Christina Bauer Film and Culture Professor Williams July 31, 2013 Perceiving the World Without A Phallus

As a self-proclaimed feminist by the age of eleven, I considered the term to be a public expression of my pride to be a not yet developed woman. I safeguarded the beauties of what I believed was femininity as a neglected strength within our culture. My ignorance, derived from both the naivety and my misinterpretations of what I learned was feminism, had me believing my feminism was dictated by my sexuality. I considered my feminism to be a biological influence, that my female sex instilled my belief for gender equality. Not until I was mature enough to understand the nature of politics did I realize my feminism was created from nurture rather than nature. My feminism was created not by my designated womanhood, but by my intellectual responses to the social structure within my circumstances. Female, male, gender are complex term that we have inaccurately simplified by assuming that male and female are determined by the biological sex. We have blurred the line between the social and physical aspects of woman and man, for what? To satisfy our need for reason? The nature of society has taught us to do so, but in turn the need for reason has created unreasonable circumstances. Our manipulation of terminology causes our social imbalance; the generalization of identities excludes all that do not support the simplifications of logic. We reduce the complexity of meaning to allegedly acquire understanding, and through the structure of language we have managed to misinterpret

the values of content by placing them within the binaries of good or bad. The need for binary opposition eliminates the idea of a spectrum, removes qualification, and forces the inexorable qualities that determine its approval or rejection (again, another binary opposition). In turn, female, male, gender as a whole, is lessened to obtain a rationale for the sake of logic. We neglect to acknowledge genders multiple meanings as a social choice, not just a physical determination. Our attachment to the biological sex of the male and female, the unwillingness to accept the multi dimensions of gender, result in a culture that prefers male over female. Mary Klages, Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed, exemplifies these realities that encouraged my reevaluation of Feminism. We must begin to safeguard the notion that our intellect can in fact successfully adapt to theories that support an in between. The plural male narrators perception of the Lisbon girls exemplifies the indeterminate language assigned to the female gender role. The ambiguity of the Lisbon girls deters the narrator from depicting an accurate understanding of the female gender role; the girls indescribable signifiers emphasize the female detachment from language. Lacans theory argues that woman cant (mis)identify with the Phallus as the center of the Symbolic Order, Woman is a subject position on the edge of the Symbolic, not firmly governed by the center, and hence theres something in that position that escapes discourse, that is not fully controlled by the center and the structure of language (Klages, 96). Thus, the girls detachment from the center causes the male narrator to struggle to find ways to describe their female attributes. The females escape from discourse causes the male to construct arbitrary assumptions leading to false The Lisbon girls disconnection from logic enables the narrator to assume they are celestial creatures

beyond humanity. The narrator perceives the Lisbon girls to transcend the standard of beauty, comparing the girls to a congregation of angels (Eugenides, 23). The narrators conjectures, drawn from a distorted view, removes the identity of each girl by fusing them into an illusory entity. However, when finally given the opportunity to acquire further insight into the girls, the narrators fantastical theories about the girls alter. Once the narrator processes the girls as distinct beings their alleged perfection becomes flawed. The narrator begins to see the faults of each girlBonnie has a sallow complexion and sharp nose, Therese has a heavier face, Mary has a widows peak and fuzz above her upper lip, etcthat now humanizes the girls and instills a sense of disappointment in the narrator (Eugenides, 23). The narrators inaccurate conclusions serve as a parallel to Western cultures patronization of the female. The narrator places the girls within a common quandary of Western culture that engenders the ambiguity of the female to shoulder the narrator's divine gaze. Several poststructuralist feminist theorists, such as Lacan, describe the female ability to stray from the center as jouissance. The female jouissance can be considered a type of deconstruction, as it shakes up the fixity and stability of the structure of language and puts signifiers into play, making them slippery and indeterminate (Klages, 97). In turn, the female gender role defies the power of assigned signifiers, threatening the order created by the male center. The Lisbon girls lack of definitive qualities disrupts the structure of language and therefore obstructs the narrator's ability to achieve understanding through the use of signifiers and logic. Therefore, the Western cultures binary oppositions would suggest that irrationality corresponds with female while rationality relates to male.

