A Peak Into "The Laugh of the Medusa" by Helene Cixous

Helene Cixous’s popular essay “The Laugh of the Medusa” was originally written in French in the year 1975. It was later translated into English by Paula Cohen and Keith Cohen in the year 1976. Cixous’ popular essay stresses on the need for a female narrative, and how it should come from the female body. She talks about a brand new language, which she calls ecriture feminine, that will have a female narrative, and will not submit to the patriarchal notions and ideas that most languages generally subscribes to.

Cixous talks about the need for woman to put herself into text by her own movement; she talks about the importance of women to write about themselves. She urges women to put their own experiences into text, to take their bodies back.

One of the most striking features of this essay, according to me, is how extremely classist this essay is. It lacks the intersectionality that is prominent in the current understanding of feminism. Cixous makes a lot of sense, but I will be pointing out a few points lacking in the essay.

Intersectionality involves the inclusion of women from all sections of the society (I am not considering transgender women here). It does not consider economic, social or regional divisions as a bar to the rights and opportunities that should be available to the women in a particular society. One of the other important features of intersectionality is to identify the differences that persist among women from different classes and backgrounds, and that certain women need to be given higher number of opportunities than others to ensure that they will be able to attain the same rights and freedoms as their counterparts.

Cixous seems to be skipping the entire idea of intersectionality. She mentions the need for women to write about themselves. The truth is, they have. The patriarchal society was not willing to take them seriously, that’s all. Mary Ann Evans had to rename herself with a heterosexual cis man’s name to get published, when men actually wrote poppycock and got away with publishing it and making it bestsellers. The fact that having a vagina can actually reduce one’s work of art to mere absurdity was extremely prominent during the Victorian era, and it has not differed much in recent times. Women in certain societies need permission of the male heads of their families to even get educated. In such dire straits, expecting one to write about their experiences as a show of their power and rights is going to look extremely biased.

Intersectionality also involves the inclusion of the marginalised sections of the society. This means that a lot of the women who need empowerment might not even know the meaning of the word. They might not even be aware of their own rights. They might be accepting of what they have been served. Education may be far from their grasp, primarily because of the patriarchal notions among which they’ve been born and brought up. Marginalised people are even shunned by the rest of the society, such as the Dalits in India, so their access to any of the institutions are limited by the constraints imposed upon them by the people in power.

One other major focus of Cixous is on sexuality. She talks about how women should be writing through their breast milk; she talks about the way in which women should be exploring their own sexualities and writing about them. Understandably, she is one of the primary critics of Freud’s theories, and one of the main reasons behind her focusing on women’s sexuality and how women should be putting that on paper is the fact that Freud subordinated women’s sexuality to that of man, and proposed that women’s lack of a penis makes them crave for the same. But Cixous’ idea of attacking Freud’s neurotic ideas by highlighting the importance of female sexuality somehow ends up subjecting women to only their sexuality and their bodies, which is something that male authors have been seen doing for centuries already. Most male authors that write about female characters oversexualize them and basically use them to satisfy their own cravings that they might be lacking in real life.?

Cixous also mentions that only man must write about his masculinity and only women should write about their femininity. This theory seems pretty flawed since perspectives are extremely important to understand in a field such as literature. This theory also puts gender into two specific boxes, and seems like a very basic, old way of thinking. In such a modern world, where gender is being seen on a spectrum, boxing up people into two specific genders, and also subscribing to the society’s way of thinking of what ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ should look or sound like has to be one of the biggest problems to Cixous’ essay. One may show the socially constructed ‘masculine’ behaviours, even though they identify as a woman, and vice versa.

Cixous also mentions that one of the main reasons behind female suppression is because ‘man fears losing himself in woman.’ To begin with, that is an extremely pathetic excuse to vouch for the actions of the men against women throughout the centuries gone by. It is not going to justify violence against women. It does not make sense when a woman who has been abused is told that ‘the man feared you, so he beat you into a pulp.’

Cixous mentions the coming of the New Woman, who will write herself, and let her voice be heard. This brings me back to one of my first ever points - what about the marginalized and downtrodden? Do we not give them rights, just because they are unable to write about their own sexuality and their bodies? What about a woman who has been abused, and who needs only rights, and not her own sexuality to write about? Do we not consider her as the New Woman?

“This is a useless and deceptive fact unless from their species of female writers we do not first deduct the immense majority whose workmanship is in no way different from male writing, and which either obscures women or reproduces the classic representations of women (as sensitive-intuitive-dreamy, etc.)”. With these words, Cixous seems to point out that the classic female writers represent women as a part of male imagination. Not to deny with her words completely, but the need for women of all times to be understood, heard and considered is extremely important to know where we should start from. The socialization and conditioning of women have been different at different points of time. Just because it does not fit our modern ideas of what female writing should be does not mean we should denounce those accounts. Female writing should include the different types of? narratives that we get from different sections and classes of the society irrespective of whether they cater to hyperfemininity or hypofemininity.

Not to disagree with Cixous completely, but the fact that her central theme revolves around the idea of female sexuality, and the sexualization of their writing just does not sit right with me. More than focusing on whose body it is speaking, we should focus more on the words being spoken and take into account its urgency and importance.?

The Laugh of the Medusa was a daring text at a point of time when it was published. Female sexuality wasn’t exactly revered in the 1970s. However, times have changed drastically since the 1970s - the rights and information available to women have changed as well. The understanding of feminism has seen a huge change with the help of the internet and social media. It has a vastly different understanding right now, along with the way in which it is being practised. In such a setting, I would really like to read an update from Cixous herself about some of the theories proposed by her in The Laugh of the Medusa.