As a professed Christian feminist and having just recently written about the feminism contained within the Christian writings of Julian of Norwich (who places God as Father, Jesus as True Mother, and the Holy Spirit as Spouse), I was eager to read Kidd's book because she places a great deal of emphasis on the feminine sacred images of Mary and a female Mother God in Traveling with Pomegranates, not to mention a black Madonna that becomes a kind of mother to Lily and the three sisters in "The Secret Life of Bees." Furthermore, her daughter Ann, creates a feminine trifecta of feminine spiritual images using Athena, Joan of Arc, and Mother Mary (I'm still trying to swallow this one, but I don't believe that she or Sue is replacing the Trinity in any way, rather they are creating room for feminine spirituality). I will be posting some of my thoughts and favorite quotes soon as I grow even further into my own feminist shoes while reading these books.
But for now, since I am reading about Sue, who describes herself as a "conventionally religious, churchgoing woman, a traditional wife and mother," and her "awakening" into a feminist self, I thought I would finally post my own "growth into feminism/growth into theory" that I wrote for my Lit. Theory class this past quarter. So here goes:
In my undergraduate English program, I took an Introduction to Literary Theory course as part of my core requirements as an English major. Having heard many rumors of the confusion I would soon experience, I walked in the first day with very little confidence. However, my trepidation was both brief and exaggerated, as I soon found myself understanding "most" of what the professor was saying. Moreover, I found myself existentially attracted to the feminist theories of Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf. As part of our assignments, the professor assigned articles for us to read and we were instructed to create outlines and express some of our reactions to them. Along with the articles she chose, we studied the schools of criticism presented in Beginning Theory by Peter Berry. It was my exposure to Lit. Theory, as well as an Intro. to Women's Studies, that I realized I had, unbeknownst to myself, been a feminist for most of my life.
As a young girl growing up in the conservative Appalachian mountains of southwest Virginia, I watched my parents practice very traditional gender roles - my father went to work and "earned the money," while my mother stayed home to raise my brother and me. They were the rule, embodiments of a generational tradition handed down throughout the years - men worked in the coal mines (the main source of employment in our area) and women fulfilled the "wifely duties" of keeping house and raising children. From a young age, I watched my mother pull on bright yellow rubber gloves everyday to clean the house (much like the mother in the cartoon I watched every morning - Dexter's Laboratory*).
One day I told her I didn't want to wear those when I grew up, that I had "important things to do." Years later, having married and started a home of my own, I realize that she worked just as hard as my father but in a different way. Still, there was something eerily disturbing about those "homemaker" gloves, as if they signified all that I did not want to be. As a child I never "played house." Rather, I pretended to be a secretary or hotel manager or teacher...something that, at the time, represented life beyond the walls of my home, although now seem the images of stereotypical feminine workforce.
What I realized during those two classes, immersing myself in feminist criticism, was that even at a young age, I rejected what I understood to be the traditional gender roles of my parents. And yet, I also came to realize that it was my parents, the very archetypes of a life I recoiled from, were the very ones who encouraged me not to embrace those traditional roles, urging me to go to college and have a career.
Just recently, my mother gave me my own pair of BLUE rubber gloves and I couldn't help but smile at the irony - what I viewed as a little girl to be the stifling symbols of a limited existence confined to a house, I now found to be a beautiful metaphor for my own growth as a woman. For while I have chosen a different path than my mother, it was only through her encouragement - her own brand of expressing feminism - that I became who I am today.
[The following paragraph is more about my teaching theory than feminism]
For our final assignment in the Intro. course, our professor gave us the choice of analyzing a piece of literature or writing a teaching philosophy using three different types of criticism. Since I wanted to be a teacher, I chose the latter and set out to discern my own pedagogical style. In my paper, I discussed how I would use Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and New Historicism, focusing mainly on Shoshana Felman's article, "Psychoanalysis and Education: Teaching Terminable and Interminable." Felman's rejection of a linear hermeneutic, confined to a logical progression on an infinite chronology and her articulation of a circular epistemology - one that occurs through "breakthroughs, leaps, and regressions" (415) - appealed to what I saw as the epochal dimension of reality. Further, her emphasis on the emotive aspects of pedagogy, how knowledge can be obtained unintentionally and is not simply a cognitive enterprise, spoke to the poet within. In my future classroom, I planned to implement Young Adult Literature and picture books alongside larger texts of the literary cannon, encouraging students to create their own meanings and connections rather than telling them what they were supposed to learn from it. I also wanted to create a comfortable atmosphere for discussion, for the free expression of ideas, allowing students to self-publish their work in order to build their confidence and collective identity. Furthermore, I planned to assign a multi-genre project to allow for different students' strengths and weaknesses. My experience teaching high-school this past fall opened my eyes to the significant distance that can exist between theory and reality. My experiences affirmed what I feared in developing a theoretical pedagogy - that in reality, theory rarely works out as neat as we thought it would. However, in putting some of my plans to the test, I was able see them in action, recognizing their benefits and limitations.
Growing up I had typically read for the pure enjoyment and entertainment of it. It was only in college that I realized I had been all along been analyzing and interpreting literature in some way or another. Armed with my blue gloves, the voices of Woolf and Beauvoir in the back of my mind, and my love for literature, I am ready to delve deeper into theory and all that it entails.
[Now having read this, I know that I have already changed even more from when I wrote this in the beginning of this quarter. Eavan Boland is another great feminist poet who I have come to admire recently, as well as Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor. But perhaps this is what feminist growth is all about; the constant growth and awakening into a new woman each day.]
No comments:
Post a Comment