Cross Currents; Discussion on Women in Literature by Sociologist Pam Schwingle and Dr. Virginia Clark of the University of Vermont

Cross currents as made possible by a grant from the Vermont Council on the humanities and public issues. This is cross currents a series of programs exploring issues of public concern in Vermont today on cross currents. We present changes and choices. The views of women through literature part of a series of book discussions examining social and political attitudes toward women. The changes these attitudes have undergone and how they are perceived in literature. This series was organized by the Moorestown Centennial public library and the northern Vermont reading cooperative keynote speakers at the group's introductory meeting in Morrisville. The evening of January 30 first were parish Wingle from Bristol Vermont a sociologist with a particular interest in women expressing themselves through writing and Virginie a Clark Professor of English at the University of Vermont and a specialist in the development of the English language.

Here now is Pam Schwinn goal with a personal perspective on women in literature. The title of my address tonight is why I read literature by and about women. And I'm going to try to answer it from my own experience of course because that's all I really have to go on. But it's I'm not going to give an answer one answer to this question. And I think that you'll all have your own answers but if you've noticed through Never you start talking to somebody's feelings that you think are unique or ideas that you have that you think are unique to yourself you find out as you talk more that people are also feeling the same shared idea and perception so my answer I don't think is too presumptuous to be based on my own experience. So in a sense to speak about this objectively why I read literature by women it's going to be a little difficult because since about nine hundred seventy one. I've been reading books by women and I would say exclusively so when I

think about this sometimes i think Wow that's almost that's about nine years and that's a long time but when I think about all the experience I had before reading all those years before in school that I read a lot by men. And so this is just kind of balancing it out I think. And that I think the first book I read when I was starting to read women's literature although I read other books by women in high school and college but that I really realized there was a breaking point for me was a book by a Niacin. A lot of you might be familiar with her journal writing but she's written a lot of novels. And one of these novels that I read was letters to fire. And in that book I really felt there was a break for me I realized that there was something different about reading books by women than what I had experienced before when I read books by men. But anyways to get there. In reading all these books by women I really feel like what's been happening is that my whole

universe of ideas is starting to be affected and changed. I see personal encounters the lives of men and women differently than I did before. The books I've been reading books by Lessing Lawrence Smedley Sander Stein some of you might recognize these people's names Sarton Perkins Gilman Glasgow Hellman Newman Neale Hurston Wolfe and more each one of them I find when I read them adds a new twist to my life a new vision a new understanding of my life the way I live it now the way I lived in the past my mother's life my grandmother's life. It helps me understand that there's a real collective unconscious you know that I share with all women. And these books give me access to a tradition or a chronological development that has really been lost. I can read about a heritage of women that has shaped and continues to define our lives even

now the way we look at things the way we think about things. And I see something that Ellen Glasgow and author talks about is the vein of iron. And that's the something that keeps us alive and inspired even in spite of the heritage that we have that sometimes not only defines our lives but oppresses us encouragement validation the excitement of weaving together bits and fragments of the past to create a picture of woman in the present. These are some of the most basic reasons why I read literature by women. Reading the stories in books of women reminds me that our world of experience has not really been recorded in the literature of men. In fiction written by women there is a vast range of story in topic. But what can be said about women's fiction is is that it has been written especially that that has been written in the century before us is that it records

for us in a way that other written words have not. For example the written works in the social sciences or humanities. A point of view of the other half women. It is in our favor that fiction writing became somewhat of an acceptable occupation for women unlike positions in the scholarly feels like the humanities or social sciences. So women usually wrote outside of institutions even though it wasn't acceptable for fashion I must add or in-app profession but an acceptable thing to do. It didn't mean that women were given a lot of encouragement in terms of being published or in terms of getting a lot of recognition by critics. What women were writing and sometimes they were writing this is fiction stories sometimes journals or letters they were writing a story of our lives that wasn't being recorded anywhere else they were recording a record of our seeings. And it's not because I don't want to suggest that men weren't.

We're trying to omit or distort our lives. It's just that I think that they are the conditions of their lives were so different and have been so different. As to prevent men from having access to our world in our experience. So it's it's just being outside of the way that we look at things. So I'm talking about the fact that women have been recording a day to day record a day to day set of experiences that make their common world a little different than the common world of men. Adrian Rich who is a poet and also who has written essays on motherhood and and essays. In the women's movement where white women and women of color working together she has written an introduction to a book called working it out and she speaks to this difference in our experience men's experience and women's experience and the importance of women telling their truths in their written work.