Notably, feminine jouissance--their inability to be described--ultimately does describe the female gender role as figurative. The female is associated with symbolism whereas the male equates to clarity leading to an overly generalized binary of metaphorical and literal. Qualities that lack explicitness are therefore female signifiers; the complexity of language constitutes the misinterpretation of feminine jouissance. Arguably, Western culture strongly associates female gender signifiers with the female sex as an attempt to create a spurious connection to the center of Symbolic Order. The dominant assumptions that link female gender roles with the female sex produce a false rationale for the indescribable female signifiers. Any deviation from logic becomes associated with the female, as if the female sex serves as a center that the female gender cannot separate from. The female sex thus becomes the feigned reasoning for female signifiers--indications of irrationality, allusiveness, and abnormality are caused by Western cultures definition of feminine tendencies. Femininity becomes a debilitative characteristic rather than an opposing equivalent to the gender role of male. The male desire for a center within order is what diminishes the influence of female gender roles; the female genders confinement to its sex deprives the ability for women to achieve equality over the preferred male gender. The plural male narrator's figurative imagery parallels the Western assumptions of femininity. The Lisbon girls are depicted as uncomfortable within their prim dresses (Eugenides, 60). The dresses themselves symbolize the hindering signifiers set upon the female. The Lisbon girls are maturing yet they're forced to fit within the confines of their dresses; despite their physical and emotional growth, the girls remain

dormant. The symbolism serves as a visual example that the qualities of the female are far more expansive than Western cultures definition. Through the nature of bugs, the Lisbon girls imminent fate becomes emphasized. The expectations of the feminine role in the eyes of Western thinking proves to be the equivalent to the triviality of a fish-fly: They only live 24 hours. They hatch, they reproduce, then they croak (Eugenides, 2). Thus, the female existence becomes predominately defined by the physical sex of the female, disparaging the role of femininity as a form of service rather than a social influence. The boys within the novel are enticed by the mysteries of the female, but the characterization of the bugs suggests that their intrigue leads to an anticlimax that establishes the insignificance of the female gender within Western society. The confinement of the female role to its physical sex hinders the womans ability to become influential or effective, making passivity a gender signifier for femininity. When the Lisbons house needed maintenance, Mr. Lisbon would have the boys and men of the town to help him because [he] only had daughters (Eugenides, 54). The girls inability to help Mr. Lisbon becomes a gender signifier that supports the belief that female correlates with passivity. The torpidity of the women interferes with the ability to upkeep the disposition of the house, in turn the female presence contributes to the disarray of order and consequently the female gender role becomes disregarded. Keeping up with the analogous relationship between the female gender role and bugs, the fact that the men are cleaning bugs off the houses serves as a visual interpretation of the male gender role perception of femininity as something to be deposed and to be purified from. The narrator recalls that Mr. Buell often went the extra mile to clean his walls from bugs

because of his religious beliefs. If Mr. Buells religion influences his cleanliness, the females indolence instigates moral corruption of the Western male. The binary oppositions within Western culture suggest that religious practice serves as a signifier of good and evil, in which good correlates with man as evil parallels with woman. As Mary Klages examines, poststructuralist feminist theory sees the category or position woman as a part of a binary opposition, man/woman, in which man is the favored term... [and woman is represented by] things Western culture works to control, to suppress, or to exclude (Klages, 96). Therefore the signifier of purity relates to the male side of the binary, suggesting that the female acts as a hindrance to maintaining that purity. The Lisbon girls idleness promotes the social constructs that equates female with weakness with the binaries of man and woman woman is constructed as otherness, as non-being, as alterity, as something outside of and dangerous to consciousness, rationality, presence, and all those other nice things that Western humanist metaphysics values. The Lisbon girls presence therefore engenders inconsistency within the structure of their home; their idleness contributes to the struggle to maintain order. In essence, they present themselves as weak and subservient to men, as often is portrayed American culture as a whole.

Works Cited Eugenedes, Jeffrey. The Virgin Suicides. New York City: Random House, 1993. Print. Klages, Mary. Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York City: Continuum International, 2006. Print.