You are on page 1of 14

From Housewifization to Androgyny

Author(s): SUSAN VISVANATHAN


Source: India International Centre Quarterly , WINTER 1996, Vol. 23, No. 3/4, Second
Nature: Women and the Family (WINTER 1996), pp. 177-189
Published by: India International Centre

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23004618

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

India International Centre is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
India International Centre Quarterly

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
SUSAN VISVANATHAN

From Housewifization to Andr

edged in its meaning? So also Nature, when applied to


Have wewomen,
considered that for women 'labour' is double
is a social construct.
Carolyn Merchant, Claudia Von Werlhoff, Maria Mies and
Ivan Illich have argued forcefully that capitalism had rendered
the woman a captive of the house. The labour of housewives goes
unnoticed as shadow work; they are not seen to be part of the
economy.1 These authors have argued that in capitalism, women
were seen as belonging to the domain of Nature; and they were
to be broken, tamed, cultivated and civilised. Women who experi
mented with healing, agriculture and war were punished. Science
and exploration were male domains; women could not innovate.
The subduing of women's nature was the greatest expression of
the hierarchy of gender. The housewife is the transformation of
the creative energies of women into one systematic type of
labourer: one who is concerned primarily with reproduction, the
birth of new members for the labour force, and their sustenance.
This labour does not create surplus or capital, it cannot be
sold on the labour market. It is, as one feminist has argued, love,
emotion and responsibility. In capitalist patriarchal ideology
these are not things of value; for value only arises from profit in
the market. So the histories of men are visible while women
constitute simply, a sex. Joan of Arc and the Slave Queen Razia
thus drew attention to themselves because they dressed as men.
In a plea for return to motherhood and professions, feminists
tried to handle the question of what gender neutrality actually
entailed. While women enter the professional world (or the labour
market) on an ostensibly equal footing with men, the domestic
space still represented traditional hierarchies. Women bore
children, cooked and cleaned, while men controlled property,
women and children. Both men and women went out to work,
but the earnings by women were a "second" salary. Their official

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
178 / India International Centre Quarterly

roles were continuing in a gender-defined way; but their commit


ment to the codes of work had to be neutral. Their actual invol
vement in the powerful roles in society were seen to be negligible.
The feminists have argued that, as a concomitant to gender
neutrality in the work space, what was required was gender
neutrality in the domestic space. This would involve the socialisa
tion of young children, so that work allocation is not gender
specific. Boys as well as girls must be trained to cook, clean, wash,
shop, rear children and earn. This is work, not 'women's' or
'men's', but work that needs to be done in a shared and reciprocal
way.
Michelle Rosaldo underlines the fact that in most societies
women may have power, but men usually have authority.
Authority becomes a veil which separates and distances men so
that they can control interactions as they wish "... by avoiding
certain sorts of intimacy and unmediated involvement they can
develop an image and mantle of integrity and worth." The
"natural" attributes of womanliness, an ascribed status, is con
trasted to the achieved status of 'becoming a man'. Because
women are excluded from the domains of rationality and power
by cultural stereotyping, they appear as the other. Rosaldo argues
that the status of women is achieved from their stage in the life
cycle: from being daughter, daughter-in-law, wife, mother or
mother-in-law—roles which demarcate their relationship to men
in terms of blood or marriage. For Rosaldo the two extremes of
this position can be seen in the witch who sleeps with the devil,
and the nun who is the bride of God.

In The Death of Nature (1979) Carolyn Merchant shows how


western science domesticated Nature and women. The earth was
transformed from the image of a nurturing mother, into a poten
tial for economic interest. The disorderly elements of female
nature would be subjugated, and women would become passive
dependents in both production and reproduction. Even today, the
isolation of women in child labour—as if pain was demeaning
and infectious, is representative of a scientific objectivity—as
opposed to empathy as experienced with traditional assistance at
child-birth.
In such an objective perspective, nature and culture were no
longer categories in relationship but were now dual, external,
divided and antagonistic. This is a description of the relationship

