~~~

'/~~.~,. -~f~" .~_~_:;:~~~~~

"

USAN S.LANSER
~/ l\~ LiteraturI! and Society (1980) does incorporate essays of structuralist bent. 2 The

\~, ~!~iad~~:iCehff~::~r,~nC~i~~~!n:rn:~~to~~::;~!O~~ °io:;~~~n~ ~~;::;~e:~~

~TO'
WIRD AF.EMINIST M~:R~r"l0'LOGY~} (t!,oi\I}J"
nQ;( , V Mid"Femmes
cent B.I', 'ppli,"ion
imaginaires 3ofi,
my in "Sox",li<y,
own attempt toSymb""" .nd Bin""m"
forge a feminist poetics md
view in The Narrative Act; and the very recent essay of Robyn Warhol. Even
<h, co·
of point
4
01

01) ,M
(tJ.O "l .j\ ,l t" ,\.~
,\" \r
-,
1~\'
~
\ feminist critics who acknowledge considerable debt to theiFformalist or struc­

'\S"':
, U ~ C"\ . ~ '"
r;, ~~' :::
(

'-~
4-"t I
!\
';)'

y
" •.(1 ~ ,

,1'
,f"
~~
~
( A~~ ~lr""
$.
\ , .

'
,
.';(1 ~
",Iff.
v1
.
turalist training have sharply criticized its limitations. Naomi Schor vows that she
L. could not practice feminist criticism at al} in the "subtle oppression exercised [in
'7 American departments of French] by structuralism at its least self-critical and
doctrinaire" (ix); Josephine Donovan, speaking from an Anglo-American per-
'Vitpective, rejects "th_e dissection ofliterature as if it were an aesthetic machine
v \ t,:; I-.. r I~ I -- ./........... .L made up of paradoxes, images, symbols, etc., as so many nuts ana bolts easily·

f'ef.::--
, ~ 1'1' II' ~ (J1'nit.'r Url/f.'V,
jV()..'('(' disintegrated from the whole" {"Women's Poetics" 108).5 It would be safe, I
_____ -..-.....-..-..-....-.~._.._..
______ .._..._.._..!:!.._.._.~ ~ 1 think, to say that no contemporary theory, whether Anglo-American or conti:.
, ! nental, has exerted so little influence on feminist criticism or been so summarily

~ ~x, ,,,.-;:
What you choose and reject theoretically, then, depends-
upon what.JQu'
. !
.
dismissed as formalist-structUI:alist narratology.

~
•\1\ / " arepractically trying to do. This has always been the case with literary
'~
; critiCism: it IS SIIl}Ply that it is often very reluctant to realize the fact. In
K':t" any academic study we select the objects and methods of procedure
,
Sf 1
' (
{!,
('
'- ,
In part, of course, tEis coolness toward narratology-both the practice and the
r'
word 6_is characteristic of toe profession as a whole. At the end of her excellent
'i:'\ ;.:a ~ which we believe the most important, and our assessment of their impor- book on narrative poetics, Shlomith Rimmon-Kennan feels compelJed to ask
'-:...J ~,_ ~ tanee is governed by frames of interest deeply rooted in our practical

-=:t=
,~7'.
~
~~G'orms of social life. ,Radical critics are no different in this respect: it is just
that they have a set of social priorities with which most people at present
end to disagree, This is why they are commonly dismissed as 'ideologi-
cal,' because 'ideology' is always a way of describing2.!her people's i,nter-
fJ
,
'I
:
~.{
'-\,4 ,...f.-
I/IJ.> S
,,1,vI
l:hether she has written "an introduction. , . or an obituary" to the field (130).
erry Eagleton uses even stronger death imagery when he likens structuralism to
J 'killing a person in order to examine more conveniently the circulation of the
lood" (109). To psychoanalytic critics like Peter Brooks, a formalist narratology,
however valuable, cannot grasp "our experience of reading narrative as ~dy­
~ J ests rather than one's own. ------- n~~peratiQn:' (3 i'b).' And there is perhaps no surer 6arometer of professional
' l '-.../ ~ TERRY EAGLETON (211) ~ . .
~ sentiment than David Lodge's brilliant satire, Small World, in which Morris Zapp
. says of a Sorbo nne narratologist, "'Hasn't his moment passed? I mean, ten years
Feminist criticism, like n~rratology and all good theories perhaps, is an op- ago everybody was into that stuff, act ants and functions and mythemes and all
rlmistic enterprisi, eager to account for the whole of its relevant universe. For that jazz. But now ....., (134). Those Anglo-American scholars who were never

I
nearly two deca'des it has not only offered new ways of seeing a vast range of texts I comfortable with structuralism in general or narratology in particular have proba­
by both women and men, in virtually every genre and language; it has also scru- 'i ')": \J (" bly been relieved at its decline, while most critics grounded ·in Continental
tinized the assu'mptions, theories, and methods of Ii'terary scholarship, from -'( (r( thinking hav~. move? on to post-structuralist theorie~ that off~r an exhilarating
biography and history to deconstruc.tion and Pliychoanalysis, from archetypal ,,<:\\' I openness agamst whIch narratology may seem mechanIcal, emplfical, hardly con-
criticism to reader response. Yet in the sometimes sharp debates both within A1jJ ducive to the plaisir du texte. .
feminist criticism (especially between "American" and "French" approaches l ) { Given a literary climate at best indifferent to narratology, my desire to explore
and between feminism and other critical modes, structuralist-formalist methods the compatibility of feminism and narratology is also a way to think about what

~
have been virtually untouched. In consequence, narratology has had little impact narratology can and cannot do, what place it might have in the contemporary
on ferpinist scholarship, and feminist insights about narrative have been similarly critical environment of American departments of literature, and how it might en-

1-'1
overlooked by narratology. The title of this essay may therefore seem startling, as ' ~ rich tI:e herme?eutica~ enterprise for critics ,:"ho are not th.emselve~ theorists of
if I am trying to force an intersection of twO lines drawn on different planes: the . ~arratlve. I1'Llmmed 1ate task, however, Will be more clfcumscnbed: to ask
one scientific, descriptive, and non-ideological, the other impressionistic, eval- ~ether feminist criticism, and- partic~la~ly the, study of narratives by women,
uative, and political (a false· opposition that I hope my opening epigraph helps mIght benefit from the methods and mSlghts of harratology and whether nar­
to dissolve). ' atology, in turn, might be altered by the understandings of feminist criticism
Although feminism and narratology cannot really be said to have a history, . and the experience of women's texts. It is in the frank desire to say yes to both
there have been a few gestures of synthesis. While narratological studies areal>- these questions that this essay has been conceived. It is in the supposition that
sent from nearly. all of the otherwise eclectic and wide-ranging collections of the readers of this journal are more involved with narratology than with feminism
feminist approaches to literature, the excellent volume Women and Language in that my emphasis will be on the second question rather than the first.
 612 SUSAN S. LANSER TOWARD A FEMINIST NARRATOLOGY 613

There are compelling reasons why feminism (or any explicitly political criti­ a representation of life
'o~
1I1f1,/ cism) and narratology (or any largely formal poetics) might seem incompatible. an account of reality
j\P' \, The technical, often neologistic, vocabular of n ratolo has alienated critics a mimetic document
of many persuasIOns an may seem particularly counterproductive to critics with
1\~IJJl' political concerns. Femini,sts also tend to be distrustful of categories and opposi­ and as
-cf!- ti.2!th, of "a conceptual universe organized into the neat paradigms of binary
logic" (Schor ix)8~a distrust which explains part of the attraction of feminist a non-referential linguistic system
' theory to Derridean deconstruction. But there are (at least) three more crucial an enunciation supposing a narrator and a listener
issues about which feminism and narratology might differ: the role of gender in prima'rily a linguistic construct.
the construction of narrative theory, the status of narrative as mimesis or semi­ (Furman 64-65)
[ osis, and the importance of context for determining meaning in narrative.
The most obvious question feminism would ask of narratology is simply this: Traditionally, structuralist narratology has suppressed the representational as- \
11upon what body of texts, upon what understandings of the narrative and refer­ pects of fiction and emphasized the semiotic, while feminist criticism h!ls done
