AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS AND THE POWER OF REPRESENTATION

Abstract

The paper focuses on the representation of women in several short stories by American women writers with a special emphasis on the notion of symbolic power or the power of representation. The theoretical framework is based on the works of cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay and their explanation and development of the notions of symbolic power and representation practices understood as the expressions of the power of words. Furthermore, Edward Said’s and Homi Bhabha’s considerations of the relationship between power and representation are juxtaposed with the feminist critics’ (Cixous, Irigaray, Gilbert and Gubar, Rivers, Gill) views on the importance of acquiring one’s own voice in the process of (self-)representation and (self-)empowerment via written narratives. The corpus consists of three short stories by important American women writers – Kate Chopin, Mary Wilkins Freeman and Susan Glaspell – written and published towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The selected short stories are not only written by female authors but also feature main female characters and touch upon the issues of male/female power relations and the female voice and self representation, i.e. the power of words in the female narrative of the self. The analysis of the proposed corpus reveals common themes and narrative strategies used by female authors to address the issues of symbolic power and (self-)empowerment in line with some of the contemporary feminist debates and concerns.