by Alison Lurie
Among teachers, even before theory, a “text” was usually expected to be difficult to access. Even today, when we study a physics textbook or the Bible, we are not supposed to be able to understand what we read without the help of a teacher or preacher. Literary theory expanded the definition of “text” enormously and critically. For one thing, redefining poems and novels and stories as texts removed them from occasions of private appreciation and set an interpreter between them and us. Many contemporary critics, like medieval churchmen, seem to prefer to stand between the text and the reader, blocking direct access and substituting their own commentaries or “metatexts” for their chosen Gospel. The tendency of some modern theorists to “read” the whole world as a text—a notion reminiscent of the medieval idea of the world as God’s book—expands the area of the layman’s presumed ignorance and the critic’s wisdom and power.
Using the term “text” implies that a work is worthy of study, but it may also sideline it, since in both churches and classrooms a text has traditionally often been only the jumping-off point for a sermon or lecture which may range far afield. So it has been with the texts of deconstruction, which more often than not give rise to amazingly intricate and far-fetched discourses, another now popular word with both religious and educational overtones. At times it seems that the briefer the text, the more elaborate is the critical structure built upon it.
Many people have pointed out the practical advantages of the term “text,” which embraces every sort of written document from an advertising slogan to a verse epic. The hidden implication of this apparently generous and inclusive term, however, is that all texts are equal: the difference between the advertising slogan and the epic is one of social context rather than one of value or meaning. In practice, however, some texts are more equal than others: they are privileged. They deserve to be rewarded and honored and widely read. This term has also passed into common academic—and occasionally nonacademic—discourse. Outside the university, though, it is still most often associated with matters of social class, and for literary critics to adopt the term suggests that there is still rank among documents.
While texts are privileged, characters and concepts within them are more apt to be spoken of as “valorized,” that is, highly valued, but not always correctly. The term is almost always used in a negative, debunking way, to expose the hidden assumptions of a given text. But because most of us learned the word “valorize” (“to fix the value or price of a commodity”) before we read literary theory, the old meaning haunts the new usage with its implication that what writers are doing in presenting any character or idea as admirable is equivalent to price-fixing. Echoes from the word “valor” also hint that there is something illegitimate in attributing “boldness or firmness; courage or bravery” to anyone or anything, since a reputation for these qualities must usually be won rather than assigned.
For theorists, it is not popularity or traditional acclaim (economic success or aristocratic lineage, so to speak) that now determines the value of a text; it is the decision of the literary critic. At first this might suggest that critics, like royal personages, assign the highest rank and title to selected members of the mob of texts suing for their favors. However, this is true only to a certain extent. Contemporary critics, like many sovereigns, tend to keep the greatest honors and privileges for themselves. Today it is critical theory that is truly “privileged.” As Jonathan Culler put it in his lucid and thoughtful, if at times terrifying, survey of trends in the field, Framing the Sign, “formerly the history of criticism was part of the history of literature … now the history of literature is part of the history of criticism.” The late Paul de Man even suggested that critical or philosophical or linguistic texts are fully as “literary” as poems and novels, which may account for the fact that many articles and books in the field seem, especially to a novelist or poet, intended not so much to supplement as to compete with the works they claim to discuss.
In some university courses today students read mainly critical theory, and class discussions revolve around such second-level texts. The fact that these texts, too, are subject to deconstruction, and their deconstructions to further deconstruction, has produced an exhausting series of commentaries on commentaries which recall nothing so much as the productions of medieval scholasticism. To the unconverted this mass of words resembles the infinitely retreating and dimming reflections in opposing mirrors.
More recent developments in poststructuralist criticism, and more recent verbal inventions, are too many and various for me to even attempt to cover. A thorough investigation, though, might look at the metaphoric suggestions of Derrida’s difference and difference, and the daunting vocabulary of terms from classical rhetoric adopted by writers like Paul de Man and Harold Bloom, which suggest that literature is a form of political oratory, and that to write is essentially to pose or deceive.
Attention should also be paid to the emerging language of feminist criticism which, for example, sometimes speaks of women’s writing as flua``nt (“flowing”), suggesting, unfortunately, that though spontaneous, it may also be damply emotional and unstable. Equally interesting is the vocabulary of the New Historicists, who lend to use the term “subversion” in the place of deconstruction, calling up a Conradian world of plots and counterplots, revolution and ruin. Several writers, both feminist and historicist, have been accused of recuperating (in this case, reviving) Marxist vocabularies and texts—thus by association implying that these terms and works were seriously ill, or perhaps even that literature itself is an illness.
To the common reader all these new vocabularies are daunting and confusing. Perhaps that is one of the aims of their inventors and users: many new intellectual disciplines, like elementary school cliques, tend to adopt their own private version of pig latin in order to build morale and confuse outsiders. Among these confused outsiders, unfortunately, is often the writer. Earlier schools of literary criticism have usually been either friendly and easily accessible, or if anything too invasive—prying into writers’ personal lives and their psychological and economic motivations. “Theory,” by contrast, excludes authors from consideration.