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
SUSAN VtSVANATHAN / 179

between the sexes. Women, being identified with nature, became


associated with animality—just as were indigenous people in the
colonies. Thus women, the enslaved and animals all belonged to
one class. Hannah Arendt writes that women and slaves were
homologous because they were hidden away, belonged to some
one or another, and because their life was 'laborious' and devoted
to bodily function. Arendt argues that the chief function of
"labour' is the "production of life", and therefore labour is as
sociated with procreation. However the least durable are those
things which are needed for consumption, for life itself. If not
used immediately they perish. Therefore, the daily labour of
women which contributed to subsistence was not inscribed in
memory Arendt said that work—what men did—was different,
for it transformed things from matter into material, from nature
into culture, and was associated with the hands, with skill and
knowledge, rather than with the body.
Why then is labour, life-generating as it is, associated with
passivity? Carolyn Merchant argues for the history of the West
and Leela Dube for India, that women are associated with the
earth. They bear and nourish the seed, which is the vital, life
generating active principle. Corporeality, substance and matter
are seen to derive from the female in patriarchal societies—there
fore also putrefaction and mortality; but on the other hand, quick
ness, the mind, the soul, cerebrality is passed through the male.
Leela Dube argues that a woman is alienated from her productive
resources (like land, she belongs to someone) and she has no
control over her offspring. 4
Ivan Illich would re-affirm the importance of women's con
sciousness about their bodies.5 What was necessary in the debate
was to refocus upon issues of complementarity, argument, con
versation and understanding. As Anna Kingsford, one of the early
feminists maintained, women when kept back from articulating
and achieving this dialogue became stunted. In this situation the
men lost out too, for one sex cannot be handicapped without the
other suffering.6
Virginia Woolf's novels became a new exercise in articulating
the theme of the suppression of women's talents. In The Voyage
Out, Rachael's passion and proficiency in music, while acknow
ledged, may not be professionally used. He wet, the most sensitive
and gentle of men believes that Rachael becomes "less desirable

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
180 / India International Centre Quarterly

as her brain began to work." He wet argues that women see men
as horses do, "They see us three times as big as we are or they'd
never obey us."7 In the end, Rachael must die—she represents the
classic situation of constraint imposed upon the individuality of
women—talented but unprofessional, dying in the small cabin
spaces that society provided for them.
A Room of One's Own became a symbol of private space and
autonomy, where women could find their own sense of being,
write a new history of actions and events. I will not go into an
analyses of Woolf's work here, except to mention that in Orlando
(1928) Woolf destroys this conception of women's being as con
ventional, peaceful and consensually embedded in patriarchy.
She substitutes a male-female figure who so light- heartedly, so
brilliantly destroys and ravages all notions of women's being—
transforming roles and rules, work and custom.
Woolf's work explored two central ideas about women and
consciousness. One was the idea of androgyny. In A Room of One's
Own she playfully and poignantly sketched a mythical account
of Shakespeare's sister Judith, as talented as her sibling, but fated
to die and remain anonymous for she was a mere woman.
Originally delivered as a lecture, she spoke here of the only
possible way for women's emancipation—it was a plan for the
soul. "In each of us two powers preside, one male, one female, and
in the man's brain, the man predominates over the woman."
Where there was harmony between the two forces, spiritual co
operation, a fusion, the greatest creativity is possible.
Virginia Woolf herself was housewifized and sanatorium
ised. Mrs Dalloway, her novel, would be a major critique of the
concept of normalcy as defined by Victorian society.8 Through the
character of Septimus Smith in Mrs. Dalloway ,she tries to show
that God and nature speak in many voices; some have the gift to
hear and understand.

In her valuable interpretation of Jung's work Boundaries of the


Soul, June Singer argues that there is a natural biological opposi
tion between men and women which is the basis of creativity 9
She develops Jung's notion of the anima and animus to underline
that every man has a feminine side, every woman has a masculine
side, which are rendered unconscious by culture. The repression
of the anima (in men) and the animus (in women) creates in both

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
SUSAN VtSVANATHAN / 181

the longing for the other, as well as the awe, fear and incom
prehensibility associated with the other.10
Further, Singer writes that

unless we are partners with that contrasexual side of our nature, the
soul that leads us to our own depths, we cannot become full and
independent partners with a beloved person in the world outside.

