A Selfie of the Artist as a Young Woman

I wasn’t necessarily planning to write something today. People of all ages and genders are dying on other parts of this planet, even mere kilometres away from my home town and because of that, I didn’t really feel much like celebrating women’s rights… Not when our basic human rights are being trampled.

But this year, International Women’s Day finds me working on my novel, sipping coffee in a part of the world where business continues as usual. This is why I wanted to paint a short portrait of this writer as a young woman. The 8th of March only comes once a year, and who knows what will happen until the next one.

A bit of literary theory before we begin.

In 1975, in an essay called ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, French feminist and literary theorist Hélène Cixous introduced the term écriture féminine. She is saying that

‘women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, rhetorics, regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the ultimate reserve-discourse.’ (Cixous)

There is more about this on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89criture_f%C3%A9minine) and in essays and books. In short, according to Cixous, women focus more on thoughts and experiences, they do not follow the strict rules of writing and therefore write more freely (and perhaps more in-depth). One example of écriture féminine can be the stream of consciousness.

This is the theory. As with everything in literature, things change with time. I don’t think that it’s still the case that women write in a certain way. However, I love the fact that I am part of a transgenerational community of female writers who defy a traditional mode of writing.

Ever since I decided that I wanted to be a writer, I have been interested in the literary representation of thoughts. I am writing from three perspectives, one for each protagonist. My perspective is not first-person, nor third person. Not even second person. I write in a stream of consciousness style, but I take it further than just conveying thoughts and feelings. I’m playing with fonts, colours, dialogue formatting, and more. Each character is unique in the way their minds interpret the world around them. I’m interested in creating an experience where my reader can become my character and observe the world in the same way as they do.

My novel takes place in the future, but it’s a tangible future, and therefore, like many spec fiction writers before me, I’m using it to warn people. Orwell, for example, paints an excellent picture of life in ‘1984’ from the outside in. His protagonist is a puppet whose life takes place in that universe. His book is what we call ‘plot-driven’ in literary theory. My piece, on the other hand, is ‘character-driven’. I’m presenting life from the inside out.

I know that if my novel will ever be discussed in a university setting, it will be placed under the lenses of feminist theory. Every text written by a woman can and will be placed under the lenses of feminist theory because that is one of its roles - to analyse female writing (the same way I’m analysing young writing for my dissertation). I was really wondering if I’m fine with that. After all, my piece has got nothing to do with feminism or female empowerment. Yes, two out of my three protagonists are women, but that’s not their main ‘character trait’. I am writing it as a ‘youth-ist’ piece centred around the experiences of two young people and a youth worker.

But let me tell you what, it’s not about what the writers write, it’s about what the readers read. And if some readers will see this as a piece of écriture féminine, I wouldn’t mind at all. My road has been paved by women who HAD to write in a special way to stand out in the male-dominated literary world. International Women’s Day finds me working on my novel. I am a young woman writing a novel. How cool is this!?