'~ntial universe, have the insights of narratology been based? It is readily appar­ the opposite. ~erities tettcl t9 a~t~n ­
,~ent that vi~lIy no work in the field of narratology has taken gender into with any other aspe£t.,!l£..rnlR~ . d to speak of char lar s if they
CV'1$ a~nt, either in designating a canonor in formulating questions and hypoth­ werepersons. Most narratologists, in contrast, treat c aracters, if at all, as "pat­
)..... E ~ses. Thismeans, first of all~ tha~ the narratives which have provided t unda­ t~rrence, motifs which' are continually re ntextualized in other
~ -: tlOn for narratology,have been elt ef"men's texts treated as men's texts. motifs"; as such, they "lose their privilege, their central stat1,lS, and their defini­
~ enette's Ofmu io a "Discours du recit" on the basis of Proust s a Re­ tion" (Weinsheimer 195). This conception could seem to threaten one of feminist
~ cherche du temps perdu, Propp's androcentric morphology of a certain kind of criticism's deepest premises: that narrative texts, and particularly texts in the
-) folktale, Greimas on Matrp1!Ssant, Iser on male novelists From Bunyan to Beck­ novelistic tradition, are profoundly (if never simply) referential-and influen­
ett, Barthes on Balzac, Todorov on the Decameron-these are but evident ex­ tial-in their. representations of gender relations. The challenge to both femi­

, amples of the ways in which the masculine text stands for the univer al text. In
the structura ist quest for "invariant e ements among superficial differences"
nism and narrato is to recognize the dual nature of narrative, to iln'd
categories and te . at are abstract and semiotic en g' to e useful, but con-'

tfSJ1J).
: f(Levi-Strauss 8), for (so-cailed) universals rather than particulars, ~g¥,.has crete and mimetic e.nough to seem relevant for critics whose th~ories root lite,rj
avoided questions of gender almost entirel . This is particularly prOblematic for ture in "the real conditions of our lives" (Newton 125). tfl'1.rf.€M1 J,

~
thO e emmlst critics-m t IS country, the majority-whose main interest is the The tendency to pure semiosis is both cause and effect ora more general ten­

. "difference or specifiQi~ o£~QmQn's writing" (Showalter, "Women's Time" 38).

t/1rrJThe
V 'I,
recognition o( this specificity has led not only to the rereading ,of individual
~I texts but to the rewriting of literary history; I am suggesting that it also lead to a c....(J.'1/11
II ,. dency in narratology to isolate texts from the context of their production and re­

'\ _rIIVv ception and hence from what "political" critics think of as literature's ground of

being-the "real world." This is partly a result of narratology's desire for a pre­

",(:A \ rewriting of narratology that takes into account the' contributions of women ,as -.J \ [t.,e.. c~e, scientific description of discourse, for many of the questions concerning the
:iJ'J' both producers and interpreters of texts.' ' ' 11 relationship of hterature to the I'real world"-questions of why, so what, to what
I' This challenge does not deny the enormous value of a body of brilliant nar­ effect-are admittedly speculative. Thus "when narratology does attempt to ac-)
, rative theory for the study of women's works; indeed, it'has been applied fruit­ count for the contextual, it does so in terms of narrative conventions and codes.
fully, to such writers as Colette (Bal, "The Narrating and the Focalizing") and Yet their capacity to account for social, historical, or contextual differences always
Eliot (Costello) and is crucial to my own studies of narrative voice in women's remains limited by the original formalist closure within which such codes and
texts. It does mean that until women's writings, guestio~~mi­ conventions are defined" (Brewer 1143). This is why early in the history of for­
nist points of view are co'i1Sfciered, it will be impossible even to know the defi­ malism, critics like Medvedev and Bakhtin called for a "sociological poetics",
(
cie . 0 nar . seems to me like y ,t at the most abstract and that would be dialectically theoretical and historical: "Poetics provides literary
gr mmatlca concepts (say, theories of time) will prove to be adequate. On the history with direction in the specification of the research material and the basic
other hand, as I will argue later in this essay, t~eories of plot and st0!I.may need

l
definitions of its forms and types. Literary history amends the definitions ot po­
1)\ Ito change substantially. And I would predict that the major impact of feminism etics, making them more flexible, dynamic, and adequate to the diversity of thy
fA on narratology will be to raise new questions, to add to the ~Arratological distinc­

1
historical material" (30). My insistence on writing women's texts into the histori­
tions that already exist, as I will be suggesting below in my diSCUSSIOns orna£­ cal canon of narratology has,precis* thi1 aim of making it more adequate to the
-'fiitive level, context, and voice: diversity of narrative. J eq.. ,
A narratology for feminist criticism would also have to reconcile the primarily Finally, feminist criticism would ar ue thatnarratolo y itself is ideolo ical in­
. ,.semiotic approach of narratology with the primarily mimetic; orientation of most deed in an important sense, fictionaL One nee not agree wholeheartedly with
,( (Anglo-American) feminist thinking about narrative. This difference reminds us Stanley Fish that "formal units are always a function of the interpretive model
that "literature is at the juncture of two systems"; one can speak aboUfj,it as ' one brings to bear (they are not 'in the text')" (13); to recognize that no inter­
. 'NNf',,(\ {ev~ , ~e¥t; (/0 Ie::" 1:'
 614 SUSAN S. LANSER TOWARD A FEMINIST NARRATOLOGY 615

pretive system is definitive'or inevitable. But as Fish also reminds us, every the­ ,narrato!ogy to certain problems for which other theories have not been adequate
ory must believe itself the best theory possible (361)., Formalist-structuralist '( ~nd hence illUstrate its unique value for feminist scholarship.

narratology may "know" that its categories are not immanent, but it proceeds as) ......

if there were "a stabl<? and immediately knowable text, ?irectly avail~ble to c1.as- . I would like to begin the movement toward a feminist narratology by identify­
sificatory operations that are themselves neutral and mnocent of mterpretive

~
ing some of the questioris a feminist reading might raise for narratolo.gy. I will
bias" (Chambers 18-19); Feminist criticism has simply not had this luxury: in its ~ emphaSize here not so much .the fruitful applications which narratology coulq
. critique of masculine bias, it has of necessit the view that theory some­ (/') currently offer but the quest~ons t~at it does. not yet seem to have addressed. I
1. rv
J
·mes says more about the rea an about the ~ext. have chosen, instead of a typical piece of fictl~n, a far more anomalous wor~ se:-
C
'J1. ' ~
If[
or emmist criticism wou egm, t en, with the recognition
at revision of a theory's premises and practices is legitimate and des.irable. It
h.....ul··~;lwould probably be c!!.utious in its construction of systems and favor flexlble.£llte­
~ t.j
I' )(.
~ let r, a e
caiiSe'it ,e:esents many complexit~es i~ .a short space of tex,t and ~[!OW! m~ to
examine several aspectS "Of women s wlitmg anl'l wntmg In general. I he text IS a
a young fI e w s an censored her corre-
V~~ " g~es ~ver fixed set~. It ;-v~uld scrutinize its norms to b? sure of what theY!!r,.e ~,tY1 s~ce. It appeare m Atk~nson's Co:. IIt.m P~I '. san"wiche? b?tw?en.a

if
normative. It would be Willing to look afresh at the question of ender re­
f~ its theories on' the asis of women's texts, ' ~-PC} ~;:~~s~~o~h~fl~~!~!: ::udrc~::~t;:~!~~ty~~;s::;:~~s~7e~~I:~. a~:~;i~g~I~:t:~

I
,,~gagillg aa:ffiitQi," j~; i3ubii;~~ inN, 9agifl5 to do. In both its concepts
a; t/J ...11 ~J' n e certam, t at It IS apocryp a; rna e no assumptions about the author's
and its terminology, it would reflect the ~imetic as well as th? se.miotic .experi- I'JlQ.//J;J/:
