Arachne Silenced: Herstoriographic Metafiction and Gender Trouble in Stevie Davies’ Impassioned Clay (1999)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Herstoriography is a feminist tool that explores the voicing of women who were silenced by literary historiographic discourses. As a herstoriographic metafiction, Stevie Davies’ Impassioned Clay (1999) has diverse narratives about the same historical events. The herstoriographic metafictional moments in the novel doubt and question the concept of the indisputable universal truth endorsed by patriarchy. The paper draws mainly on the “Arachne” paradigm in the light of feminist and postmodern theories of Nancy Miller, Judith Butler, Patricia Waugh, Linda Hutcheon, Elaine Showalter, Teresa De Lauretis and others to offer a herstoriographic reading in opposition to patriarchal historiography that fixes women as menial or monstrous beings, or as objects of sexual gaze. Three moments of subversion or blurring can be elicited in this metafictional novel that constitute herstoriography: political and religious, gender, and literary and historical. The paper seeks to focus on those moments that establish a dialogue between fiction and history/ herstory, present and past, and voice and silence. Thus, the female voicing that has been silenced by the androcentric historiographic discourse is rescued and reframed in herstoriography.