Thanksgiving—a holiday of feasting and family gathering. In my house, it’s also the weekend when we put up the Christmas tree and pull out that box of holiday cards. This is the time of year when we often follow the traditions instilled by our parents or establish new ones for our children. It’s a season that embraces gratitude for interconnectedness.
Perhaps it also has the power to color a master’s thesis. Although, it was a national holiday, a graduate student never sleeps. Well ok, I did get some sleep. But while I slept, visions of Cixous danced in my head.
While reading this weekend I came across this passage:
For “woman,” well imprinted with the sociocultural heritage, has been inculcated with the spirit of “restraint.” She is in fact “restraint” itself, socially. (Or, if you wish, the repressed, the controlled one.) She restrains herself, and is restrained, by a thousand bonds, hitched, conjugated, strings, chains, nets, leash, feeding dish, network of servile, reassuring dependencies. She is defined by her connections, wife of, as she was daughter of, from hand to hand, from bed to niche, from niche to household, woman as the complement-of-a-name has much to do to cut free.(Cixous 39)
In the margins I wrote, “independence vs. dependence—individual vs. communal?”
I understand Cixous argument. I often make Cixous argument. I insist on being defined by my own accomplishments, given the opportunity to establish my own identity. And though I did not realize it for most of my life, I was blessed by being (for most of my childhood) the only child of a single mother. Just as I was not defined as daughter of, I do not feel I am defined as wife of. My mother encouraged my independence; my options limited only by my imagination. I recognize now, that is why I have such a raging sense of self, why I have lived my life with almost a complete lack of restraint.
I will belay my tirade on how society still condemns such independent, self-defining women (usually with the singular term ‘Bitch’) and move on to the irony of independence.
Growing up without the excessive bonds, strings, and chains of “reassuring dependencies,” it was easy for me to identify with the masculine. This is what Maureen Murdock calls The Father Quest (The Heroine’s Journey):
During the second stage of the heroine’s journey a woman wishes to identify with the masculine . . . She puts on her armor, mounts her modern day steed, leaves loved ones behind, and goes in search of the golden treasure. She fine-tunes the skills of logos. She looks for clearly defined routes to success. She sees the male world as healthy, fun-loving, and action-oriented. Men get things done. This fuels her ambition. (Murdock 36)
But all of this ambition and independence often fuels competition and isolation. In our frustration, have we overlooked the benefits of interconnectedness? We’ve created a society in which women, as well as men, must be taught how to develop and maintain personal relationships in corporate workshops.
Perhaps, defining ourselves by our connections is an inherent strength of womanhood . . . if we are the ones doing the defining. When I wrote my personal mission statement two years ago, I was careful to include all of my roles: wife, mother, daughter (among others). . . roles that I seek to strengthen not to obliterate. In gaining certain “freedoms,” women are now free to redefine old relationships in new ways—viewing our multiple roles as a part of a network of reassuring interdependencies.
Works Cited
Cixous, Hélène. “Coming to Writing” and Other Essays. Ed. Deborah Jenson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Murdock, Maureen. The Heroine’s Journey. Boston: Shambhala, 1990.