ence that is th~ reading of literature, and It would study narratIve m relatIOn to a ft
/tIC \

sex. Here is the text as it appears in the CaskfJt:

referential context that is simultaneously linguistic, literary, historic~l: biographi-

cal, social, and politicaLfGranted, narratoJogy might haye to be wlllmg to cede '
I

FEMALE INGENUITY 'I~VV/Lr;<,

J
some precision an<l'SimP'licity for the sake of relevance and accessibility, to de-

(~
~
I
'/ velop terminology less confusing, say, than a series like analepsis, proleps~
)'f Secret Correspondence.-A young Lady, newly married, being obliged to
alepsls, and metalepsls.l'he valuable and impressive work that has been done in , l show her husband, all the letters she wrote, sent the following to an intimate
the field would be opened to a critique and supplement in which feminist ques­
tions were understood to contribut~ to a richer, more useful, and more come.l!(t)
. uJ1 {I'~ '5 f,ieod
narratol0&Y. For as I have been trymg to suggest, a narratology that cannot ade- I cannot be satisfied, my Dearest Friend!

~;
blest as I am in the matrimonial state.

I q'illitely account for women's narratives is an inadequate narratology for men's

unless I pour into your friendly bosom,

J f' texts as well.

A ,e-f,,~d "''''''toi2W ,hou.d be of pMt'eu'" inte"," to feminot "iti", b~ .
"\ camre-tiction IS the dominant genre in the study of women and literature. The
necessarily semiotic nature of even a revised narratology will help to balance
,

.
l(.,~
which has ever been in unison with mine,

the various deep sensations which swell

with the liveliest emotions of pleasure

my almost bursting heart. I tell you my dear

feminist criticism's necessarily mimetic commitments. The comprehensiveness

imd care with which narratology makes distinctions can provide invaluable meth­
(f}-Y{l/:J<J.. husband is one of the most amiable of men,

I have been married seven weeks, and

ods for textu~1 analysis. As Mieke Bal argues, "The use of formally adequate and
precise tools is not interesting in itself, but it can clarify other, very relevant
issues and provides insights which otherwise remain vague" ("Sexuality" 121).
~~(\\ have never found the least reason to
repent the day that joined us, my husband is
in person and rna,nners far from resembling
ugly, crass, old, disagreeable, and jealous
Narratology and feminist criticis i ht rofitably join forces, for example" to
( ex ore tete eologica aspects of narrative, which ave co erned narratologlsts
monsters, who think by confining to secure;
a wife, it is his maxim to treat as a '
like Ann Jefferson and Marianna Torgovnick and feminist critics like Rachel Blau
bosom-friend and confidant, Jlnd not as a
DuPlessis. I can imagine a rich dialogue between Armine Mortimer Kotin's and
plaything or menial slave, the woman
Nancy K. Miller's analyses of the plot of La Prineesse de Cleves. And a major bene­
chosen to be his companion. Neither party
( fit ofnarrat010gy is that it offers a relatively independent{pre-textual) framework he says ought to obey implicitly;­
for studying groups of texts. It could, for example, provide a particularly valuable but each yield to the other by turns-
foundation for e.xpl,oring one of the most complex and troubling questions for ~€ An ancient maiden aunt, near seventy,
feminist criticism: wh~her ,there is indeed a "\Yoman's writing" and/or a fem!le , a cheerful, venerable, and pleasant old lady,
tradition, whether men and women do wnte dlfi.arelltly. fi'bf given tfie volattle "C/ lives in the house with us-she is the de­
IratOle or ffie question, t~e precision and ~bsttaction 'of narrat~logical. systems (r'.
etAo~ light of both young and old-she is ci­
vil to all the neighborhood round,
I offers ,the safety for investigation that more Impresslomst~c"tlreune1l"'Of~rfferei'l~~
generous and charitable to the poor-
\30 not. This kind pf research would demonstrate the partIcular responsiveness of I know my husbana loves nothing more
, .
 616 SUSAN S. LANSER

argued. that there is a "woman's language" or a discourse of the owerless: II

speech that is "polite, emotlona , en USlaStlc, gossipy, talkative, uncertain,
<:iii["' and chatty" m contrast to men's speech or powerful speech, wfilch IS "ca­
pable, direct, ralional, illustrating a sense of humor, urifeeling, strong (in tone
and word choice) and blunt" (Kramarae 58). The two letters illustrate man'Vl of
~he difference~ between these two modes of spee~h. T~ surface .tex,t is vim!!!!!y';
a sampler of _n:S langua~ Its self-eff~cmg narrator praises the "more .
deSei'Viiii' husband and blushes for her own "unworthiness"; her "liveliest
emotions" generate a discourse of repetition, hyperbole, convolution, and gram­
matical anomaly. It is the voice of one who clearly cannot "say all in one wor,d,"
who can assert herself only in empty phrases and a syntax of negativity.,~
voice..?f t~bt~s, by contrast, strikingly simple and direct, in the kind of
lailgilage that commands (an all-too-ready>, .authority." This second narrator
shows herself angry, strong, decisive, sure of her judgments, acutely aware of fier
husband's defiCiencies and of her own lost opportunities. Her speech acts­
"I repent," "I know," "she is the devil," "I am unhappy" -are act§ ~f Convic­
tion; such a voice req!,lires enormous confidence and would probably be accorded
, l' an immediate credibility. Beneat.h the "feminine" voice of self-effacement and'
emotionality, then, lies the "masCUline" voice of authonty tfiat t~
. cannot inscribe openly. ,The subtext also ex.poses the surface text, and hence v
the surface voice, as a suoterfuge, revealing the "feminine style" to be a car­
icature donned to mask a surer voice in the process of communicating to a
woman under the watchful eyes. of a man. But this also means that the powerless
'. '
forin called "women's language" is revealed as a potentially subversive~hence
powerful tool!,. - ~
inThe Narrative Act I called for a poetics that would go beyond fornial classifi­
cations in order to describe the subtle but crucial differences between voices like
~e. For in structural ten~'o 'fflis88 are similal! 50th are first-pers011I 1
protagonist (autodiegeti~). narrators. (t.hou~ they are a~dressing different nar­
ratees). Most of the qualtttes that dlstmgUlsh the two vOices have yet to be cod- ,.
ified by narratology. One might ask, for example, what kinds Qf illocutionaDY acts :
the narrator undertakes and whether she undertakes them in a dlscourseof
"presence" or "absence," if we take "absence" to encompass such practices as
"irony, ellipsis, euphemism, litotes, periphrasis, reticence, p'retermission, di­
gression, and so forth" (Hamon 99). This question, i .' n,l~might lead to a
(much-needed) theory that would define and describ tOile n narrative. Tone.\

~ W~s (the prying husband and the intimate friend) this letter is
in an unusually ODVIOUS sense a double const11!ction, a blatant specimen of writ­
J!
.
.
might be conceived at least in part as a function of the re atlons Ip between the
deep and super?cial structures of an iIlocu~io~ary act (e:g., the re~ationship be­
twee~ an act of Judgment and th~guage'In :which the Judgment.IS expre~ed) ../
ThiS double text recalls an even sharper lesson about narrative voice, the
lessonTormuiated by Bakhtin: that in narrativ.e there is no single voice, that in far
ing over and under cenSorship. The surface tex~ .subtext are strikingly differ­ subtler situations than this one, voice Impinges upon voice, Yleldliig a structure
. ent both in story and narration, and a narrative theory adequilte for describing in which discourses of and for the other constitute the discourses of self; that, to '\
the whole will have to account for both and for the narrative frame that binds go as far as Wayne Booth does, "We are constituted in polyphony" (51). The
them. In particular, such a text raises for discussion questions about narrative Il­ blatant J:1etero~sia of this letter-and I shall suggest below that' it is even more
voice, narrative si.tuation, and plot. . IJl.fl- layered than at first appears-is but a sharper version of the polyphony of all
_ voice and, certainly in visible ways, of the female voices in many women's ~r­
