Abstract
Virginia Woolf’s speculations about a ‘woman’s sentence’ or Hélène Cixous’s descriptions of l’écriture féminine constitute only one area of enquiry into the possible specificity of women’s novels. The use of distinctly feminine themes is another obvious possibility. The mixing of traditional types of novel as they have been defined by a predominantly male literary theory is still another. Could comments about female/male perception of time (linear or cyclical), or about a vision/touch dichotomy be relevant to the structure, the imagery, the narrative point of view, the characterisations of the woman’s novel, if such a thing exists? If the theoretical writing of most French feminist critics has tended to explore style, English-language critics have more often studied questions of theme and form.1
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It may well be, however, that the story has to be told differently. Take Oedipus, for instance. Suppose: Oedipus does not solve the riddle. The Sphinx devours him for his arrogance. (Lauretis, 1984, p. 156)
Then all stories would be told differently, the future could not be calculated, the forces of history would change, will change, hands and bodies, another way of thinking, not yet thinkable, will transform how all societies function. (Cixous and Clément, 1975a, p. 119)
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Notes
See Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets and Silences (New York: Norton, 1979) p. 39.
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© 1989 Adele King
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King, A. (1989). Forms and Themes. In: French Women Novelists: Defining a Female Style. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08815-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08815-7_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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Online ISBN: 978-1-349-08815-7
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