Ecriture Feminine

6 Pages 1509 Words

THE QUESTION OF ECRITURE FEMININE AND THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN: discuss with examples of close readings from of the texts.


‘Dictionaries are graveyards of language’ . Since dictionaries contain all the words of our present language it would be unfair to call a dictionary a graveyard. Language is ‘A human system of communication which uses structure vocal sounds and can be embodied in other media such as writing, print and physical signs. Most linguistics currently regard the faculty of language as a defining characteristic of being human.’
Écriture feminine is a mode or style of writing that took form in the late 60’s. It is not a pattern wholly advocated to women as the name might suggest but is a practice of writing that requires openness and multiplicity of a text, something that writers such as Cixous believe difficult to find amongst the work of male writers. Écriture feminine does not have a finite meaning. It allows itself open to various interpretations linking it to Intertextuality. Intertextuality states that the text is not an isolated object but rather a compilation of cultural textuality. ‘Texts have no unity or unified meaning on their own, they are thoroughly connected to an on going cultural and social process’ .

Écriture feminine looks at the relationship between writing and subjectivity, sexuality and social change. Through Écriture feminine we cannot view masculine and feminine in the same context as male and female. ‘Female refers to a biological state, feminine refers to a cultural ideology of womanhood and feminist: a mode of social and political thought and action (Toril Moi). In this case the male species can effectively be authors of Écriture feminine and Cixous sees this in writers such as Kleist, Joyce and Genet.
It had been until the last century that the pen had been deeply associated with the male, as was all forms of learned behaviour. This way of life gave rise the u...