Perhaps the most obvious difference between the letters, apart from their con- "oA

} trasting stories, is t~ difference lJetween the two voice.: Some linguists have
"f'atiVes. For the condition of being woman in a male-dominant society may well .­

\.\[}\
-I
618 SUSAN S. LANSER
-....
...........
TOWARD A FEMINIST NARRATOLOGY
---~.:-..----.-..-..------ ..................................... ---, 619
.........
necessit;tte the double voice, w~ther as conscious subterfuge or as tragic dis­ ( through which the more global judgment of patriarchal practices is exercised.
/ possession of the self. Thus in a text hke Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The
( T..lris t6'ltt differs from the "palimpsestlc discourse rbffilrilse CrItiCism frequently
.1,: fellow Wallpaper," the narrator speaks her desires underneath a discourse con­ describes in which "surface designs" act simply as a cover to "conceal or obscure
structed for her by her husband John; in Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers" deeper, less accessible (and less socially' acceptable) levels of meariing'" (Gilbert
two women protect a third from a conviction for murder by communicating in and Gubar 73). Here the "surface design". turns out to be a more damnin dis­
"women's language" under the watchful but unseeing eyes of the Law; in novel course than the text it purports to protect. The text designed or t e husband
after novel Jane Austen constitutes a narrative voice that cannot be pinned down,
that can be read according to one's own desires; a novel like Marge Piercy's
Cltanges builds a double structure through which both its author and its pro- . =::.
smallJ i' conceals an undertext (tfie text designed for the confidante), but the
in.turn, creates a new readin of the surface text a .
I woul argue, for yet another addressee. This third text is the one constituted
undertext,
...........---­
. ed,

tagonist work otit the necessity of living in a world of double discourse (Hansen). _ ~ bfille . "dis lay.:u;xt" Il that IS the letter as it appeared in Atkinson's Casket.
A n~rratology adequate to women's texts (and hence to all texts, though poly- ..\' '~ It a dress' -ary reader; she is neither the duped male nor the sister­
priony IS more pronounced and more consequential in women's narratives and in t~
the narrativ~s of ot . '. eopl~s) .would have to acknowledge and ~c-~ ,J\.
K confidante bu t the unidentified public' narratee of either sex who can see beyond
the immediate context of the writer's epistolary circumstance to read the nega­
COllnt fo olyphony of VOice, dentlfymg and dlsentanghng Its strands, as S) tive discourse as covert cultural analys'is. Thus the literary context of this text
recent studies GracIe a eyes and Michael O'Neal begin to do. . (J provides a third and entirely different reading from the readings yielded to the
f1 If we return with this understanding of voice to the doubleotext letter, it is ,,"'­ private audiences of husband and friend. At the same time, it is tlte knOWledge of
,~ easy ~o identify those verbal features that distinguisH one from the otliei' by ex- . the other two texts, the access to the private texts, that opens -the third reading,
r~Vf.'~ammmg the forms of' excess" that were aced aw . , rocess. m a version,perhaps, of w.hat Genette calls hypertextualiti (Palimpscstes 11).
The rst ~~d le~~ si.gni . cant IS a co~binatio~ of ~epetition and .hype~bole t. at OJ
. The fact that this letter has seve narratees BU est . ort of re 0 ­
\D\! serves as filler, Yleldmg phrases hke "which has ever been In Unlson With
.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
contain. erard Genette has made an ex­
W~ mine" and "with the liveliest emotions of pleasure." The second is more impor­
t emely important contribution to narratology in distinguishing the multipl~
~\£., tant,/or itcreate.s the syntactic hinge that binds and fina,lIy transforms the whole: diegetic levels possible in a single text because one narrative may enclose or gen­
~ n a senes of negations that the subtext will reverse: .
:r:\lJ b f
• , - --J
m
\...:J
erate another (Genette, Narrative Discourse 227 -37; Nouveau Discotlrs 55-64).
Genette speaks' of the outermost level as t4~ e:;!!..adiegfltic, of a narrative incowo­
~.~~
\,..
I ... have never found the least reason to repent
my husband is ... far from resembling. , . monsters
~UfCv'~
11
;1 ;J
rated withirt this ar!?as tnlfadtegettc, and d If. third narrative"'eve1 as~­
fR:. Extradiegedc narrators, saysGenette, are usuaii9 ftnthor-narrators '-Jane
19>P'iA EYre, George Eliot's "third person" voice-and "as su'ffi they oECdpy the same
a wife, it is his maxim to treat ... 1I0t as a'plaything 7,&
~ Neither party, he says ought to obey implicitly narrative level as their public-that is, as you and me" (Narrative Discourse 229).
tl-. ~ I am tt1lable to wish that I cOllld be more happy- ~3««{} . But as Genette also makes clear, there is no necessary connection between extra­
diegetic narration and a public audience; letter-writers and diarists (Pamela,
'-;vt This negativi ty is more than the link between two texts; it is the means by which ­ Werther) may also be extradiegetic narrators. Intra-diegetic,~and metadi:egetic)
\'"- ~e two letters finally yield a thir~: a story, a third voice, a!.'0:d audie~. For the
../ ~
narrators-Rochester when he is telling Jane Eyre the story' of Bertha Mason,

!
negativity maKes of the surface text"not"Ofie narrator's-slmple proclamation of / ' .
the charac'tefs in Middlemarch-are conventionally able to address only narratees
appiness but the indictment of an entire social system. What indeed, does the \f' inscribed withitl the text. In Frankmstein Walton's letters to his sister constitute
surface paint but the very portrait of marriage that it claims to erase? Each nega- • '\ lt7 an extradiegetic narrative; Frankenstein's story, told to Walton, is intradiegetic,
tivestatement suggests de arture from a . I norm, a norm in whiCiili'i.W.es f and the monster's history, narrated to Frankenstein and enclosed within the tale
elf marnages, husbands are monstrous, women are treated as playthings \~ he tells Walton, is metadiegetic. Genette's notion of levels provides a precise
or slaves, and women's .desires are unthinkaole. In other words, the surface text, S way of s'peaking about such embedded narratives and identifying their nar­
by saying what one particular marflage is not, shows the terrible contours of what " ~.. [ ratee~-;md for ~escribing tr~nsgressio~s a~ross narrative le~els (called metalep­
its narrator expected marriage'to be. While the subtext condemns one man and ~y ses) like those Dlderot's narrator commits m Jacques le/ataltste.
laments one woman's fate, the surface letter condemns an entire society, present-~ '.:5 But Genette himself recognizes that narrative level has been made too much
ing as typical the condi.tionswhich the subtext implies to be individual. ~- . ~ of, and that indeed it does not take us very far. In the Nouveau Discours he makes
text, the.n, becomes an instan~e of the surface text rather th~nits antithes's; the ' clear just how relative the distinction of levels is by generating an imagi'nary
two versIOns revea not opposing but related trut s. t IS fittmg, thert, that they / ' scene in which three men sit down, one offers to tell the others a story which he
K

tt~
meet at their point of dissatisfaction, at the single line-Jbe first-that does not warns will be long, and the storyteller begins, "'For a long time I used to go to
, c ange: "I cannot be satisfied, my dearest Friend!" rS.-lqVLe.
<.t.S <t..e.wfvr
"11'" .bed early ... '" (64). With a frame of only a sentence, says Genette, the en­

.-------­
I In the light of this reading, women's language becomes not simply a vehicle tirety of Proust's A fa Recherche suddenly becomes an intradiegetic narration. If
for constructing a more legitimate (masculine, powerful) voice but the voice we look at the letter in terms of Genette's levels, we could identify as either an
,~' - ~- ~ .
'~
?Pl~~ " ,.'.
1\
~--, OJf,l
\.\-vr
 z>1+;~ .
~~~~~~~~~~'--'':'''--:''--''-''~ __'--'__'-' '--''-' '--'__ kl V1 Q' J
TOWARD A FEMINIST NARRATOLOGY 621

