Ideology and Self: A Theoretical Discussion of the “Self” in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Fiction

Abstract

I D E O L O G Y A N D S E L F : A T H E O R E T I C A L D I S C U S S I O N O F T H E “ S E L F ” I N M A R Y W O L L S T O N E C R A F T ’ S F I C T I O N S . D. H A R ASYM University of Alberta She whose sense of her own existence was so intense, who had cried out even in her misery, “ I cannot bear to think of being no more — of losing myself — nay, it appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist” , died at the age of thirty-six.1 As Virginia Woolf’s comment and quotation from Wollstonecraft’s letter suggests, Mary Wollstonecraft’s oeuvre from Mary, A Fiction and A Vindi­ cation of the Rights of Woman to Maria or The Wrongs of Woman may be read as a quest for a unified self and presence, to serve as a focal point for her, paradoxically, feminist, yet, monolithic ideology.2 Indeed, presence is a necessary constituent of her attempt to write herself as the true voice of feeling into her fiction and, in so doing, provide a unified subject as a politi­ cal representative for the emancipation of women. Wollstonecraft’s will to explain reinforces presuppositions of an explain­ able universe, a ‘knowing’ subject and a neutral medium of expression — language. Problems necessarily arise from this structural equation (world + subject + language) which are similar to problems written into both Hegel’s and Lacan’s theories of universal language, theories which assimilate femi­ nine difference into masculine sameness.3 Since language consists of conven­ tional structures which pre-exist and prohibit appeals for self-present inten­ tion, the writing process may be read as both an active and a passive pro­ cess. In this configuration, then, as Wollstonecraft attempts to inscribe herself into her displaced, autobiographical, feminine characters, she, too, is written by the text. Held in the act of reading, ordering, and writing her life-narrative, she is not a masterful subject, but an object or an already written supplement.4 Structuralist and deconstructive practices read the self as a linguistically and socially constituted figure, a figure which operates independently of any individual or subjective intention.5 Emile Benveniste in Problèmes de lin­ guistique générale notes that language is a discursive relation involving two figures in a structure of dialogue: “Two figures positioned as partners are E n g l is h S t u d ie s in C a n a d a , xn, 2, June 1986 alternately protagonists of the utterance.” 6 The concepts of self and I are merely figurative words chosen through syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of linguistic structures. For Lacan, the self is a mere symptom of the oppo­ sition of divisiveness and otherness.7 In contrast to viewing the subject as a linguistic intentional construct, Wollstonecraft’s interpreters often conceive of the author’s or character’s self as an essence. The text is the intersection of self and literature.8 Yet, should we assume this phallogocentric9 unity of self and formal neutrality of language (unity and neutrality which exclude feminine difference and both suppress and repress women) when we read Maria or The Wrongs of Woman? Does not this assumption decon­ struct the very tenets of Wollstonecraft’s feminist ideology? In the treatment of the self in Maria or The Wrongs of Woman, there is a sharp contrast between Maria’s first-person autobiographical memories and the third-person narrative discourse which criticizes and censors Maria’s actions, and draws social and political conclusions about the unjust treat­ ment of women. Thus, the memoirs, far from portraying a unified subject and developing as an instruction text for the emancipation of women, dwell in fatalistic melodrama, and eventually usurp the objective discourse of the narrator. In so doing, the memoirs deconstruct the intentions of Wollstone­ craft’s radical idealism and rather than creating a work of fiction which offers a representation of the “new” emancipated...