She says that our work has Dan and continues to be and I'm going to quote from her that of World protection world preservation world repair. The million tiny stitches the friction of the scrubbing brush the Scouring claw the iron across the shirt the rubbing of the cloth against itself to exercise the stain the renewal of the scorched the rusted knife blade the invisible weaving of a frayed and threadbare family life. The cleaning up of soil and waste left behind by men and children. These together these kind of tasks form day after day week after week year after year a different kind of experience than the experience of men in their common world of work. When you think about their common world of work in the shop in the office and it means simply that we might have a different kind of story to tell. The mundane everyday world which men of letters have scorned which the

Greeks will have no part has a place in our literature without it we only have half the story. A story of half a population half of people half of humanity. This is one of the reasons I like to read literature by women. Another reason I like to read it is because I think it casts a different light on what we commonly accept to be true about men. I think for a minute what we would know if only men had written. I think a quote of Virginia Woolf's which I really happen to personally like a lot says it well. For there is a spot the size of a shilling at the back of the head. Which one can never see for oneself. It is one of the good offices that one sex can discharge for the other. That is to describe the size of a shilling at the back of the head. Think with what humanity and brilliancy men from the earliest ages have pointed out to women that dark place at the back of their head.

A true picture of man as a whole can never be painted until a woman has described that spot the size of a shilling at the back of his head. I think I just think that that says it will not only a picture of our day to day world then but a picture of the perspective of men. A picture of what men what part men play in our world and what. And what they know or don't know about themselves. I mean when you think if you read men's literature you do start getting a sense that of what part women play which is quite a small part in their lives or that there you get a very male sense of the world instead of a world that very inclusive of a lot of different kinds of activities women writers can capture there and have captured it. Another insight of Virginia Woolf's is that women have served all these centuries as looking

glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice his natural size. How important then for the work of women writers to put this image back in place. These new pictures and the pictures women have drawn for centuries when they have written balance are realities about the nature of the sexes. And I think that's really important. It's another reason why I read literature by women to kind of get a fail instant sense. Aside from these points and possibly more importantly women writers give us or reflect back for us our relationships with other women. In few books by men are relationships between women drawn at all or very truthfully only until recently has our own culturally impaired vision broadened and allowed us to see women each other as friends and not enemies. Our culture pits us against each other making us enemies

because our only access to power has been through men. If you think about this the men in the women's relationships are natural and usually men when they talk about women will be talking about women in relation to men or women are alone out there somehow or else the rivals with other women. In an article in chrysalis magazine Carol recently wrote an article entitled Has anyone read Gone With The Wind lately. It won a Pulitzer Prize in one thousand thirty seven and has been selling more and more copies than most bestsellers. Since then every year since. What she brought this article up for I think is really interesting is she questions why it is so popular. It's rarely taught in American novels classes or it's very rarely listed in literary histories. And she offers two reasons. One is that she says that she thinks it's an incredibly

vivid story about a woman who is very alive and has a very healthy self-love in an environment that discourages that. And two she talks about that it's really very much a story of the development of Mar Melanie and Scarlets relationship with each other which is isn't usually talked about usually seen that Scarlett and Rhett have the relationship but in fact it's the evolution and we don't even think about it I think that our minds have been trained in such a way that we don't even think about looking at the story that way that it really is the story of maybe Melanie and Scarlett's relationship and evolution of a relationship Mish Mokhtar says that it is the story. She she makes a quote No read from it in the struggle for survival Atara against overwhelming odds. Scarlett finds Melanie in an unwavering ally. She is always there when Scarlett needs her understanding perfectly the crisis of the moment.