extr~diegetic ~arrator or simpl~ as an editor t~e voice t~at presents the I.etter as a -iU"'~i
specimen of Female IngenUity" and explams both Its context and Its secret ' ON PUB PRIVATE
code to the readers of Atkinson's Casket. 14 The diegetic level of the letter is ~ 6.. ~ r
contingent on this initial decision. And boili" the surface letter and the su6text, iA A '''1 heterod iegetic narration of .' moments of "meta­
being mterlineat, exiSton the same level, in an unusual case of double diegesis. '1Ifll V" /
(third-person) Emma lepse n in Jacques Ie
Genette's notion oflevels does not allow us to say much about the narrative situa­ or jatalisfe when narrator
tion of this letter because it applies only to internal relations among parts of a /
Middlemat'ch consorts with his
text. It does riot describe any individual narrative act per se, and it closes off tre
characters
extra-diegetic
text from considerations external and contextual. ,
homodiegetic Jane Eyre's letters of
To provide a more complete analysis of narrative level, I would propose as a narration
(first"person) Walton
complement to Genette's system a distinction between public' and private narra­
or
}..\\9 tion. By public narration I mean'simply narration (implicitly or explicitly) aa-­ Werther
, O~J(j) are;sed to' a narratee who is external (t.hat is, heterodiegetic)15 to the textual
; t r~&~ world and who can be equated with a public readership; private narration, in con­ 'heterodiegetic tales of the
t1;:.' trast, is addressed to an explicitly designated narratee who exists only within the (third-person) Heptameron
F textual world. P~ic narration evokes a direct relationship between the reader or
and the narratee and' clearly approximate'S most closely the nonfictional au-
~er-renmonship, while in private narration the reader's access is indirect, ~"
as it were "through" the figure of a textual persona. Such a distinction, combined
*"
.