In her later work Androgyny11, Singer distinguishes between


various terms in order to define what androgyny really is. This is
neither hermaphroditism, which is a lack of physical differentia
tion; nor is it bisexuality, which is a lack of clarity in gender
identification. The Jungian concept of androgyny expresses "a
natural unforced and uninhibited (male or female) sexuality".
Within the Jungian definition, men do not need to exude machis
mo, or women pretend to a naive and dependent character.
According to Singer "excessively polarised personality types"
thrive in cultures which demand repression of natural tendencies.
Androgynous individuals transcend these repressions "not in
order to prepare a way of living out sexual impulses so much as
in order to permit what has been repressed to return and to be
reintegrated into conscious awareness" The androgyne con
sciously accepts the interplay of the masculine and feminine
aspects of the individual psyche.12
Consider Virginia Woolf's classic experience of an
androgynous experience, felt by Clarissa Dalloway as, "a match
burning in a crocus, an inner meaning almost expressed." This
becomes a revelation which allows her to "then feel what men
felt.13

in creative work. I take the specific case of a woman, a


Androgyny is useful
Christian for Philomena-Marie
nun called understanding who
women engaged
led the fisher
people's struggle in Kerala in 1984.14
In Kerala, the fisherfolk's struggle against capitalistic ravag
ing of the sea had drawn tremendous strength from Christianity.
Some of Jesus' best friends were after all fishermen—Peter, for
instance, whom we know as Cephas. Many of its leaders today
are drawn from the Church, though there are many internal
contradictions. The struggle itself is about the opposition between

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
182 / India International Centre Quarterly

capitalists and their trawlers which ravage the sea, over-fishing


the waters, using destructive purse-seine and trawl nets without
any regard for spawning seasons or ecological balance. In this
sense, the sea is merely a commodity base. The fisher people
contest this indiscriminate fishing, and have been organising
protest after protest without much success.
Sister Philomena-Marie begins to stand out in this struggle
by her sheer insistence that she was ready to martyr herself, that
she would fight until the cause was won. In this determination
she took on the state, the capitalists, the establishment church. In
the summer of 1984, she was jailed; and soon after that she began
her 23-day fast.
The Bishops of the State, after studying the participation of the
radical members of the clergy in a trade union movement, resolved
that fast to death was not permissible, nor participation in protests
culminating in violence. The clergy were to be warned about sup
porting radical slogans, warned against dangers to their faith.
Sister Philomena-Marie was forced to call off her fast; but she
never lost her will to help the fisherpeople, to lead them in their
agitations and to co-ordinate their work for them. In a speech in
1990, she said:

When human rights are trampled, no one can stay neutral. Neutrality on
such occasion is equal to a crime. From the experience of the struggle we
learn that justice is not given but taken by the concerted effort of the
people concerned. The Church by her neutrality is supporting the exist
ing political and economic system. When we struggled with the people
ever ready to give up our life, the Bishops could see only disobedience,
violence, entering into politics. The boat (trawler) owners go with the
blessing of the Bishop. When poor people fight for their rights, they will
be characterised as communists and naxalites. The Church can only
understand charity and distribution of bread.15

How does one understand the power of this woman, and her
active involvement in the fisherpeople's struggle? The last part of
this essay looks at androgyny, celibacy and dress to understand
how a woman becomes an active leader, a symbol of the fishing
movement which cuts across religious divides and focuses on
human rights issues. It reorients the discussion on women's
nature and labour to provide an insight into alternative spaces
and being.

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
SUSAN VtSVANATHAN / 183

Sister Philomena-Marie is a woman who has given her life to


Christ. The complexity of the relationship is implicit. She is cer
tainly one of the 'wise-virgins'. This is one of the most poignant
stories that Jesus told, of women who waited for their bridegroom
in a state of preparation. The parable highlights their joy in
comparison to the anxiety and trepidation of the virgins who were
disappointed because they were not ready to meet the Lord.16
However, marriage— spiritual marriage—is about the meeting of
the soul, and the understanding of the self and other. The
metaphor of a marriage is used in order to understand the inten
sity of desire; but when we say 'Virgin' and 'Bride' we are speak
ing of a consummation that is yet to come. In this interpretation,
Death has lost its sting, for it offers only the vision of resurrection
and union with the beloved.
The complexity arises not with the metaphors of love used
for religious union, for these are to be found in all societies, but'
with the concept of androgyny. For Jung, it represented the fusion
of characteristics associated with masculinism and feminism in
17
such a manner that it would create the whole being. It articu
lated the idea, quite familiar to us now, that psychological char
acteristics had social and archetypical undertones and that the
concept of 'nature' and gender are social constructs.
Now let us take a specific example to see how androgyny
operates in the image of Jesus. Consider the physiognomy of his face
represented, which evolves into a Western aesthetics of being poig
nantly beautiful, simultaneously delicate and assertive. Look also at
the androgyny of his nature: a child who is presented with gifts of
perfume and gold, who is identified with the gentleness of pas
toralism, and the careful art of carpentry, which combines both
physical strength and contemplative concentration. This Jesus
grows up to be friends with fishermen and prostitutes, rich men and
tax collectors; he is often with women and children; light enough to
walk on water, capable of great and ferocious anger; he weeps quite
openly, and teases his mother; he cannot bear pain and humiliation,
and asks the God who is another form of his own self to take away
the bitter cup. Weak and defenceless as he is before his father, he is
quite different at the courts. This Jesus then cannot be stereotyped,
because from one moment to the next we do not know how he will
behave. What are the sources of his strength, his imagination, (for
• 18
he is always telli

