The Construction of Female Subjectivity in Caterina Alberts Solitude - Essay Example

? THE CONSTRUCTION OF FEMALE IVITY IN CATERINA ALBERT’S SOLITUD Lecturer: The Construction Of Female ivity In Caterina Albert’s Solitud The storyline encompasses around Mila, as the main female character in the story line, is set during the hard times of the Civil war. She is an embattled and neglected wife; her husband pays little attention to her, as he is lost into gambling. This makes her sink into a life of solitud, loneliness she is plunged into a life of misery which makes her long for interaction and companionship. Being married in a backward community and living in the rural set up in the mountain, made it even tougher for her to advance economically and academically1,. Mila represents women in that community who are treated as subjects to men. This dates back to the history of Europe when women originally used to be taken by force or regularly sold by force by their father. They were not consulted or given the chance to make their own choice with regard to their life partner hence it was solely a decision between the father and the man interested with his daughter. Church was there to set the moral pace by making it a requirement that a formal wedding is conducted to join the two parties involved but nothing to show that the bride’s consent was considered before the ceremony. Thereafter, the man had power over life and death over his wife making her forcefully reliant and dedicated to him. Mila embraces this to as her marriage to Matia, a vow of lifelong obedience to him. Women’s main roles were is to stay at home, do the chores and other duties regarded as feminine. They do not have an opinion of their own. Men however are at liberty to do what they wish as depicted by Matia, the husband to Mila. His gambling receives less judgment from the society even though it poses a threat to his marriage and eventually causes it to crumble Pressure mounts in her matrimonial life from the behavior of her husband and the society instead of offering support, expects her to keep her home together despite the fact it brings to her total misery. Her husband fails to play his role and so it is expected of her to fill in cover up for him. She has to put up with what he does given that no alternatives are mentioned in such a case which would be of help or at least intervene. On her own, she has to struggle to find a solution to a stifling and perverse life. She could not automatically result to change of partners at her will which in this case would have the ideal solution to her problem at. This was so as she lived in a strict and morally upright community that is rural. The expectation the society has of a married woman is to be a submissive and loyal wife to her husband in all circumstances. She had not failed in performing her duties as a wife. Mila’s husband however who is expected to be her partner and also a provider merely was the one adding trouble to their life. He is a gambler and keeps adding debts to the already poor life they are living which Mila has to struggle and pay. But being male he is considered not at fault and that gambling is a man’s thing. Furthermore he treats her as an object rather than a life companion. For a long time she suffers in solitude and misery. She is forced to play subject to her community wishes which cause her to be afraid. Her fear is governed by the way the community would view her if she walked away as well as the consequences that would follow thereafter. She is torn between living up to their expectation and walking away to find her happiness. Eventually Mila reaches a point of realization and comes out boldly with a tough decision. She decides to go against the traditions, stand on her own and eventually walks away from her husband. She makes a decision that does not meet the expectation of the community for her own good and peace no matter the risks or costs involved. This is on the realization that she cannot depend on Matia her husband for neither emotional nor even economic support. She considers herself free from him and becomes self reliant. She now solely depends on herself and it’s only after dong so that she gets peace of mind she desired for a long time. It’s like a rebirth of Mila which can be compared to the modern day woman who is independent and makes decisions for herself regardless of the society opinion on the issue. Instead of receiving support from people she considers her own Mila is treated as a moral outcast by her neighbors. It takes a great amount of courage and determination for her to continue living in such a place where it is evident she is considered a disgrace and thus unwanted as no one even wants to associate with her. It is an imbalance between culture and tradition and what is right for an individual for personal happiness. Mila detaches emotionally from her husband whom she is married to shares a roof with In an attempt to please her people Mila sacrifices her happiness by rejecting the advances of her neighbor L’Arnau and more so the secret love she has for a shepherd who was the only true friend and companion that she had. This is because the community still views her as a married woman who has chosen to be rebellious. Engaging with another partner would only add to her troubles, she therefore denies herself the chance of being happy. If the genders are to be reversed the case would have been different as the man could get better treatment and the community’s judgment would be less harsh. In the story line women continue to be demeaned by men. This is seen when on a festive night, while Mila’s husband was a way gambling Anima attacks her on her home with the idea that she will sell herself. He knew she was vulnerable as she was considered the village outcast and no one wanted to associate with her. He manages to rape her and all this happens in her home as this depicts how women are violated and little is done . Her husband who is designated to protect her is nowhere near to help her and the only place she was meant feel safe and protected from all danger turns out to be insecure. To worsen it all she had no one to turn to this on such a devastating time2. Women emerge as vulnerable and defenseless members of that community as men who are meant to protect and defend them don’t measure up to the task. This is the last straw that makes her walk away from her home that she struggled against all odds to put together. She could not regard the place as home anymore as it could not offer the comfort nor protection that she required. It was a bold move considering she had already lost favor with her community members. This completely frees her and this major step can be related to modern day divorce. Mila fully blossoms and in the end and overcomes the challenges of suppression as a woman in her community. She represents the re-emergence of the woman with a solid stand. However, a deeper analysis revels the feminine protagonist in the novel has been separated by over half a century of civil wars but at the same time she tends to use canonicity as she enjoys the Catalan literary tradition and culture. The two ages are thus literary linked with themes and images of feminine independence, autonomy, isolation and estrangement of women alone and lonely which is supposedly criticized in the difference of the two periods portrayed. It is of absolute possibility that two eras tend to be characterized by the same ideologies as on the other hand the feminine critique may provide a link as separation seems the order of the day; according to Ferra?n, & Glenn, an attempt to bring the two texts together in a comparative reading must negotiate, then, both canonical