Articulating The Unspeakable Female Body in Orlando

Abstract

Articulating The Unspeakable Female Body in Orlando Female experience and body has always been defined and ill-treated as deviant by the dominant patriarchal structure and its sexist language. It is the ‘dark continent’ full of indefinable things, like female sexuality and textuality that must be avoided. That is why, the expression of female desire has always been ignored and/or disguised in male texts. However, today is high time women, having been estranged from their bodies and sexualities throughout history with the terrifying myth of Medusa, emerged from their deep sleep and seek the ways of resisting linguistic, historical, and sexual confinements placed on them. To be able to realize and extend that resistance, they have endeavoured to create a new feminine rhetoric, which is only possible through writing with a female language and through the reclamation of the female body. Virginia Woolf, being one of the first woman writers, noticing and understanding the relationship between dominant male ideology and language, knows the inexpressibility of the female body and the parallel improbability of a female text through a borrowed man-made language. Hence, Woolf focuses on the ways of creating a feminine rhetoric and a female language that could express female desire and body. This study, focusing on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, aims to present the practices of de con structing the internalized fear of rejection and inferiority of women, and establishing a new, female-oriented tradition through articulating the unspeakable female body written in a female language, which creates multiple meanings and fluid identities

Keywords

• Female Body and Sexuality,Female Language,De con struction,Phallocentrism,Androgyny,Feminine Writing

Dillendiril e meyen Kadın Bedeninin Orlando’da Dile Gelişi

Abstract

Kadın deneyimi ve bedeni her daim egemen ataerkil yapı ve onun cinsiyetçi dili tarafından sapkın olarak tanımlanmış ve horlanmıştır. Özellikle kadın bedeni, barındırdığı cinselliği, metinselliği ve tanımlan a mayan özellikleri dolayısıyla, bu ataerkil yapı için kaçınılması ve uzak durulması gereken ‘karanlık bir kıta’dır. Bu nedenle, dişil arzuların ifadesi erkek egemen metinlerde göz ardı edilmiş ve/veya gizlenmiştir. Ancak, Medusa'nın dehşet verici efsanesiyle tarih boyunca bedenlerinden ve cinselliklerinden uzaklaştırılmış olan kadınlar için günümüz, derin uykularından uyanma ve kendilerine dikte ettirilen dilsel, tarihsel ve cinsel sınırlamalara direnme yollarını arama vaktidir. Bu direnişi gerçekleştirebilmek ve yaymak ise ancak, kadınların, kadın bedeninin dile geldiği ve dişil dil ile oluşturulmuş dişil yazını yaratması ile mümkündür. Ataerkil ideolojiler ile dil arasındaki ilişkiyi fark eden ve anlayan ilk kadın yazarlardan biri olan Virginia Woolf, kadın bedeninin ve dişil metinlerin erkek egemen dil ve söylemler ile ifade edilemeyeceğini savunur. Bu yüzden Woolf, kadın arzusunu ve bedenini ifade edebilecek dişil bir dil ve yazın yaratmanın yollarına odaklanır. Argümanlarını Virginia Woolf'un Orlando adlı eserine dayandıran bu çalışma, kadınların içselleştirilmiş reddedilme ve aşağılanma korkularını yıkarak, dillendiremedikleri kadın bedenlerini ve deneyimlerini ifade edebilen çok yönlü ve akışkan dişil dil ve söylemleri yaratma yollarını sunmayı amaçlamaktadır

Keywords

• Kadın Bedeni ve Cinselliği,Dişil Dil,Yapısöküm,Fallosentrizm,Androjen,Dişil Yazın

References

1. Brown, Nathaniel. “The ‘Double Soul’: Virginia Woolf, Shelley, and Androgyny” Keats-Shelley Journal 33 (1984):182- 204.
2. Cixous, Helene, Cohen, Keith, and Cohen, Paula. “The Laugh of the Medusa” Signs Vol. 1. No. 4 (1976): 875-893.
3. Cixous, Helene. “Castration or Decapitation”, trans. Annette Kuhn. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society Vol. 7 No. 1 (1981): 44 – 55.
4. Freud, S. “The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud XIX (1923-1925): 171-180.
5. Jones, Ellen Carol. “The Flight of a Word: Narcissism and the Masquerade of Writing in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando” Women’s Studies (1994): 155-174.
6. Kitsi- Mitakou, Katerina. “Which Is the Greater Ecstasy?”: Desiring the Body’s Text and Writing the Body’s Desire in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando” Yearbook of English Studies, 3 (1991): 215-52.
7. Knopp, Sherron. “If I Saw You Would You Kiss Me?”: Sapphism and the Subversiveness of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando” PMLA, Vol. , No. 1(1988): 24- 34.
8. Kofman, Sarah. L’Enigme de la femme, la femme dans les textes de Freud. trans. Catherine Porter as The Enigma of Woman, Woman in Freud’s Writings (London: Cornell University Press, 1985).

9. Kristeva, Julia. Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia. trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia UP, 1989).
10. Lauretis, Teresa. Technologies of Gender (London: Macmillan, 1987).
11. Lokke, Kari Elise. “Orlando and Incandescence: Virginia Woolf’s Comic Sublime” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 38 (1992): 235-52.
12. Marcus, Jane. “Sapphistry: Narration as Lesbian Seduction in A Room of One’s Own” Virginia Woolf and the Languages of Patriarchy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 163-187.
13. Moriconi, Christina Kay. “Writing a Woman’s Sentence: Virginia Woolf’s L’ecriture Feminine” (Master’s Theses, San Jose State University, 1996)
14. Parkin-Gounelas, Ruth. “The Other Side of the Looking Glass: Women’s Fantasy Writing and Woolf’s Orlando” Gramma (1993): 153.
15. Plato. Delphi Complete Works of Plato (Illustrated) (East Sussex: Delphi Classics, 2013) https://play.google.com/books/r? id=S2QbAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PR1
16. Showalter, Elaine. “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness” Critical Inquiry, Vol.8, No. 2 (1981): 179-205.
17. Showalter, Elaine. Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siécle (New York: Viking, 1991).
18. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own (New York: Harcourt, 1929) http://feedbooks.com
19. Woolf, Virginia. “Women and Fiction” Women and Writing. (Ed.) Michele Barrett (New York: Harcourt, 1979), 48 – 191.
20. Woolf, Virginia. The Common Reader: First Series. (Ed.) Andrew Mcneillie (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1984).
21. Woolf, Virginia. Moments of Being (Ed.) Jeanne Schulkind (New York: Harcourt, 1985).