Over the course of 12 years of extraordinary stress gradual an inescapable changes occur in the characters. Melanie stands by Scarlett every crisis and Scarlets life and there is a corresponding softening in Scarlett's attitude towards her in her long slow struggle to some sort of self-awareness. Scarlett finally recognizes that the end of the novel how very much she loves and needs Melanie. You can probably remember back for most of you who've read then that this is a really poignant story point and part of the story and it's also the part of the story where a lot of other resolutions come to bear when she realizes that she really that scarlet Melanie realized that they really care for each other it also means that a lot of other things fall into place after that. Joanna Russ is a pioneering writer of feminist science fiction and I just saw a quote of hers in this month's magazine. And she maintains that the crucial test

of feminism in a work is the presence of at least two women who are friendly. Pretty simple really when you think about that one woman and not two who are rivals male works which try and sometimes honestly try to be feminists invariably focus on the woman man couple or the one woman among male colleagues. The secret of feminism is what happens when women talk to women. Advise women love women. The two may be lovers friends or friendly strangers or friendly colleagues but this is the absolute precondition for a feminism and B truth. There are innumerable instances of female friendship throughout women's literature and I think to to study it would be really interesting and I would love to and I'm sure probably somebody has started to already. But for us here now mention of it is important to remind us how the lack of stories

about relationships with each other deprives us of a part of ourselves again shows us only half the possibilities or half of humanity which is another reason why I like to read these books. Before I take a turn in talk about the conditions of work of women writers I want to mention a point about women's literature and the appeal it has for me that I consider to be primary. I learn as I read this literature that women have brought to the written page issues of morality and public outrage. Many times before men have had the insight or courage to write of the same issues besides describing our day to day existence our lives with others men and women. We have perpetuated in at the more reality a truth often lost in other writers. Tillie Olsen who I'll talk a little bit more about later wrote an afterword to life in the iron mills which

is a book that was written in 1861 by Rebecca Harding Davis. She says that this is the first book that was written that spoke about the inhuman conditions of industrial America before the Civil War when it was first published in The Atlantic Monthly it was really considered a literary success a work of genius. But if it was buried for about a century after that it wasn't until the 1972 edition of the feminist pressed edition of Life in the iron mills came out that it was resurrected. This book which really talked about which was the first to bring up the conditions at this time was buried and not recognized after its initial recognition as a work of genius that it was. Tillie Olsen says in her afterward there was in the consciousness of literary America no dark say tannic Mills outside of slavery.

No myriads of human beings whose lives were terrible tragedy a reality of Soul's starvation of living. Yet by 1860 one of every seven Americans were mine and mill hands who lived and worked in circumstances like Deb and Hugh who were the main characters. When industry was considered at all it was an invasion of pastoral harmony a threat of materialism to the spirit. If working people outside of slavery existed at all and nowhere were they mention for serious attention let alone central subject. They were clean haired Yankee girls mill girls minds among the spindles or witness working men and women of these states having your own divine and strong life. Again during the Civil War Rebecca Harding Davis wrote a book called Waiting for the verdict and it was alone in trying to make some sense of the currents of the Civil War period.

And yet when Daniel Eran in 1970 I think 74 wrote the book The Unwritten war American writers in the civil war which is considered to be an authoritative volume on this subject. His major thesis is that the war remain largely unwritten. With few noticeable exceptions writers the antenna of the race had revealed little of the meaning or causes of the war nor discerned its moral and historical implications. Rebecca Harding Davis is not included among his few noticeable exceptions. However she alone and singularly in her time wrote directly of meaning causes moral and historical implications. The seamy and on Heroic the complex question of race. It seems the greatest of all missions to have ignored discussion of her work as Aaron does. And I think this happens a lot to women's writing. So far I've been talking to you from my point of view was a reader of women's fiction.

Now I want to talk about why I read literature by women. But from the perspective of I guess a sociologist. But I don't think you need to be a sociologist yourselves to understand my meaning. I want to talk about the behind the scenes of women's writing what it is like for women to write. And I want to liberally quote from a book called silences written by Tillie Olsen because I believe that she is our most articulate resource for understanding why women don't write. She in this book in Silences I really recommend it to you it's a wonderful book and it talks about the conditions of women's work in this field. Women's Writing about the day to day of our lives may be an important part of our literature. But it is also the demon that keeps us from writing. It is often in the wee hours of the night or early morning that women write

times after their families are fed attended to and tucked in. There have been few women who have had the uninterrupted time to write. Days and weeks according to the great male authors for the development of their ideas. Joseph can read in a quote in this book tells us how he worked for 20 months. I wrestled with the Lord for my creation mind and will and conscience engaged to the full hour after hour day after day. A lonely struggle in a great isolation from the world. I suppose I slept in ate the food put before me in talk connectedly and suitable occasions. But I was never aware of the even flow of daily life made easy and noiseless for me by a silent watchful tireless affection. Virginia Woolf calls her the angel of the house. Katherine Mansfield on the other hand tells us of the situation of herself

