"The Madwoman and Her Languages" by Nina Baym, 1984

This summary was written by Marta Cuboni and Michelle Attebury

This essay is a critical analysis of current feminist literary theory. The author writes from a "pluralist" point of view; she advocates a more diverse and inclusive reading of women's literature and she promotes a heightened awareness of the implications involved in the discussion of current "feminist" readings of women's literature. This essay criticizes current feminist literary theory because it is has not transcended misogynistic Freudian principles of women's identity, personality, and psychological make-up.

The essay focuses on four recurrent motifs in present feminist literary theory: the madwoman, female language, the father, and the mother. She discusses how each of these motifs has been treated by feminist critics and underlines how their treatments have served to uphold the "hegemonic mindset that recapitulates and hence capitulates to fear, dislike, and contempt of women." (p. 280)

I. The Madwoman

This section discusses Gilbert and Gubar's study of 19th century women writers entitles "The Madwoman in the Attic". Her main points are: 1. Gilbert and Gubar believe that these writers must have been liberated women, since to be writing in the 19th century would be in defiance of the patriarchy, and that the Madwoman motif represents a subversive rage because the defiance of women writers had to be hidden and supressed.

Baym says that the mistake that G. and G. in their interpretation of the madwoman Bertha in Jane Eyre is that they comply with Bronte's treatment of Bertha, which is that she, as the revolt against the patriarchy, becomes horrible and that this makes her death not only acceptable but necessary for Jane's liberation. Baym criticized G. and G. for not remembering that Bertha was a woman too.

Something that could have been developed more in Baym's essay is the idea that madwomen like Bertha are marked as "non-lingual" and don't have access to a language to defend themselves with. However, this has been the claim of feminists for all women throughout history.

II. A Female Language

1. Baym criticizes modern feminists theorists Cixous and Irigaray and their translators for subscribing to the belief in a specificity of female language based on a supposed difference, which in itself is based on misogynistic Lacanian theories about women. According to these theories, female language is identified with "madness, antireason, primitive darkness, mystery" (p. 283). Tied in with this theory is the trend described by G. and G. in their essay "Sexual Linguistics" to claim language as women's territory because of "the linguistic as well as biological primacy of the mother." Baym, however, believes this only serves to enforce gender differentiation with misogynist consequences.

III. The Father

1. This section is devoted to a criticism of Freudian views of what constitutes feminine personality based in his Oedipus complex theories. She denounces again the conclusions drawn by Freud that lock women into an immature and incomplete identity because of their relationships with their fathers, and that this affects their thoughts and their writing. Baym refers to Chodorow's reading of Freud on the issue of girls not being able to separate from their mothers as an explaination for numerous readings by feminist writers that take this as an explanation for "less organized, more connected and fluid personalities." (p. 286) She describes Lacan's theories as being even more severe that Freud's. A question that remains is why would Cixous and Irigaray and other French feminists be schooled by Lacan if his theories were so misogynist?

IV. The Mother

1. In this section Baym discusses how post-Freudian analyses by feminist theories have not addressed the misogyny Freud's ideas about the mother and the Oedipus/castration complexes. Baym notes that discussions of "pre-Oedipal mother" still minimize the role of mothers in a child's development because they still depend on the Freudian concept of rejection of the mother at some stage of a child's life. Baym gives examples of women who expressed hatred towards their own mothers in their writing (Adrienne Rich), and questions why they comply with Freud's theories. As Baym says, "the Freudian and the feminist agendas may coincide because feminists do not like their mothers or because feminists prefer to endow women with a revolutionary power that we cannot have if we have been part of the system all along. To say this is not to blame the victim, but to question our ability to carry, after so many centuries of implication, any pure revitilizing force. Our powers are limited and our agendas for change will have to take internal limitation into account." (p. 289) Our criticism of this section is that she does not give more recent analysis of this motif like she does of the father motif and Freud.

This reading is like the Sosnoski essay in that it criticizes modern theory for being too institutionalized, or as Baym says, taking a legalist attitude in literary analysis. They both think theory should be more inclusive of new ideas and wary of complicity of traditional patriarchal misogynistic perspectives and explanations.