literary history, dominated by men and feminist literary history which has its own canonical moves3. A critical look at Solitud reveals that it is a dense, lexically demanding third person omniscient narrative being delivered by a woman who is writing under the male oppressions regime. The male pseudonym revealed in the narrative portrays the feminist women as leaving their native land as well as participating in one of the most important cultural movements of the day, characterized by a loosely programmatic attempt to carve out a modern culture. This type of culture is seemed as cosmopolitan, modernized and autonomous in the space for the attributed Catalan culture in the narrative. This narrative is also criticized as often rural in setting and may also seem as contradictory in the cosmopolitan movement, a movement that is seen as one of the hallmarks as the general critical and no idealistic perspective of this work is part of an expansive, Universalist vision of Catalonia. The mountains and woods that function in the scenarios being brought out in the plot of the narrative function less as backdrop than co-protagonist in Solitud are a far cry, however, from those evoked as a refuge of purity among the women therein. For many modernists and their critics, the impunity of the land is entangled in the impurity of the language, both charged with national significance as Catala is renowned for her interests in the language that constitutes her self-designated pseudonym. She, like her modernists, took pains to capture, if not codify the land that the plot is supposedly written in. the linguistic richness of Solitud only partly gainsaying the poverty of the human environment depicted therein, includes what Alan Yates refer to as the rather bizarre, synthetic dialect spoken by the rural characters. Deploying a variety of linguistic registers, some more faithful to reality than others, Catala contributed to the resurgence of Catalan as a world language; she was skeptical, however, of the normative endeavors of Pompeu Fabra, author of dictionaries and grammars and other neoclassically inspired noucentistes. Solitud remains indomitable, dense and demanding in the wake of noucentistes, who attained a hegemonic position in Catalan culture, extolled a measured urbanity explicitly centered in the cities that also advocated for an end to what they considered a state of linguistic disorder bordering on anarchy. Solitud was published in installments in the modernist review at a time when Catalan national culture was flourishing hence due to the ability of the feminist view expressed by the protagonist the support received was immensely appreciated. Hence the simple, reiterative, colloquial and popular tone of the novel is now widely recognized to be the effect of considerable artistry. Avoiding the quasi-ethnographic perils of a folkloric literal genre centered on the depiction of the customs and manners, and a largely respecting grammatical norms, the novel evinced a concern with the Catalan language that was different. Both women working in vastly divergent political contexts, grappled with the relations between literature, morality and community, and produced texts that have been read as testimonies to the vitality of the language. On the other hand, home can be many things for many people; a man’s castle and a woman’s place, a sanctuary and a prison, a familiar sight of belonging and an uncanny site of alienation. It can also be, as was the case with Catalan, the sheltering space of a language in times of political oppression especially for the women of the society who need protection from the men. The questions of gender and nationality has not always been evenly as depicted in Solitud as they are bent on social reality and narrative constructions to the black and white pattern of gender domination; the patterns of gender domination, like patterns of gender domination obtain in ways that cannot be discounted, only queried anew. The Catalan women of fairly privileged means are bound together in the generalities of identity – by gender, nationality and class and there is such a consciousness link bending together readers, writers and others may be extended to the writers themselves. Like so many other women in the novel, their double oppression constitutes, in turn, another link. One that is perhaps rarely, more significant than when it is contested, dismissed or even denied as the oppression is not invariable. The significance of the link between gender and nationality is not invariable too, an indication of the difficulty a female writer had back then in Catalonia. The pseudonym presumably served to avoid and assuage accusations of impropriety, presumptuousness or vanity – conceits of more self implicating sort – which attended women who wrote more than letters and diaries. Then again, the pseudonym, once it was generally known to pertain to a woman, became something of a lightning rod for all sorts of psychological speculation; Catala had to contend with subtle and n9ot so subtle forms of censorship and self-censorship that hounded women as gender did indeed and still does make a difference, albeit fluctuant, in the practice and performance of national culture and vice versa. Some of the most compelling connections and differences that are set out in Solitud derive from a less oriented inter-textual approach as it centers on women who struggle with men that far from alleviating their loneliness, fill them with feelings of emptiness, pain fear and even disgust. Furthermore, even though various others cast doubt on their respectability, both female protagonists eschew the virgin/whore dichotomy prevalent in modernism and still far from exhausted in the post war period. Being motherless and brought to a house in extreme disarray that women are supposed to make into a home as well as work fast and furiously at cleaning and putting things in order is the main role of the women. In and out of such gender marked work, they confront their insignificance as they come close to madness as well as cope with violence and death to appoint of contemplating suicide. The feminity portrayed seems to both experience an excruciating critical moment of clarity that brings a full circle and that an extensive humanist tradition understands as self-awareness. The trajectory of the protagonist has led to several critics to classify the narrative as an example of female Bildungsroman, yet what makes the connection even more impressive if the less a matter of character and self-awareness. The play of speech and writing, stories and storytelling by which individuals, families and communities are figuratively portrayed do not give much of the connection that seem to be impressive. It can nevertheless be contended that Solitud has sticking connections with other novels that are in ways that outpace established chronological protocols and that push at the heuristic privilege of perioditization. There is a highly theorized principle of inter-textuality, once much in vogue that stresses such quality as reversibility, discontinuity, transformation and the confusion of authorial voices. In Solitud, the shepherd is the source of rondalles, traditional stories passed more or less anonymously from generation to generation as the entire narrative is so artfully in a non-conversational tone; the allegorical imports of the narratives is self-evident and colors the narrative as a whole. Bibliography Catala?, Vi?ctor. Solitude: A Novel. Columbia, La: Readers International, 1992. Print. Ferra?n, Ofelia, and Kathleen M. Glenn. Women's Narrative and Film in Twentieth-Century Spain: A World of Difference(s). New York: Routledge, 2002. Print Read More