Before the present time it is unlikely that many authors of poetry or fiction or drama ever sat down to create a text. Today, however, a few writers seem to be doing just that. They are deliberately producing work that is intended to be taken apart and studied rather than read and enjoyed. Some of their productions have been original and interesting, but most of them depress me and make me sorry for their authors, whom I see as trying in vain to run round the end of the new school of literary criticism and score some points for their own words. Even if what they say won’t be taken seriously as a poem or story, or a statement of values, the hope is that it will qualify as a kind of criticism.
I am afraid that these writers are in for a disappointment. Critics have never taken kindly to attempts to usurp their functions; and though they may claim that their own work is literature, they are unlikely to concede that any collection of words put together by an author, including the present one, could be taken seriously as criticism.
My Name or Yours?
Feminism, like many other social movements, has had its troubles with language, and especially with names. We have learned to say “chairperson” and “humankind,” and are gradually managing to replace the ungainly pronoun “he/she” with the new multi-person “they” and “them,” avoiding sentences like “Tell whoever has parked his/her van in my driveway that if he/she does not remove it I will report him/her to the police.”
On the other hand, many women are still not sure what to call themselves. For centuries wives were concealed from the world behind their husbands’ names. You were Miss Jane Smith until you married; you then immediately became Mrs. Thomas Brown. Few people who weren’t personally acquainted with you knew your first name, or dared to use it if they did. The name “Mrs. Thomas Brown” was generic and transferable; it did not d
esignate a particular individual, but merely “the current wife of Thomas Brown.” At the time this seemed completely normal to us. In the 1960s I and a group of friends put out a cookbook to raise funds for the nursery school our children attended. All the recipes were signed with our married names: I was Mrs. Jonathan Bishop.
Today, most of us would probably sign our recipes with our first and last names. but we would expect to be called Ms. rather than Miss or Mrs. in our professional lives, partly because, like Mr., it does not reveal marital status. Miss or Mrs. is still used sometimes on formal private occasions: political banquets, society fund-raisers, and debutante balls. It is also favored by women whose only public identity is that of the wife of their (often well-known) husband.
Even today, it is common for women to take their husbands’ last names, especially in conservative circles. Problems start later. If your husband dies, you will still be Mrs. Thomas Brown, a respectable widow. But if you are divorced you automatically become Mrs. Jane Brown, thus informing the world that your marriage has failed. Tommy Brown, of course, never has to change his name, and can conceal his marital status all his life. If he remarries, another woman will immediately become Mrs. Thomas Brown.
If you were especially daring, or especially angry at Tommy, you could petition to resume your so-called “maiden” name. There were difficulties with that choice, however. Many of my divorced friends kept their husband’s last name so that it would continue to be the same as that of their children, or because it was associated with their public or professional identity. Some, too, had been glad to lose their original name. It is no fun for a little girl to be called Susie Hogg or Susie Mudd, and an acquaintance once told me that one of things about her first husband she liked most was that his last name was not Fink.
In the nineteenth century many women writers were known by their husband’s name only; some of the best-selling novels of the time were announced on their title pages as “By Mrs. Clfford” or “By Mrs. Oliphant.” Later, the usual thing to do when you published your first book was to use your first name and your husband’s last, as if you were already divorced. Of course, if you actually got divorced later, you might find yourself stuck with the last name of a person you disliked or even hated. Writers who did not marry, or started publishing early, like Willa Cather or Mary McCarthy, were luckier. I was lucky too: though I had been married for fourteen years when my first novel appeared, I decided to stick with my original name because I knew it would please my parents. I had no wish to please my mother-in-law, and anyhow there were already far too many writers called Bishop.
In the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and ‘70s, young women were encouraged to reject their patronymics—”slave names” was the term used by the most radical—and choose new surnames. Sometimes these honored the maternal line: Polly the daughter of Joan might become the photographer Polly Joan; she might have decided instead to be Polly Joans, Polly Joanchild, or (in a feminist version of the Icelandic custom) Polly Joansdaughter. Other women adopted the name of the state or city in which they were born or lived, like the artist Judy Chicago. Another popular choice was the month or day of one’s birth: Jane March, Susan Monday. You could also choose a name linked to your occupation or hobby: Mary Weaver, Ellen Fern.
All this was fine. Problems came later, when these feminists married. Many, even those who had been content to bear their fathers’ names, balked at the idea of dissolving their identity in their husband’s. A temporary solution, at the time, was to hyphenate the surnames of bride and groom. The pairings were not always ideal, as in the case of friends whom I will call Ann Fish and Bill Gold. For one thing, there was the question of whose name would come first. They could of course alternate, so that individuals called Ann Fish-Gold and Bill Gold-Fish would come into existence. This was sure to cause confusion in doctor’s offices and at work, let alone when Ann and Bill tried to rent an apartment, buy insurance, or set up a joint bank account. Usually, therefore, the choice was to put the husband’s name first.
