LCT JOURNAL 2020
Debilitating Legacies: Alleviating the Anxiety of Female Authorship in Munro’s “Meneseteung” Meg Jianing Zhang
T
he second chapter of Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination opens with the voices of S. Weir Mitchell, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Emily Dickinson, and Anne Sexton. Only after their epigraphic input do we hear the authors’ voices in the form of a question: “What does it mean to be a woman writer in a culture whose fundamental definitions of literary authority are…both overtly and covertly patriarchal?” Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar respond to Harold Bloom’s androcentric “anxiety of influence” with what they call an “anxiety of authorship.” I will turn to their critique of Bloom to investigate how Alice Munro’s short story, “Meneseteung” explores methods of alleviating this anxiety of female authorship. Almeda Joynt Roth, the protagonist of Munro’s narrative and a nineteenth-century poetess herself, is surrounded by spheres of patriarchal authority. Her primary influence is her deceased father whose literary legacy simultaneously cultivates her love for poetry and prevents her from birthing poetic daughters of her own. “Meneseteung” juxtaposes Queen Aggie (the town pariah) and Almeda to depict the dilemmas that women writers confront in their attempts to relieve their anxiety. Extreme aggression transforms Aggie into a monster. Extreme passivity manifests into debilitating isolation and pathological illness in Almeda. Ultimately, “Meneseteung” offers means of alleviating the anxiety of authorship. Despite her physical and mental decline, Almeda poetically triumphs because of she celebrates her female body and returns to a forgotten matrilineal heritage of literary strength. Gilbert and Gubar purport that Bloom’s “anxiety of influence” predominantly applies to the male writer in a patriarchal context. According to Bloom, the (male) poet develops his own style by engaging in oedipal warfare with his poetic forefathers. His strength is a product of his precursors’ eventual invalidation and defeat. Bloom’s model of authorship also asserts a cyclical relationship. The son who defeats his father becomes the father his own son shall surpass. Meanwhile, the woman writer is not subject to such luxuries. For the woman writer, her (male) precursors are not outdated opponents over whom she inevitably triumphs, but rather extant forces of authority that nip her creativity in the bud. Moreover, the patriarchal system in which she resides forbids her Page 47
