Women's powerlessness and self-inflicted violence in literature

Confluence of Prose and Poetry

Women, under the auspices of a system of marriage that left this with very little recourse or power to prosper on their own often felt a sense of powerlessness that encompassed their whole mind and often showed in literature written by them. There are many examples of the kind of powerlessness that brought out within them the traits of human nature that beget powerlessness. In the case of women, as with men, violence was often the most common trait and yet, for women the very concept of violence was considered off limits and so the violence frequently became self-inflicted. "Violence comes from powerlessness, as I have said; it is the explosion of impotence."

May 53) Walker expresses this by stating that women frequently write of their guilt at having feelings of resistance, and a desire for power.

A with equal force, [as the desire for power] women reminded themselves that they shouldn't expect too much. Insofar as they desired power, they felt guilty. 35 They knew that these new opportunities were entailed, and often they reinforced their own sense of powerlessness by admitting the justice of such restrictions. Many women poets express a longing for freedom, but in an equal number of cases they reject this aspiration.

Walker 37)

As women seek to regain a sense of self and restore their innate power, they are dashed upon the cliffs of marriage, regardless of the good intentions of the husband or the father. There are two particular works, within the collection of the textbook, Making Literature Matter, which are strikingly evident of this phenomenon. The work, the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman and Forgiving My Father by Lucille Clifton, both outline powerlessness and also demonstrate examples of self-inflicted violence.

In the Yellow Wallpaper Gillman's madwoman frequently calls to the attention of her physician husband that there is something wrong with the home where they have settled for her convalescence from a supposed "nervous condition," that all evidence suggests, simple goaded her on to independence and expression, i.e. To write down her own thoughts. (Gilman 917) Her husband seemed to see this exercise of writing as something that evidenced her inability to conform to the confines of marriage and therefore something that was unhealthy to her existence as his wife. Sadly, this puts her work in the dark, and makes it so she must hide from her husband her writing and her desires. She expresses guilt and secrets her writing away, pretending to conform, as she is slowly driven mad by the morose surroundings of the room with the yellow wallpaper, which by her descriptions was once a torture chamber for children, who were probably equally mad, as a result of their powerlessness. " -- there is something strange about the house -- I can feel it. I even said so to John one moonlight evening but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window. I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition." (Perkins 917) When she describes the wallpaper one can definitely see the nature of her madness, and the fear of being trapped within this torture chamber of a room.

The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped off -- the paper in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide -- plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others. No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long. There comes John, and I must put this away, -- he hates to have me write a word. (Gilman 918)

The character's repeated attempt to both conform to John's wishes, accepting the house, that they were so "lucky" to secure for the summer and pretending not to write, or even think for herself, so as not to make herself "sicker." The heroin helplessly conforms to the madness of the house, locks herself in the room with the yellow wallpaper and precedes to go mad.

I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try. Besides I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued." (920)

Yet, even in her madness she is not allowed to express her feelings, as suicide is not an option, as it might look bad to the neighbors. Some argue that heroine's language of madness is not a language of helplessness but the expression of her only avenue for resistance.

"Paula Treichler argues that the heroine's madness at the end of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is the beginning of a language of resistance. These analysts see illness not as a fulfillment of sexist stereotypes but as a way to resist them."

Walker 48)

Women, are subject to a specific form of powerlessness, one they must submit to unconditionally, and have little if any recourse to strike out of, as they have no choice in a world where marriage is the only viable vocation, to seek their own success or failure.

"The will to power is different in every individual, according to Nietzsche and yet it is also clear that it exists, even in those least likely to obtain the power that drives an idea of "success," through money or influence."

Ransom 7) it is clear to most people that even those hwo are unlikely to find success, in it have a will to power and if that power cannot be realized for whatever reason the individual may be incited to violence. Though there are many cases of women actually inflicting violence on the world around them, most often it is a repression that creates the infliction of violence upon themselves.

And how does violence feel? As we will see, it feels like existential crisis, like hopelessness, like the loss of the future. It feels like impossible contradictions of resistance within oppression, like the struggle of humanity within terror. Violence is about im/possibility, about the human condition and the meaning of survival. This is why wars are fought with bloodletting, why torture takes place, and why neither violence nor war is limited to the physical carnage of the battlefield.

Nordstrom 59)

The early death of Clifton's mother, as a result of having to powerlessly rely on a liar and a letch who could not provide for his family, is the ultimate example of self-inflicted violence, as is Gillman's character resorting to an expression of madness to resist her powerlessness. It was only slightly more "appropriate" for a women to realize madness as it was for her to throw herself from a three story window.