':Z"/
intradiegetic
or
metadiegetic homodiegetic the "found" memoir
Scheherezade
narratives of
with Gene,tte's notions of both level and person, would yield the typology shown :,::..........­ (first-person) of Lionel Verney in Frankenstein
on the facing page. Mary Shelley's The and the Monster
I propose this notion of public and private narrative levels as an additional Last Mt1Jl or Piran­
category particularly relevant to the study of women's texts. For women writers, delio's Six Characters
as femini.st critic~sm has long n~ted, :he distinc:i?n between ~rivate and pU.blic
(
contexts IS a cruCial and a compllcated'one. Traditionally speakmg, the sanctIOns
"public" text is indeed designed for the man, the private (indeed secret) text for
against women's writing have taken the form not of prohibitions to write at all but
the female friend. One must already, then, redefine the simple distinction of
of prohibitions to write for a public audience. As Virginia Woolf comments,
public and private to create a category in which a narration is private but is de­
"Letters did 'not count": letters were private and did not disturb a male discur­
signed to be read as well by someone other than its officially designated nar­
sive hegemony. Dale Spender takes the distinctions even further, arguing that

l
ratee; 16 I will call this ~ate narrative act. To the extent that the surface
the notions of public and private concern not only the general context of textual
letter is in some sense public, it, dramatizes the way in which women's public,
production but its gender context as well: that is, writing publicly becomes syn­
discourse may be contaminated by internal.or external censorship. This, in turn,
onymous with writing for and to men. Spender comments:
helps to explain why historically women writers'have chosen, more frequently
than men, private forms of narration-the letter, the diary, the memoir ad­
The dichoromy of ~ale/female, public/private is maintained by permitting
women to write, . , for themselves (for example, diaries) and for each other dressed to a single individual-rather than f~fms that require them to address a
in the form of letters, 'accomplished' pieces, moral treatises, articles of inter- ' public readership, and why public and private narratives by women employ dif­
est for other'women-particularly in the domestic area-and even novels for ferent narrative strategies. 17 The concept could also be applied fruitfully to texts
women. , . , There is no contradiction in patriarchal order while women in which the narrative level is unclear, as in Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"
write for women and therefore remain within the limits of the private sphere;­ and Craik's A Life/ora Life, which seem to implicate a public narratee while pur­
the contradict-ion arises only when women write for men. (192) , porting to write a private diary,
The application of the distinction public/private to literary texts requires us to
The bride's letter both illustrates Spender's formulation and expands it in impor­ think in more complex ways about the dichotomy of gender that Spender at­
tant ways. The only public level of narration here is the narration that presents taches to p'rivate and public discourse, Here again the letter is illustrative. For if
the letter in the Casket as the "display" of a correspondence. In relation to this my analysis is persuasive in suggesting the existence of a third text available only
level, the letter itself is a private text, designed for a private readership. Yet the to one who has read both the, second and the first, ,and read i~ the light of a
surface letter is intended by its narrator to be an eminently public text in relation particular understanding both of women and oftextuality, then the public text:.....
to the subtext, which is the private text she urgently hopes will not be available that is, the one which is directed by the extradiegetic narrator or editor to "any­
to the "public" who is her husband. In terms of the I-narrator's intentions, the one" ~is also the most hidden text, the hardest to see, for nothing really points
~-,,~---- vA
~, '!7l­
l'~
 622 'SUSAN S. LANSER TOWARD A FEMINIST NARRATOLOGY , 623