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
184 / India International Centre Quarterly

The androgyny of his being does not question the right to his
manhood; it only states that while being a man he could under
stand and empathise with women—as much as with the
Centurion's daughter, or Lazarus, or the lepers, or the blind, or
Zachariah, who was always so ashamed. For centuries this em
pathy, this understanding of the other in the essence of his being
or her being, has been passed down to us as the concept of love,
or in the Greek term agape. This love was not sexual, (though the
intensity of desire communicates itself in the story of Mary Mag
dalene) but appears in the form of wisdom and peace.
When Philomena-Marie leads the fishers she symbolises the
fact that she is a woman, a follower of Jesus, a Bride of Christ.
However she also leads them in another way: not because she is
a woman or a man but because she understands the rules of
parapolitics, of capitalism and profit, of the servitude of the
declassed. In that sense, she does not stand in for the bride of
Christ; she is an office member of the KSMTF (Kerala
Fishworkers' Trade Union). She understands her job, she is highly
qualified in management theory, her rhetoric does not carry any
of the tones of gender or of religion. She could be either male or
female, nun or priest, Hindu or Christian. It is this "gender
neutrality" that is so coveted and yet so ambiguous to analyze.
One of the greatest problems of understanding work is in the
terms which neutralise gender. In the unbridled years of feminism
when women pitted themselves against male bastions, it was
important to believe that same is equal to equality. Yet, in recent
issues of Feminist Review and Signs 9 some of the most poignant
reviews have been about lost identity—what happened to
motherhood, what happened to being and celebrating womanly
selves? Did being a woman mean hating the 'other'? How would
one then look at complementarity and the division of labour? In
a brilliant indictment of maleness and the right to die in war,
Genevieve Lloyd argues that heroism is a term set apart for men,
and in war they transcend their love of life for the rationalist ideas
of justice and freedom. Women, however, it is believed cannot
overcome nature or transcend death because their role is to
reproduce. Freedom and consciousness then are male preserves;
but when a woman sacrifices her sons, then she overcomes nature
and becomes a citizen—like the Spartan Mother who does not
weep for slain sons, but rejoices in the victory of her country at

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
SUSAN VISVANATHAN / 185

war. Some of the greatest critics of war have of course been


feminists like Virginia Woolf.20
Androgyny is different from gender neutrality. It means
overcoming the cultural parameters of what it means to be a man
or a woman; but it raises the problem of a common humanity.
Work then is defined in terms of ability and interest, and the
distinctions between men's work and women's work would at
once be devalued. Androgyny then is about fearlessness, and role
choices which are not biologically defined. Anthropologists are
familiar with instances of role reversal which augment clearly
enough the cultural reasons for demarcating work as gender
specific. Trying to explain this in evolutionary terms would be as
difficult as asking why penguins and sea horses have gentle,
loving nurturing fathers, while cats are so oedipal-fixated that the
Tom sometimes kills his offspring.
Androgyny is not about bi-sexuality, or about her
maphroditism. It is not about transvestism, though we will see
that the latter becomes an important code by which androgyny
often articulates itself. One of the complexities of androgyny
could be substitutability, which sociologically is not a problem
when applied to role behavior. Substitutability is usually about
roles and not persons. Androgyny celebrates the differences and
similarities that involve being human.
The case of Jesus is problematic only because his relationship
with his father is philological, with his mother corporeal. His
father is God, but his mother only a saint.
The most interesting thing about androgyny is that it does
not necessitate gender neutralisation. In this context, let us look
at Joan of Arc. I shall draw my story from Marina Warner, Tom
Keneally, Bernard Shaw, William Shakespeare, though specialists
on Joan know that this is a small cluster in the milky way of
researches on Joan of Arc.
Joan constantly refers to herself as "The Maid' or 'The Virgin'.
What she conveys most stridently is the preparation for consum
mation, the virgin sacrifice by fire. She must die so that her
country may be liberated. What is most significant is that Joan
does not menstruate—her 'womb is dead'; therefore she may not
conceive a child, but conceive only the deed or word or value. In
this sense Joan, Mary the Virgin Mother, and Sister Philomena—

