that the handsome, blond,attractive, manly man, Matthew Rawlings, should be attimes tempted (oh, what a word!) by the attractive girlsat parties she could not attend because of the fourchildren; and that sometimes he would succumb (a wordeven more repulsive, if possible) and that she, a good-looking woman in the big well-tended garden at Richmond,would sometimes be pierced as by an arrow from the skywith bitterness.” (Lessing, 2002: 357)

In this passage the discourse of the feminine mystique is

conveyed through language consistent with the world that it

24

had created for women – “the four children”, “good-looking

woman”, “well-tended garden at Richmond” – and by the tone

which suggests rules and regulations that are always abided by

– “inevitable”, “could not attend”. The voice that counteracts

the feminine mystique is maintained in a subordinate position

by the use of parentheses and attacks the patriarchal feminine

mystique through its language by questioning the use of

certain words. Later in the narrative, when Susan Rawlings has

been largely transformed into the madwoman Mrs Jones, the

roles are reversed:

“Yes, I think it would be a good idea on the whole’ shesaid, with the cunning of a madwoman evading the realpoint.

In the mirror she could see Matthew lying on hisback, his hands behind his head, staring upwards, hisface sad and hard. She felt her heart (the old heart ofSusan Rawlings) soften and call out to him. But she setit to be indifferent.” (Ibid.: 373)

Here, it is the ‘old heart of Susan Rawlings’ that is

relegated to parentheses, and the voice of the madwoman that

is verbally expressed through dialogue. By this point the so-

called madwoman, Mrs Jones, subverter of the feminine

mystique, is strong enough to stifle the voice of Susan

Rawlings, wife and mother. The progression from one voice to

another is significant and also helps us to understand the

final suicide of Susan Rawlings. Susan Rawlings becomes Mrs

Jones through the course of the narrative as the deviant voice

overpowers the conformist voice. So when Susan Rawlings loses

the freedom of Room Nineteen, no longer able to be Mrs Jones,

25

and unable return to being Mrs Rawlings (the husband having

found her replacement in a long term affair, and the Aupair

acting as mother to her children), she is nobody. The act of

removing her freedom has made it impossible to maintain her

new identity, yet she has already phased herself out of her

old identity. It is the removal of Room Nineteen that is the

real death here, and the final act of suicide was but the

removal of this empty shell.

Although the ending of Amor is significantly less tragic,

ending with the flame of Ana’s crisis being extinguished as

she goes to bed with her husband, this tale recounts only one

day in the life of Ana the Brazilian housewife. The fact that

this one day bears remarkable similarity to that of the early

marriage of Susan Rawlings does raise questions as to Ana’s

destiny. What is clear though is, despite writing from

different countries and different backgrounds, both Lessing

and Lispector have critiqued the social structures that form

and control the lives of women like Ana and Susan and in doing

so have exposed the nature of the feminine mystique in their

respective societies. Lessing’s detailed psychological account

of the tragic fate of the urban middle-class housewife in

Britain, brings to light the ways in which the feminine

mystique controls women using guilt, fear, and the subtlety of

a system that makes women believe that they have chosen their

fate. Through employing the traditionally subversive trope of

the madwoman and expressing Susan’s life through a complex and

ruptured narrative that posits the voice of the mystique

against the voice of the woman who rejects the mystique in a

26

kind of narrative battle, Lessing highlights the need for

change in a society that is repeatedly killing women into

specific feminine identities. Equally Lispector has portrayed

a poignant tale of a woman facing identity crisis and of the

fear that she faces on a daily basis. Like Lessing, Lispector

has used narrative voice to express and subvert the feminine

mystique, yet Lispector’s short time-frame offers but a

snapshot of the difficulties faced by Ana under the control of

the feminine Mystique. Lispector thus uses a language that

focusses on an expression of the feminine to question the

definition of feminine as prescribed by the mystique, bringing

into focus the possibilities of an alternative identity for

women.

Read comparatively with the raw materials of Friedan’s

sociological enquiries in The Feminine Mystique, therefore, Amor

and To Room Nineteen provide a piercing condemnation of a

societal system spanning three separate continents under which

a woman’s true identity is held for ransom in the name of the

family unit. I will leave you with the final sentence of The

Feminine Mystique which seems to summarise perfectly Lispector and

Lessing’s calls to action: “But the time is at hand when the

voices of the feminine mystique can no longer drown out the

inner voice that is driving women on to become complete”

(Friedan, 1963: 364)

27

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold, ed. (2003), Doris Lessing, (Broomall: Chelsea House

Publishers)

Cixous, Hélène, (1979), Vivre l’orange/ To Live the Orange, trans. Sarah

Cornell and Ann Liddle (Paris: Des Femmes)

Fallon, Erin, ed. (2001), A Reader’s Companion to the Short Story in

English, (New York: Routledge)

Freud, Sigmund, (2001), in Strachey, James, ed., The Standard

Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume XIII (1913-

1914)

Friedan, Betty, (1963), The Feminine Mystique, (New York: Dell

Publishing)

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Gubar, Susan, (2000), The Madwoman in the

Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. (Second

Edition), (New Haven: Yale University Press)

Lessing, Doris, (2002), To Room Nineteen: Collected Stories Volume One,

(London: Flamingo)

Lispector, Clarice, (1990), Laços de família, (Lisboa: Relógio

D’Água)

Prokhovnik, Raia, (1999), Rational Woman: A Feminist Critique of

Dichotomy, (London, Routledge)

Sartre, Jean-Paul, (1956), Being and Nothingness: The Principal text of

modern existentialism (Washington: Washington Square Press)

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Woolf, Virginia, (1972), Professions for Women, in The Death of the Moth

and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich) pp. 235-

240

Woolf, Virginia, (2000), A Room of One’s Own, (London: Penguin

Classics)