Read Online Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 12 by Gavin J. Grant - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Gavin J. Grant
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voices speaking to the author could only be a conceit promoted with calculation aforethought by the author.
The voices that make up the fabric of The Woman Who . . . include a “Narrator,” who often describes scenes and settings for the stories told; a “Chorus,” which occasionally offers comments and criticism of the group-generated sort, sometimes speaking as the voice of mainstream conventional wisdom, sometimes from the perspective of one late-1970s feminist faction or another; a “Witness"; “The Woman,” who is the designated writer struggling to produce this new narrative; “The (Woman's) Friend,” who is a constant critic, unable to suspend her disbelief in the very possibility of the story the writer wants to tell; “the Man,” the writer's lover; and an extensive cast of characters, both invented and historical, most prominently Ada and the General, who figure in the stories told. The Woman wants to devise a narrative in which a war widow, Ada, by engaging in unspecified heterosexual relations with the General (whose men killed her husband and most of the people in her village), “takes the war out of” the General, who is neither “the worst of his species” nor the best. The story she wants to tell is not that of a man saved by the love of a Good Woman (a very popular story in the twentieth-century US), for the Woman says, of her own experience, that love itself makes no difference. What Metzger proposes will take the war out of soldiers and generals and similar others will not be love, but something else—something she apparently sees resulting from a certain kind of heterosexual relation.
In late February, 2003, when I had the impulse to take this book down from the shelf and reread it for the first time in twenty years, I went to Deena Metzger's website and found this quote prominently displayed:
To follow story is to understand the path of healing. Each of our stories is a universe. Each one of us is living a story. To discover its shape and essence is essential to soul making.
Metzger's depiction of the Woman's struggle to create a plausible story of women defeating war itself (rather than warriors) without the use of weapons, then, takes the power of story extremely seriously. Story, for Metzger, creates agency and possibility. Or, to use her own words, is necessary for “soul making."
This novel was published in 1981 and written, we can surmise, during the 1970s. Although the woman-and-sex controversy associated with early 1980s feminism in the US centered on feminist positions toward pornography and sadomasochistic sex, many feminists throughout the 1970s struggled with fundamental questions about heterosexual relations. At the time of its publication, the very title of this novel not only implied a defense and acceptance of heterosexuality as compatible with feminist projects, but also challenged those cultural feminists who held that all men were biologically destined to be warlike, destructive, and oppressive. Early in the novel, the Chorus rebukes the Woman for sleeping with her lover:
We think you will betray us. We think when you will have to choose, you will choose him. We think this is not the time for women to be with men. We think it is more than difficult. We think it is dangerous. To you. And also to us. (22)
The Woman's (and Metzger's) attempt to tell this new story, then, not only flies in the face of common sense and an interminable history of women being the booty, the survivors, and the widows of war, but also implicates how Metzger positions herself as a feminist. The Chorus attacks both Ada for presenting herself at the General's house and the Woman—the novel's designated writer—for wishing to suggest that it might be possible to redeem male oppressors through the very heterosexual relations that many feminists viewed as an instrument of their own oppression.
Chorus. Every country is an occupied country. Every woman is an occupied territory. Every woman
The voices that make up the fabric of The Woman Who . . . include a “Narrator,” who often describes scenes and settings for the stories told; a “Chorus,” which occasionally offers comments and criticism of the group-generated sort, sometimes speaking as the voice of mainstream conventional wisdom, sometimes from the perspective of one late-1970s feminist faction or another; a “Witness"; “The Woman,” who is the designated writer struggling to produce this new narrative; “The (Woman's) Friend,” who is a constant critic, unable to suspend her disbelief in the very possibility of the story the writer wants to tell; “the Man,” the writer's lover; and an extensive cast of characters, both invented and historical, most prominently Ada and the General, who figure in the stories told. The Woman wants to devise a narrative in which a war widow, Ada, by engaging in unspecified heterosexual relations with the General (whose men killed her husband and most of the people in her village), “takes the war out of” the General, who is neither “the worst of his species” nor the best. The story she wants to tell is not that of a man saved by the love of a Good Woman (a very popular story in the twentieth-century US), for the Woman says, of her own experience, that love itself makes no difference. What Metzger proposes will take the war out of soldiers and generals and similar others will not be love, but something else—something she apparently sees resulting from a certain kind of heterosexual relation.
In late February, 2003, when I had the impulse to take this book down from the shelf and reread it for the first time in twenty years, I went to Deena Metzger's website and found this quote prominently displayed:
To follow story is to understand the path of healing. Each of our stories is a universe. Each one of us is living a story. To discover its shape and essence is essential to soul making.
Metzger's depiction of the Woman's struggle to create a plausible story of women defeating war itself (rather than warriors) without the use of weapons, then, takes the power of story extremely seriously. Story, for Metzger, creates agency and possibility. Or, to use her own words, is necessary for “soul making."
This novel was published in 1981 and written, we can surmise, during the 1970s. Although the woman-and-sex controversy associated with early 1980s feminism in the US centered on feminist positions toward pornography and sadomasochistic sex, many feminists throughout the 1970s struggled with fundamental questions about heterosexual relations. At the time of its publication, the very title of this novel not only implied a defense and acceptance of heterosexuality as compatible with feminist projects, but also challenged those cultural feminists who held that all men were biologically destined to be warlike, destructive, and oppressive. Early in the novel, the Chorus rebukes the Woman for sleeping with her lover:
We think you will betray us. We think when you will have to choose, you will choose him. We think this is not the time for women to be with men. We think it is more than difficult. We think it is dangerous. To you. And also to us. (22)
The Woman's (and Metzger's) attempt to tell this new story, then, not only flies in the face of common sense and an interminable history of women being the booty, the survivors, and the widows of war, but also implicates how Metzger positions herself as a feminist. The Chorus attacks both Ada for presenting herself at the General's house and the Woman—the novel's designated writer—for wishing to suggest that it might be possible to redeem male oppressors through the very heterosexual relations that many feminists viewed as an instrument of their own oppression.
Chorus. Every country is an occupied country. Every woman is an occupied territory. Every woman
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