Words of One's Own: Some Evidence against Men's Use of Language as a Tool of Domination

A radical critique of literature, feminist in its impulse, would take work first of all as a clue to how we live, how we have been living, how we have been led to imagine ourselves, how our language has trapped as well as liberated us, how very act of naming has been till now a male prerogative. Adrienne Rich's characterization of domination of women by men throughout history contains two assumptions that present paper will debate: at language has been a primary source of men's continued supremacy and that written language contains record of that supremacy. Having taken Rich's claim as an invitation to study gender in language use, we have conducted an inquiry into men's and women's use of written language during eighteenth century, a period of history much focused upon by feminist scholarship. Our findings have led us to contend that there are perceivable (and describable) gender-relevant in language written by men and women during that century. We will trace way element of gender informs dichotomy of sexes in language, information that has been assumed by other scholars interested in this question to be product of patriarchal culture and to have been under control of men in that culture. Most important in view of such a prior perspective, we will bring to light well-documented and significant extent of women's written contribution to shaping of their own gender identity according to patriarchal values, a phenomenon anticipated by some contemporary feminist language and historical theorists. The eighteenth century was a time that feminist historians contend was formative in development of patriarchal definitions of modern womanhood, and evidence of this linguistic contribution by eighteenth-century women to construction of patriarchal ideal argues for a review of some feminist historicists' contention that domestic subculture, as a vital support structure of modern industrialized culture, was solely a patriarchal product. The development of feminist critique of language and literature that Rich called for 23 years ago has been fruitful and has multiplied in a variety of academic disciplines. Research into details of history of male domination of female, theories about its role in development of modem sociopolitical organization, and questions about patriarchal stamp of language and literature all have been pursued. Joan Scott, in Gender and Politics of History, has provided a feminist interpretation of nineteenth- and twentieth-century historical processes that links identification of gender to evolution of power relationships in modem industrialized society (42). She argues that gender identities are determined by total conglomerate of cultural forces rather than by individuals or groups within cultures whose power and identity are derived from some category -- such as race or class -- other than gender. Scott's contention about significance of gender in social history is that differences between sexes constitute and are constituted by hierarchical social structures (25). Beside Scott, other feminist theorists of social, political, and literary history such as Nancy Armstrong, Rita Felski, Vivien Jones, and Jane Spencer have argued for identification of gender as an essential part of construction of social hierarchies by a cultural process that features language. Although Armstrong concludes her political history of novel with observation that women's writing has contributed much to definition of political hierarchy that emerged in eighteenth century, she, too, acknowledges that the modem political state ... was accomplished largely through cultural hegemony (9). All of writers mentioned use fiction and nonfiction texts as cultural products demonstrating feminization of culture. …