She Bang, She Bang: The Destruction of Masculine Writing and Assigned Roles in Mason & Dixon
Thomas Pynchon's novel Mason & Dixon takes a turn for the unruly when, in the middle of the novel, the narration breaks from the overarching story and begins a new chronicle in the form of a captivity narrative. This story line introduces new characters and new ideas, some of which are self-contained within this section. Within these pages, Pynchon not only drastically changes his storytelling style a multiple number of times, but also manages to have a character undergo a complete metamorphosis in a matter of roughly thirty pages. This small section of Pynchon's behemoth novel introduces ideas that align with the Feminist theorists Luce Irigaray, and her text "The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of Women," and Sandra Gilbert's and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic. Throughout his frame narrative, Thomas Pynchon not only erases any ideal of masculine writing within Mason & Dixon, but also creates a female character who holds the power to break through the literary roles assigned to female characters.
Pynchon not only refrains from introducing Mason & Dixon's captivity narrative, but also neglects explaining the narrative change until Eliza's story is fifteen pages in. The narrator of this section is unidentifiable as it is not narrated by the primary narrator Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke, nor is this section narrated by Pynchon's third person narrator that communicates the story of Cherrycoke and his relatives. When, halfway through the story, Pynchon reveals this change in narration, informing the reader that he/she is truly reading a story within a story, the reader is left flailing in confusion as to what he/she is reading. This comes about when it is discovered that Tenebrae, Cherrycoke's niece and a peripheral character, has been reading a volume that one of her cousin's brought home from college (Pynchon 526). The narrator is finally revealed to be the unknown narrator of the Ghastly Fop series, a volume of fiction within Pynchon's fictional universe.
As this discourse unravels, the narration begins to become distanced from masculine writing and to synchronize with Irigaray's ideal of feminine writing (Irigaray 797). Irigaray argues that the only way for women to fight their subjection is by "jamming the theoretical machinery itself" (796). The way to do this, Irigaray claims, is to completely oppose all preset ideas of style and linearity, to destroy the previous ideals of literature, as those belong to the masculine voice, and instead to create an entirely new way of writing. This breaking from the preset ways of writing is exactly what Pynchon exhibits, specifically in his captivity narrative, through his complicated style of narration. When the novel shifts to the first person narration of Eliza, the captivity narrative’s female lead, the female stock characters within captivity narratives are explored with the use of mimesis. By betraying his previous mode of third person narration for a sudden shift to first person, Pynchon is able to disrupt the style of sight by mimicking the masculine form. This is due to the fact that through Pynchon's mimesis of the masculine canonical form of first person narration, the author is actually disrupting the novel’s masculine point of view, thus creating a feminine structure for Mason & Dixon as a whole. However, the narration of Eliza then switches back to Ghastly Fop's original narrator, seemingly reconvening with the systemic masculine form of storytelling once again. This, however, is only a tease.
Eliza, upon finally arriving at the Jesuit College, is introduced to the woman who will be her mentor, Blondelle. Eliza is just as clueless as the reader is as to what is expected of her at this cultish joint she has been placed in against her will. Upon being introduced to Blondelle and the other sisters, Eliza is given her first chance to speak in weeks. Within moments of this interaction beginning, the women with Blondelle successfully trick Eliza into divulging the fact that she experienced the one act unforgivable to women: desire, "I star'd often at the many ways they had inscrib'd their own skins, some of the pictures being most beautiful, others arousing in me strange flashes of fear, mix'd with...feelings of desire" ( Pynchon 520). The revealing of this emotion is immediately reprimanded with a torturous device meant to mutilate the female genitalia, in order to make it impossible for the women of the college "to keep thoughts from straying far from God" (520). This idea of women's forced sexual repression strongly mirrors the notion Irigaray conceptualizes in her essay: that female sexual desire "has to remain inarticulate in language" (Irigaray 796). Eliza, by exposing and openly discussing a function that is not meant to be unveiled, "threatens the underpinnings of logical articulation [and thus, masculine writing]" (796).
Eliza's story comes to a close by Ghastly Fop's narrator and the original narrator reconvening through Pynchon's merging of the small frame narrative into the overarching story. Eliza only has her escape from the Jesuit College finally completed through running into Mason's and Dixon's work force (Pynchon 534). Pynchon by blending the double fiction of Ghastly Fop with the original fictional narration of Mason & Dixon, manages to successfully "put the torch to...well-constructed forms" (Irigaray 797). Pynchon not only produces the unique structure Irigaray is challenging her readers to design, but also explicitly shows the oppression Irigaray asserts womankind are subject to through Eliza's sojourn at the Jesuit College.