,
.............-................----------.-.---~---~---.....................................

to its existence except itself, and it requires a teader who brings to it particular a (po~ential) rhetorical circumstance. To the extent that such questions de'ter·
mine the very meaning of narrative, they are questions for narratology.

'*
kinds of knowledge, Since it is at the public level of narration that the ideal read­

. ing becomes possible, the le~ter presented as a dis loy text a~. escqpes ~~r
~ The final element of my discussion of difference between the bride's two
ructure obhe intradie~c. narrative (in which it
(\plot 1 letters--,the question of story or plo,t-I will treat only sketchily here, for it lies
t
associations of the origm
. seems tfiaf public mal~private = female), suggestmg a kino' of paradigm
outside myii::feii' of expertise. In traditional terms, the surface text-the one writ·
for reading "as a woman" that encompasses but is not determined by the ques­ ~ ten for the husband-can barely be said to have a plot, and one might of course
:; tion of seX4 Equally, when women write novels that use private narrative forms, -Y2~ every argue that it is not a narrative at all. There is !lot a singular verb tense..ln the text;
independent predication is cas't""'inthe stative or iterative mode. All the
i ' they are nonetheless writing for a public, and a public that cannot entirely be, di­
. " (chotomized in gender terms. How individual writers negotiate this complex con­ [to actiqn that'the text implies, hence al\ there is of story, precedes the narrative·
,:li text ofgender'and,public-ity cons~itutes another important ar(:a to investigate. . moment; by the time of the writing all conflict-the gap between expectations
',,( The thfference between Genette's formulation of narrative levels and my own and reality-has already been resolved (and not by the protagonist's actions at
.\r4 7(1 illustrates, I hope, the difference between purely. formal and contextual ap­ all).~tions of both plot and character are strained by such a structure in which
i &,~. proaches to meaning in narrative. Just as speech act theory understood that the J the (lclantjs really a recipient, in which nothing whatever is predicted of whic\1
)11 minif\1al unit of discourse was hot the sentence but the production of the sentence the lfi'lfment would constitute plot as it is narratologically defined. Andal·
'j in a specific context, so the kind of narratology I am proposing would understand though one cou Id also see this stasis as the, basis for a plot left to the reader's
that the minimal narrativ;;-: th ' r . e as roduced. In the case of the letter imagination, to the extent that plot IS a function of modalized predication and
that appears in the Casket, questions of context are c osely related to interpretive hence of desire (Costello, Brooks), the surface text refuses even the possibility of
possibilities. For depending on whether one sees the letter as a historical docu­ plot:,"I am unable to wish that I could be more happy."
ment or as a text written deliberately for display-and whether, if "display Thus th...e, first text creates stasis of both event and <:~aracter, an idyll of har­
text," an imitation or a parody-different readings of the letter emerg~~ mony in which the "mdulgent husband," as "bosom friend," is a synthesis of tile
~an authentic document, a letter actually written by an unhappy wife that confidante with her "friendly bosom" and the "gallant lover": all cl;laracters but
somehow came into the hands of the Casket, then the text might become impor­
tant historical evidence of the ways in which women's writing is conditioned by A the protagonist coalesce into one idealized whole. But the subtext does offer the
elements of a possible plot. Here we have a full·blown t;i;mgie=IlUsband, lov~;,
censorship. If the text were constructed as imitation, it stands as evidence of the n 1 wife Ill. wlilch the necessity for' a ,confidante becomes logical. The plot of this·
( percep~ion, if not the IS onc a t, (~ censors . . I?ut the letter may well have
been mtended as a par.ody of the female style. ' Indeea, the history of'1'fiis
ffA 'ftjrJ.'1 . subtext is actually highly conventional: drunken husband, sinister'maiden aunt, 19
, gallant 'suitor in the wings. But here too the expectations for story, though more
style, and its connectIOn 0 t e ep'~s the context for an interesting fully roused, are shunted aside. While there is one singular event-Hmy former
possibility. Historically, the letter has such overdetermined' associations with gallant lover is returned"-the narrator says, "I might hove had him," suggesting
women that what became thought of as the "female style," a style acclaimed for that there is no real possibility of change. '
its artlessness, its sense of immediacy and lack of forethough t, was a .style tied to Can one speak narratologically of plot or even story in these twO letters, or is
the epistolary mode (Donovan, "The Silence is Broken" 212-14). If the letter is one condemned simply to negative definitions-plotlessness, or story without
in fact a "display text," it may well be a display of ','female ingenuity" not only in plot? Narratology is rich in its efforts to pin down the natuil:: of plot. The for"
the obvious sense of a clever composition that finds a "woman's way" 'around mulations of Propp, Bremond, Todorov, Costello, Pavel, Prince, all offer useful
censorship, but In the service of a broader and literary design: to make mockery ways to talk about large numbers of texts, perhaps of most (premodernist) texts.
of the assumptions about VIIomen's "artless" epistolary style, to reveal woman as But in the case of the letter, each s,chema fails. Although the subtext is a cata­
man's equal in intellectual capacity. For "ingenuity," the OED tells us, means logue of acts of villainy, for example, one cannot say of it as Propp says of his
not only the (oxymoronic) union of straightforward openness with the genius for folktales that "each new act of villainy, each ack creates a new move" (92).
skillful, inventive design but also the quality or condition of being a free-born In his canon movement is possible; here it is not.20 The units of anticipation and
man. And if the letter was written by its own editor, it also provided a convenient) ) fulfillment or problem and solution, that structure plot according to narrative the­
and safe vehicle for criticizing male dO,minance, since an ed.itor need take no re- ~<K orists of plot assume that textual actions are based on the (intentional) deeds of
sponsibili ty for a private "found" text. protagonists; they assume a power, a possibility, that may be inconsistent with
')(J~ The rhetorical complexity of the letter reminds us that narrative'meaning is! what women have experienced both historically and textually, and perhaps in­
sf' a.Wl a ,function of narrative circl!~nce. Narratology has nOt yet provided sads.:
consistent even with women's desires. A radical critique like Maria Brewer's sug~
fying language through which to make distinctions of rhetorical context;16 femi­
gest that plot has been understood as a "discourse of male desire recounting itself
nist criticism, in its concern with questions of auttienticity and authorship, might
through the narrative of adventure, project, enterprise, and conquest," the "dis­

*' t find it difficult even to talk about a text this uncertain in origin. A feminist nar-'

r~tology might acknowledge the existence of multiple texts, each constructed by

-rQ.N'f\. V\(>..f,ld\~J 'I '

course of desire as separation and mastery" (1151, 1153).

If standard narrato!ogical notions of plot do not adequately describe (some)
 TOWARD A FEMINIST NARRATOLOGY 625

women's texts, then what is needed is' a radical revision in theories of plot. For
er's tale. I would be eager for narratology to talk about such a crossing of the plot
one thing, as Katherine Rabuzzi notes (in Donovan, "Jewett's Critical Theory"
, of na~ration with the story plot.
218), "'by and large, most women have known a nonstoried existence.'" Wom­
r My analysis of this coded letter suggests in sketchy ways aspects of narrative
en's experience, says Donovan, often seems, when held against the masculine
\ that a revised poetics might scrutinize and codify. A 'comprehensive theory of
plot, "static, and in a mqde of waiting. It is not progressive, or oriented toward
voice would develop a framework for describing the elements that constitute
events happening sequentially or climactically,· as in the traaitional masculine
polyphony and would formulate a ling1.)istically based theor.y of narrative tone.
story plot" (218-19). This letter, or a novel like Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country
~ Attention to the rhetorical context of narrative-its generic status and the publiG
of the Pointed Firs, can thus only be defined as a "plotless text." (Donovan,
...~ or private level of the narration-would be understood as important determi­
"Women's Poetics," 106). Similarly, some of Grace Paley's finest stories (for ex­ :'$; , nants of narrative meaning. And theories of plot and story would be reexamined

~
. ample, "Friends" and "Ruthy and Edie" in the most recent collection, Later the
to find alternatives to the n.otion of plot as active acquisition or solution and to
Same Day), which a traditional narratology would describe as "plotless," are con­
incorporate the plot that may be generated by the relationship between narrator
stituted by plots of women's attempts to "make sense" of their world. Z! A con­
and narratee. Once it is clear that some (women's) texts cannot be adequately
temporary popular novel like Meg Wolitzer's Hidden Pictures, which sets up
, described by traditional, formalist narratology, we begin to see that other texts­
negative possibilities that neither occur nor are noted not to" occtir, when mea­
postmodernist'texts, texts by writers of Asia and Africa, perhaps-may be simi­
sured against plot theories becof!1es a "flawed" story making worrisome predic­
larly unaccounted for. It is only, I believe, such an expansive narratology that
tions that it does not fulfill. Yet one could also see this plot as a structure of
can begin to fulfill the wish Gerald Prince expresses at the end (164) ~f his Nar­
anxiety and (gradual) relief that corresponds to real-world experiences ofwome~
'(Jt% gy: that "ultimately, narratology can help u's understand what human

i'n the difficult circumstances of this novel's protagonists, a lesbian couple rai'sing

a son in su burbia. If again and again scholars of women's writing must speak in

terms of the "plotless" (usually in quotation marks, suggesting their dissatisfac­

(. tion with thy term), then perhaps something is wrong with the notions o£.p1oP
lE beingl? are."
------r
-'

that have followed £I4iii"Pwpp's mQ~y. Perhaps narratology has been mis­
NOTES
t'!,KeilJri '!!yin ,rrive at a single definition and descnptlon or lOt. We w-nl I am grateful to Michael Ragussis, Leona Fisher, Caren Kaplan, and.Harold Mosher for