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
186 / India International Centre Quarterly

Marie are homologous. Sister Philomena-Marie achieves through


celibacy the fertility and power of the word.
The work of celibacy is well known to us through the lives of
the saints in all the religious traditions, and specifically the life of
Mahatma Gandhi. Sexual energy, in Jungian terms, is transformed
into the energy required for self-realisation or political battle.
Celibacy, like androgyny, is about the consciousness of one's own
sexual identity; and the pain or the glory that arises from
transcending or overcoming one's biological and psychological
and social drives. Joan understood this well; she was, for one side,
a saint, the maid, the virgin. For the English, she was a whore who
led a dissolute life, who lay side by side with soldiers unafraid, a
transvestite who used a war to glorify herself.
Most of the stories about Joan were about the fact that men
were afraid to touch her, that they never wanted to touch her. Her
virginity, her celibacy, her virtue, her 'integrity' became the sym
bol which could heal a ruptured France.2 No wonder then that
celibacy and androgyny can together combine, as in the case of
Joan of Arc and Sister Philomena-Marie. It combines so powerful
ly, that these women are able to lead and be noticed only for the
power of their vision. Charismatic authority, as therefore the least
socially allocated grace, is an idea that settles upon a person; its
power lies in the eyes of the beholder.
Ironically when Sister Philomena is locked up in prison for
trade union activities, it is with the prostitutes. "We prayed with
them, made friends with them, shared their troubles." That is a
symbiosis of role identity with Jesus, impervious of gender. The
newspapers highlighted the fact that "Nuns have been locked up
with vaishyas" (prostitutes). For Philomena-Marie, the courage
and love of Magdalene is the unarticulated theme of her compas
sion, which links celibacy with profligacy and makes the latter
redeemable.
Joan, on the other hand, hated prostitutes and chased them
out of the camps. Legend has it that the sacred sword that won
her victory at Orleans broke on the back of one such prostitute;
and then there followed her defeat, capture and death. For
Philomena-Marie, prostitution, like alcoholism, is an occupation
al hazard arising out of the frequent economic crises in the lives
of the fishers. What is important is for her to provide alternative
modes of employment to women.

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
SUSAN VISVANATHAN / 187

Joan dressed as a boy and was burnt at the stake for it,
because this was a role reversal, contrary to Nature and so hereti
cal. Yet dressing as a boy meant that she could ride a horse, and
ride to war. Sr. Philomena-Marie dresses in indistinguishable
fawns and dull browns. Neither does she merge with Nature, nor
does she stand out. This is in contrast to the brilliant hued colours
of the fisherfolk. Her clothes mitigate her gender; they do not
neutralise it or transmute it because these are the colours as
sociated with renunciation, as also with bureaucracy.
In a world of men, Sister Philomena-Marie plays out her
vocation. She is unafraid of prelates, capitalists, governments and
death. She is of course thin (anorexic in the new equations which
social analysts have linked with fasting and visions) and over
worked. She oscillates between many roles. She nurtures a boy
married at 18, his wife and child, because they cannot manage on
their own. She races between one village and another providing
medical help. She keeps the KSMTF office in order. Earlier she
stayed with a woman's husband who had died at sea, and helped
her reorient her life. Sometimes she gets thrown out of a Sunday
school classroom because the visiting prelate sees her trade
unionism as a bad example to young children. She eats her food
with co-workers who are nuns from a nearby convent, or with an
office bearer at the KSMTF. And she has to cope with that abstrac
tion called a reputation, sometimes out there in the blazing
limelight: at other times she is completely forgotten and mar
ginalised as another Joan of Arc emerges in another part of India,
taking the question of water in a different direction. She says, "We
are networking with other movements. We are in touch with
Medha Patkar."
There can be no competition or jealousy in the emulation of
saints; there can only be patience and reservoirs of heroism which
sees martyrdom as the true androgynous term. This paper is not
oriented towards asking for martyrdom, for that would be a
terrible act of lassitude and irresponsibility on our part.
It asks to listen to the voice of the potential martyr and
respond to the commitment to the cause; to be sensitive to the
person who fasts, has visions, rebels, hears voices; and to see in
the androgyny of his or her being, questions which we need to
really ask ourselves about what it means to be human.

