The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century

The Madwoman in the Attic The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary ImaginationAnd the lady of the house was seen only as she appears in each room, according to the nature of the lord of the room. None saw the whole of her, none but herself. For the light which she was was both her reflect and her body. None could herald the whole of her, none but herself (Laura Riding qtd. by Gilbert & Gubar, 3). Beginning Gibert and Gubars piece about the position of female spellrs during the nineteenth century, this passage conjures up images of women as transient forms, bodiless and indefinite. It seems such a being could never possess enough agency to pick up a pen and write herself into history. Still, this woman, however incomprehensible by others, has the ability to know herself. This chapter of The Madwoman in the Attic The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, titled The Queens Looking Glass, discusses how the external, and especially male, represe ntations of a woman can affect her so much that the image she sees in the mirror is no longer her own. Thus, female writers be left with a problem. As Gibert and Gubar state, the woman writers self-contemplation may be said to have begun with a searching glance into the mirror of the male-inscribed literary text. at that place she would see at first only those eternal lineaments fixed on her like a mask (Gilbert & Gubar, 15). In Charlotte Bronts Villette, the narrator and heroine Lucy Snowe is faced with a great deal of reflections which could influence her self-image and become detrimental to her writing. However, she is aware that the mirrors she finds, whether the literal mirror of the looking glass or her reflection in other characters ... ... authors insisted that they are (43). However, instead of doing fiery and suicidal tarantellas out of the looking glass, (44) Lucy Snowe decides to ignore the inaccurate representations in the mirrors around her and focus her energies to ward constructing a mirror of her own the circular mirror of crystal she is always searching for but that can only be found in the text itself. The line Gilbert and Gubar apply to Bront and other roaring women writers is also valid for Lucy. The old silent dance of death became a dance of triumph, a dance into speech, a dance of authority (44).Works CitedGilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven Yale UP, 1979. ODea, Gregory. Narrator and Reader in Charlotte Bronts Villette. South Atlantic Review 53.1 (1988) 41-57.