THE NEED TO CREATE A NEW LANGUAGE/EPISTEMOLOGY
Bringing, Maupassant as a naturalist short story writer, Chekhov as a modernist and anti-realist and Turgenev who represents realism, can be considered as a critique of patriarchal literature. The daughter’s refusal to tell her father a story similar to theirs reflects Paley’s intention to restage, rewrite, revise and renew literature so that it can represent women correctly. However, the process of renewing literature cannot take place unless a new language is invented.
Cixous, similarly, advocates the creation of a new system of signification, a feminine mode of representation which is going to operate through the body. For her, associating women’s bodies with women’s writing is a way to go
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Through this statement, we deduce Paley’s optimism and strong belief in hope for change. The Junkie in the short story represents that status. After falling in the trap of addiction, the mother later succeeds to overcome taking drugs. She becomes “a receptionist in a storefront community clinic” (237). She makes up her mind to become a junkie so as to get closer to her son (as male figure) and reduce that gap between her and him. “[Being a junkie] she said it was part of my youth culture” (233). Thus, the act of giving up addiction denotes a radical transformation in her and reflects her readiness to play a different role. She proves that “she is capable of others, of other woman that she will be, of the other woman she isn’t” (890). When she turns to be a junkie, males as the representatives of misogynistic system leave her alone in deep pain. She is victimized by a patriarchal society and culture. However, she tells everybody that ‘when there is hope, there is life’. Simply, women are alive because of transformation.
Cixous and Irigaray also celebrate the idea of optimism and hope women should abide by in their lives. For example, Irigaray believes that women’s identity is open-ended and not fixed like the use of the body itself (lips –oral or vaginal). However, for this open-endedness to take place, women must strip off the images and appearances associated to them – given pasts – by patriarchal modes of representation in order to come together and voice out their differences and open-ended identities. Concerning this point, Irigaray