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
India International Centre Quarterly

Notes

1. Susan Visvanathan, Housewifization and Womens Rights, Delhi: Nehru Memorial


Museum and Library, 1992; Ivan Illich Shadow work, London: Marion Boyars, 1981;
Gender, New York: Pantheon, 1982; Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature
Berkeley: University of California Press; Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on
a World Scale, London: Zed Books; Maria Mies, Veronika Bennholdt Thomsen and
Claudia Vor Werlhoff, Women: The Last Colony, London: Zed Books 1988.

2. Michelle Rosaldo, Woman, Culture and Society: A Theoretical Overview, Stanford


University Press: 1974.

3. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.

4. Leela Dube, et al. Visibility and Power, Delhi: OUP, 1986.

5. Ivan Illich, Gender, New York: Pantheon 1982

6. Anna Kingsford, Edward Maitland, London: George Bedway.

7. Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, London: Granada 1982. A Room of One's Own,
London: Penguin 1945. Orlando, London: Triad/Panther 1979. Night and Day,
London: Granada 1982. ]acob's_Room, London: Granada 1984, Three Guineas, Lon
don: Hogarth Press 1986. To The Lighthouse London, Granada 1988. Mrs Dalloway,
London: Penguin 1966, Orlando, London: Triad/ Panther 1979.

8. June Singer, Boundaries of the Soul, New York: Anchor—Doubleday, 1973.


Androgyny, New York: Anchor—Doubleday, 1977 pg. 234.

9. Singer, 1973, 234.

10. Singer, 1973, 268.

11. June Singer, Androgyny, New York: Anchor—Doubleday 1977.

12. Singer, 1977,19

13. How terrible is the envy that Woolf feels for those male citadels into which
women had no entry. In Jacob's Room, the contempt for women is well recorded. "No
one would think to bring a dog into church, a dog destroys the service completely.
So do these women—though separately vouched for by the Theology, Mathematics,
Latin and Greek of their husbands" (Woolf, 1984:30). Night and Day (1919) chronicles
a greater resolution of the conflict between women's roles and work, between
marriage and occupation. Work cannot yet be a career, but there is a greater
celebration of cerebral endeavour and to some extent masculine adaptation to
femininist strivings. Katharine Hilberry, in this novel, is a secret mathematician. "No
force on earth would have made her confess that. Her actions when thus engaged
were furtive and secretive like those of some engaged were furtive and secretive
like those of some nocturnal animal." It is Jacob, of 'Jacob's Room' who is the inheritor
of history, architecture and learning—also of war and death.

14. Susan Visvanathan, 'The Fishing struggle in Kerala', Seminar, November 1994.

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
SUSAN VISVANATHAN / 189

15. Sr. Philomena Marie's speech at Hyderabad 1991, cited in Visvanathan 1994.

16. Gospel of Mathew, Chapter 25,1-13

17. C.G. Jung, Man and his symbols, London, Picador, 1978.

18. Susan Visvanathan, The Christians of Kerala, Madras, OUP, 1993.

19. Yet the retention of differences Prue Chamberlayne The Mothers' Manifesto and
Disputes over Mutterlichkeet, Feminist Review, 35, Summer 1990. see also Elshtain
Bethke jean, Against Androgyny in Anne Philips, (ed) Feminism and Equality,
Oxford, Basil Blackwell 1987. Frigga Hang, Feminist Writing working With
women's experience, 1992 pg. 16.

Shiela Rowbotham To Be or Not to Be—The Dilemmas of_Mothering, Feminist Review,


1989. Elaine Showalter (ed) Speaking of Gender, New York: RKP 1989 Ann Santow,
Feminism and Motherhood in Feminist Review Spring 1992 Joan C. Tronto, Beyond
Gender Difference to a Theory of Care Signs Summer 1987.

20. Genevieve Lloyd, Selfhood, War and Masculinity in Carol Pateman and Elisabeth
Gross (ed) Feminist Challenges: Social and Political Theory, London, Allen and Unwin,
1986. Type in Virginia Woolf argued, first class jobs..."

21. Thomas Keneally, Blood Red, Sister Rose, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1991.

Marina Warner, Joan of Arc, London, Vintage 1991.

This content downloaded from


103.36.84.26 on Sat, 03 Apr 2021 06:09:34 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

You might also like