~
Iearn more abotlt women's nami is-an .a out scores'of twentieth-century invaluable,criticism of this essay in successive manuscript stages. '
texts-if we make ourselves find language for describing their plots in positive 1. A simple distinction between so-called "American" and "French" feminisms is im­
rather than negative terms. possible. By "French" feminism is usually meant feminism conceived within the theoreti­
There is another level of plot, too, that the bride's letter urges us to think cal premises of poststructuralism and hence heavily indebted to the writings of Derrida,
about. There is, in fact, one sequence of anticipation and fulfillment that this Foucault, Lacan, Kristeva, Cixous, and lrigaray. "American" feminism tends to be con­
text does fully constitute, and it occurs in the act of writing. In the case of both ceived within the political imperatives of the American women's liberation movement and
the historical experience of women in general and women writers in particular. Both
letters, whether the narrator's life is happy or miserable, what she "cannot be
modes are practiced in the United States, and the two have become increasingly inter­
satisfied" without is, simply, tile telling-narrative itself. The act of writing be­
twined. Nonetheless, the debates go on. For further discussion of the differences see, for
comes the fulfillment of desire, telling becomes the single predisated act, as if to example, the introduction and bibliography and the essay by Ann Jones in Showalter, The
tell were in itself to resolve, to provide closure. R!cit and histoire; rather than New Feminist Criticism; for'an example of the new synthesis, see Meese.
being separate elements, converge" so that telling becomes integral to the,work­ 2. See especially Furman 45-54.
ing out of story. Communication, understanding, being understood, becomes 3. A piece of Bal's book on the Hebrew Bible is available to English-language readers
not only the objective of the narration but the act that can transform (some aspect as "Sexuality, Sin and Sorrow." .
of) the narrated world. In a universe where waiting, inaction, reception, pre­ 4. It is revealing that the single sentence in my book most cite~ by reviewers is the
dominate, and action is only minimally possible; the narrative act itself becomes statement that "my training is deeply formalist, and my perspective as deeply feminist";
he source of possibility. dearly many scholars consider feminism and narratology an odd pair.
What happens. in the letter, then, is that the wish for the other's happiness 5. I find it ironic that Donovan's rejection of formalist "dissection" is justified by find­
ing it incompatible with wluit Evelyn Beck and I have called a "women's epistemology"
substitutes for t?~ possibility .of cha~ge in one's own life; the w.riter's experience,
(: (Lanser and Beck 86).
serves as a (positive or negatIve) stImulus to the reader's own stOry. The confi­ 6. Particularly in the wake of the new psychoanalytic narrative theories the term tJor­
dante thus becomes an active participant not simply in narration, but in plot it­ rt/tology has fallen into disuse, perhaps perceived as too narrowly structuralist. Critics dis­
self; the wish for the narratee's happiness transfers the imperatives of plot, so agree about the differences between tlarrotology and tJorrotive poetics; see, for example,
that the possibilities of change and fulfillment are given over to the narratee. The Rimmon-Kenan's attempt to distinguish the two in Narrative Fictiofl (133 n.i). By nar­
letter thus,suggests a plot behind women's "plotless" narrative, the subversive mtology I mean simply that branch of poetics concerned with defining and describing all
plot ofsharing an experience so that the listener's life may complete the speak- aspects of narrative. .
 626 SUSAN S. LANSER TOWARD A FEMINIST NARRATOLOGY 627

I have chosen throughout this essay [(j use the word narratology rather than narrative homoqiegetic-that is, within or outside the fictional world-and that a homodiegetic nar­
poetics partly to foreground the dissonance between narratology and feminism and partly to
· identify more precisely the formalist/structuralist practices that I am discussing here. I
r
1
rator ca'n address a heterodiegetic narratee (although it would constitute a narrative trans­
gression for a heterodiegetic narrator to address a homodiegetic narratee). I have decided
will, however, be calling in this essay for a study of narrative that is finally less formalist not to use these terms, however, in order to avoid confusion with heterodiegetic and ho­
than narrotology generally connotes. For that reason, and since I am also suggesting a less modiegetic narrators and because of my commitment to simplify narrative terminology.
alienati.ng terminology for the study of narrative, I can also see the advantages of narrative 16. This is somewhat different from the case of a letter that is intercepted by a charac­
poetics, and I would not hesitate to make the change.. ter fOfwhom it was not destined, as happens frequently, say, in Clarissa. The difference is
7. While there is a reader-oriented narratology that emphasizes the process of text pro­ that in' this case the narriltor kllows her text will be intercepted and has structured the sur­
duction, Rimmon-Kenan is right to imply that "the more far-reaching 'revisionism' of face narrative accordingly.
some reader-oriented studies ... is often at odds with the very projeet of narrative poet­ 17. The differences between private and public narration in narratives by women are a
ics" (18). major focus of the book I am now completing on women writers .and narrative voice.
8. Oppositional thinking has, of course, be'en sharply disadvantageous to women, as to 18. As Susan Leger has pointed out to me, a book like Ross qhambers's Story and
other dominated groups. Binary pairs of the variety P/not-P are precisely the structures Situatioll is a healthy exception to this norm.
that create hierarchy (as in nonwhite, illiterate, un-American). Categories and classifica­ 19. I am aware that my analysis of the letters has omitted any discussion of the maiden
tions, while sometimes also used by feminists, are ripe for Procrustean distortions, for pre­ aunt and that her "maidenness" makes her a particularly interesting figure in the context
mature closures, for stifling rigidities. of the portraits of marriage in these letters .
. 9., In The Narrative Act I have in fact worked with women's texts as well as with men's 20. One could argue that the presence of a lover in the subtext keeps eternally open
and I have'also included the narrative theori~s of neglected women like Ver~on Lee arid the possibility of action, evcn if that action seems to be thwarted by the given text. Such a
Kiite Friedemann. But I did not really undertake the radical reevaluation I am no~ calling possibility to;estifies to the power of the desire for plot.
for, one which would mean begillnitlg with women's writings (both narrative and theoreti­ 21. For the example of these Paley stories I am indebted to Alan Wilde, whose book,
cal) in order not to remarginalize the marginal, in compensation for a training that has been Middle Ground: Studies in COlltemporory American Fiction (Philadelphia: University of Penn­
so strongly biased in favor of male discourse. . sylvania Press, 1987), includes a chapter on her work.
10. I discovered this letter quite accidentallY. While browsing through the stacks of the
Ul!iversity of Wisconsin-Madison library several years ago, I came across an odd compen­
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