There was potential trouble, too, when the children of hyphenated couples grew up and fell in love. Ann and Bill Gold-Fish were very happy when their daughter Jenny fell in love with Jerry, the intelligent and attractive son of friends whom I will call the Good-Littles. They were not surprised when the kids refused to become Jenny and Jerry Good-Little-Gold-Fish. Obviously, they would want to shorten their name, but which of their four parents would they symbolically reject? As it happened, Jenny and Jerry decided to solve the problem by discarding all four last names and adopting a brand new one, Tompkins, after the county in which they lived. This not only slightly hurt and embarrassed both sets of parents, it also involved tedious public announcements and legal proceedings.
Worse things have happened. A romantic couple I knew of, when they married, chose the last name of Joy. It was not prophetic, and two years later they split up. As a result, both of them had to go through lengthy, expensive, and somewhat mortifying procedures to restore their former names to their bank accounts, credit cards, drivers’ licenses, web addresses, and much, much more.
Today many brides have returned to the practices of a much earlier generation and become what my mother would have called “Lucy Stoners,” after the nineteenth-century feminist who refused to take her husband’s name. When they marry, they keep their surnames. But again, what about the children?
Fortunately, there is a simple solution to this problem, which I should like to recommend to everyone. In anthropological terms, it involves setting up a system of parallel matrilineal and patrilineal lines. Under this plan, both husband and wife will pass their own surnames on to all children of the same sex: boys will take their father’s last name, and girls will take their mother’s. If this sensible and equable custom is adopted, both women and men will have names that are theirs for life. It will be a sign to the world that marriage is an equal contract in which no one’s identity has to disappear. Eventually, this plan will also greatly simplify record-keeping and the work of genealogists. Daughters will be valued as much as sons, since they will also preserve a family name, and also, in some European countries, a family title.
Indeed, the idea seems so simple and intelligent that, if humans were rational beings, I would look forward to seeing it adopted throughout the world. My enthusiasm, by the way, is wholly philosophic and disinterested. As the mother of three sons, I would still be doomed to see my surname vanish under the enlightened new system as surely as it will under the antiquated patriarchal customs of the present.
Witches Old and New
Over the years I have met many people who considered themselves to be witches and/or worshippers of a female deity, whom they usually referred to as The Goddess. They were of every age and social class, and of both sexes—though, as in the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, women predominated. With one exception, all claimed that they were good, or white, witches, and worked only for positive ends. They celebrated the seasons of the year and the power and glory of nature. They cast spells to find lost objects; to bring health, wealth, love, happiness, and peace of mind to themselves and their friends; and occasionally to block the evil or misguided actions of institutions such as the Internal Revenue Service, the Pentagon, and Cornell University.
The one witch I’ve known who admitted to a less benign use of her magic arts was the writer Shirley Jackson, best remembered now for her brilliant and frightening short story “The Lottery.” She did not always claim to be a witch, but she also did not deny it, sometimes giving examples. At one time, she told me, she and her husband, the critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, were extremely annoyed by his publisher, Alfred Knopf. “Unfortunately, my powers do not extend to New York State,” she informed his secretary and several other acquaintances. “But let him be warned. If he enters my territory, Vermont, evil will befall him.”
The warning was passed on; but several weeks later, rashly disregarding it, Knopf took a train
to Vermont to go skiing. The first day he was out on the slopes, Jackson said, he fell and broke his leg. After emergency medical treatment, he was helped onto another train and returned to his territory, Manhattan.
Had Shirley Jackson lived four hundred years ago, she might well have been accused of witchcraft as a result of this incident. It follows what the Oxford historian Robin Briggs proposes as a common pattern. A feels him/herself to have been injured, cheated, or slighted by B—or perhaps merely gives B a peculiar look, or makes an ambiguous gesture. Soon afterward B falls ill, has an accident, or suffers some other unexpected misfortune. B, and B’s friends and relatives, blame A, who is probably a witch.
Briggs’s scholarly and agreeably written book includes many such cases. Unlike some historians, however, he is also deeply interested in “the belief system that made witchcraft credible” and persecution possible. What he has set out to do, he writes, is “as much to reconstruct a way of thinking and living as to offer explanations for the great persecutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.” At times the perceived effects of witchcraft seem to be as delusional as the accusations: one woman, Jacotte Simon, for example, “believed she was bewitched, because several rat-sized animals seemed to be running about inside her body.” In another case, early one morning when Simon was still asleep, two “marvelously big and ugly” cats, whom she later identified as two of her neighbors, appeared at the end of her bed. “Although she could not move, she managed to make the sign of the cross with her tongue, calling out to her husband for help.” When he rushed in, they vanished “with a great noise.”