Mike Levy wrote:
You may be right about this, Lissa. I've seen similar things said about a
>number of female fiction writers as well, particularly Eleanor Arnason. How
>does this connect with Le Guin's whole carrier bag theory of fiction by
>the way?
hmm... i suppose, back to the idea of hero's, that the hero's journey is
usually linear: (the german "bildungsroman") young male's parents die,
young male goes out into the world to find fatherness, finds evil, kills
evil, (sometimes finds out evil is father)((feminist?)), becomes mr.
goodness of the universe. Le Guin believes the hero story is not what is
good about novels (and sci fi) --- as novels should be containers for
collections. so, i would imagine that in order to collect, she must
meander, rather than take the ol' straightaway. (hence, the loopyness? the
curves and wanderings?) as well, she collects her ideas into a bag --
taking the ideas in, holding them next to her. i'm not sure if Le Guin
would go so far as to say that this mirrors what the french fem critics of
the body (such as Cixous) theorize -- because woman as bag sounds pretty
terrible. as does woman as hole, or woman as
emptiness-that-needs-to-be-filled (like Lillian Robinson writes satirically
about)...
i guess Le Guin is writing that women collect and men kill--gatherers vs.
hunters. (sorry.)(she is, after all, referring to anthropology). but i
don't know if she relates this to our bodies directly... although the
sexual implications are glaring to me.
-lissa bloomer
if you're wearing pants, thank my great great great grandmother.
elisabeth bloomer
instructor, english
virginia tech
ebloomer@vt.edu
540.231.2445
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