Literature Works and Literary Criticism as Representation

Far from our present time, in ancient era, Plato has been said about representation in Ion. As I once said in my previous response, Socrates stated to Ion that good poetry is made by God, good poetry is divine and the work of God, poets are only the interpreters of the Gods and Ion, as rhapsode, along with other rhapsodes, is only the interpreter of the interpreters of Gods. It means that Ion, as a rhapsode, is also the representation of the poets and poets are the representation of God.

Talking about representation, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic and Edward Said’s Jane Austen and Empire criticize how sentimental fictions, which are seems to be apolitical, could be engage in such a highly politically charged discursive context  such as patriarchy (Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic) and British imperialism (Said’s Jane Austen and Empire).

In Jane Austen and Empire, Said presents his analysis about Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) and its relation with imperialism. He assumed Mansfield Park as the most explicit in its ideological and moral affirmations of all Austen’s novel. In his writing, Jane Austen and Empire, Said stated that, “Austen’s novel express an “attainable quality of life in money and property acquired, moral discriminations made, the right choice put in place, the place, the correct “improvements” implemented, the finely nuanced language affirmed and classified.” (P. 1115). Said also argued he found paradox in reading Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, he wrote, “All the evidence says that even the most routine aspects of holding slaves on a West Indian sugar plantation were cruel stuff. And everything we know about Austen and her value is at odds with the cruelty of slavery.” (P. 1124).

However, Said underlined that he was not blame European culture as the major factor that caused late-nineteenth-century imperialism. Said assumed that European culture often, but not always, stimulates imperial rule. He also said that, “what stimulate the extraordinary discrepancy into life is the rise, decline, and fall of the British empire itself and the emergence of a post-colonial confusion”. (P. 1124).

As written in Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory (1995), Said has explained in his book, Orientalism (1978) about Eurocentric universalism that placed European or Western as superior and placed what is not, East, as ‘Other’ and inferior to the West. In Jane Austen and Empire, Said might explain about this binary opposition and siding to the inferior. He might voices the voice of the inferior and explain how the inferior seen by the superior. In this case, Said might be the representative of the inferior who is represents the inferior.

From Said’s Jane Austen and Empire, we go on to Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s view about patriarchy and women writers in The Madwoman in the Attic. Gilbert and Gubar see that men have been created the image of “angel” and “monster” for women characters in their writings and women have been “killed” into art. Gilbert and Gubar assumed, “a woman writer must examine, assimilate, and transcend the extreme images of “angel” and “monster which male authors have generated for her.” (P. 814). In some male writings in that era, male authors have been created the ideal how women should be and women have “killed” themselves into art objects; slim, pale, passive beings whose “charms” eerily recalled the snowy, porcelain immobility of dead. There is a standard that women should be angelic and fragile, purity of heart, maternal and merciful, when in the other side women are labelled by monstrous feminine symbol, such as witches, evil eye, menstrual pollution, and castrating mothers.

“She has no story of her own but gives “advice and consolation” to others, listens, smiles, sympathizes” (P.815)., “Man must be pleased; but him to please is woman’s pleasure” (P. 816). Woman described as someone who has no time for herself and has to please man all the time. If women have no story of their own, then when can be their own selves? When women own their selves as their selves without any label as mother, wife, of daughter? If women have to always please men all the time, is there any vice versa that men have to always please women all the time? If woman’s image is constructed by man’s point of view, can woman constructing her point of view toward man? Why a woman can’t own herself? Why women should always please men? It seems unfair for women, if they are constructed by male authors, who never know how the feeling of being a woman, in their piece of literature works. It becomes more unfair when the women can’t defend herself from that construction.

Gilbert and Gubar explain how difficult it is for women even to attempt the pen. Women write to have their authorities as a woman. To deconstruct the construction that male has been constructed. We can conclude that when female authors write about women, they often put themselves as the representative of women in the worldwide who do not even given the voices. The female authors represent women voices that demand equality, or at least, demand to be heard. I think that is why sentimental fiction that seems to be apolitical turns to be very political.

Works Cited

Barry, P. (1995). Postcolonial criticism. In P. Barry, Beginning Theory.

Gilbert, S., & Gubar, S. (n.d.). The Madwomen in the Attic.

Plato. (n.d.). Ion.

Said, E. (n.d.). Jane Austen and Empire.