As the captivity narrative, and consequently the novel as a whole, falls farther into entropy, Eliza begins to show signs of breaking out of the patriarchal literary mold set for her. Eliza starts achieving self-definition, as shown through the narrative switching from a third person narrator to first person, with Eliza narrating her own story. Gilbert and Gubar, in The Madwoman in the Attic, posit "For all literary artists...self definition necessarily precedes self-assertion: the creative 'I AM' cannot be uttered if the 'I' knows not what it is. But for the female artist the essential process of self-definition is complicated by all those patriarchal definitions that intervene between herself and herself" (Gilbert & Grubar 812-813). Thus, by having her choose to narrate her own story, Eiza has successfully "escaped the male designs in which she feels herself enmeshed" (813). These designs that Eliza has been able to transcend are the two male-devised images Gilbert and Gubar argue are the only characterizations women are allowed in literature: that of "angel" or "monster," thus granting her the ability to self-define (812).
Pynchon further recognizes Eliza's escape from her literary mold through a particular interaction between her and Zhang, her Chinese male traveling companion. Whenever Eliza, a married woman, attempts to initiate sex with Zhang on her own accord, she breaks away from the set image of women as the "angel" as she can no longer be the "ideal of contemplative purity" (Goethe qtd. in Gilbert & Grubar 815). Hence, she should then fall under the role of "monster," as the theorists claim these are the only two roles for women in the patriarchal system of literature. However, whenever Zhang denies Eliza's advance, Eliza assumes he now finds her contemptible, as she is prepared to slide into the only image history says is left for her, to which Zhang qualms this fear by stating, "on the contrary, I adore you" (Pynchon 533-534). Through Zhang openly accepting Eliza's desire, and not acting on it, he gives Eliza control over her own desire, presenting her freedom from the "theatrickal roles assign'd" to her (533).
Eliza's transition into a self-defining character is completed towards the end of her narrative, where her growth has become evident when she is departing from Zhang. Whenever Zhang mentions to her that the Wolf of Jesus, the man they have been running from, will continue to chase after them until he finds them, Eliza responds to this instance of fear by saying, "Once I would have sigh'd. Please, one day imagine me as having sigh'd" (535). Eliza's reaction to this fearful prospect is a complete reverse from her previous introductions to frightening encounters. For instance, upon her arrival at the Jesuit College, after weeks of unwilling detainment, Eliza contemplates suicide, as she becomes aware of the fact that death will be her only escape from the cult she has been forced into. Due to this realization, Eliza faints, perfectly embodying the angelic quality of the "'genteel' woman" by expressing her "ladylike fragility" (Gilbert & Grubar 817). For this act she is mocked by the men as a "fainting novice," which frustrates Eliza enough to be more aware of her reactions (Pynchon 517). Thus, the next instance in which she is introduced to a frightful encounter, when she enters a room full of wigs resting on human skulls, she consciously allows her only reaction to be to "let out her breath in a great sigh. And refrain from fainting" (522). In this passage, Eliza has to will herself to fight against the man-made ideal of who, and what, she should be. By the end of her narrative, Eliza merely recognizes the image she once personified, establishing for the reader that she has shed the "male defined-masks and costumes" she was subject to for so long; Eliza has fully become her own independent character (Gilbert & Gubar 814).
Thomas Pynchon's frame narrative within Mason & Dixon exhibits the author's discarding of the preset ideal of storytelling and narration. Pynchon wanders from the constructed form and linearity that Irigaray posits are the characteristics of masculine writing. By torching this systematicity, the author breaks through the confines of sight and instead creates the feminine style of writing that Irigaray petitioned for. By separating himself from masculine diction, Pynchon is then able to create a female figure that is able to transcend the confines of female gender roles in literature. Due to her transcendence, Eliza's identity is no longer shrouded by restrictive character roles, allowing her to achieve self-definition. When Eliza sheds the images of both monster and angel, all that is left is human, allowing her to achieve full personhood.
Works Cited
Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Suan. The Madwoman in the Attic. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 812-825. Print.
Irigaray, Luce. ""The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of Women." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 795-798. Print.
Pynchon, Thomas. Mason & Dixon. New York: Picador, 1997. Print