as a young woman writer being married to a man who is also struggling to be a writer. The house seems to take up so much time. I mean when I have to clean up twice over or wash up extra unnecessary things I get frightfully impatient and want to be writing. So often this week you and Gordon have been talking while I wash the dishes. Well someone's got to wash the dishes and get the food. Otherwise there's nothing in the house but eggs to eat. And after you have gone I walk about with a mind full of ghosts of saucepans and Prima stove and will there be enough to go around and you calling whatever I am doing writing take isn't there going to be tea it's 5 o'clock you know. I think you can get the idea that the conditions of work are such that many women just never bothered to get into the situation. Most writers of most women writers in the last century very rarely were married. And when you think about the last century marriage meant having a family.

Women who were married didn't it meant women who did get married were often not married until their late 30s. Tilly Olson mentions only four women who actually got married and had children when they were young women. But all of them had servants. In this century it has not been so different really. Most women writers never married or if they did never had children. Only a few have had children and then all again had household help or other special circumstances. Who knows what our literature would have been like if women of other circumstances besides those who were able to afford servants had been able to write. We have been really different I think. The education of women in the day to day of our lives has been a history of punishment. You could say found the powerlessness fear of rape fear of aging fear of expressing

ourselves. Marriage is property arrangement. Infantilization trivialization shut up you're only a girl roles part time part self. Yet look at what it takes to become a writer. Time the development of craft bent circumstances will the measureless store a belief in oneself to be able to come to cleave to find the form for one's own life comprehensions. It's difficult for men it's impossible for girls. Elaine Showalter in an essay women and Lulu the literary curriculum talks about the result of this punishment on young women. She says that women students are strange from their own experience and able to perceive it shaped in authenticity in part because they do not see it mirrored in given

resonance in the literature. They are expected to identify with masculine experience which is presented as human experience and have no faith in the validity of their own perceptions and experiences rarely seeing them confirmed in literature or accepted in criticism. They notoriously lack the happy confidence the exuberant sense of the value of their individual observations which enables young men to risk making fools of themselves for the sake of an idea. When we as writers have written the work squeeze the time sacrificed family and ourselves. What do we find then. When we have been able to write our seeing publishers and critics are not always so enthusiastic about the result. If we are published at all our work goes the route of a single printing and often is lost until some curious are driven woman scratches it up from the dust heap. Like in

life in the iron mills also works of George Sand. That's true about the fine literary criticisms about George Sand even on a off even biographies but very few of George Sand's works have been published in this country and only until recently when the feminist presses have been digging them up and they've then become available to us readers still react to a book not for its quality or content but on the basis of its having been written by a woman. Tillie Olsen causes the dancing dog syndrome. And consequently it's misread and misunderstood and mistreated or we are recognized and praised. If we write like a man with masculine power. This was something about in the I read a recent review of her work and they said that she was really so inner and so soft and yet she

really was the person who took me over the scales I think it's really interesting. Power is seldom recognized as the power it is at all. If the subject matter is considered as considered woman's then it is only minor. Moving instinctive delicate. As a result of these conditions that I talk about. And this moved these conditions move Tillie Olsen did to do a survey a brief survey of the literature and what she found was that 1 out of 12 one woman in 12 men appeared in an array of literature courses etc.. That's 8 percent. Vs. 92 percent. They appeared in literature courses required reading lists textbooks quality anthologies the year's best the decade's best the

50 years best consideration by critics or in current reviews. One woman writer was mentioned for every 12 men. It's a really staggering figure especially when I was thinking one out of 12 but then which said 8 percent vs. 92 percent I thought that was pretty staggering. The fact that even that they're not even there and if they are there they still aren't visible. But she goes on to admonish us and encourage us to read writers who are women. There is a whole literature to be re estimated revalued. Read listen to living women writers are new as well as our established writers not to have an audience is a kind of read the compass of women writers and help create writers. There is so much unwritten that needs to be written. There are other space sides

the silenced 11 out of 12 who could bring into literature what is not there now works written by poor women by women without the privilege of wealth and family who cannot have servants. First generation women to go to school. Women of Color. Finally I want to say a line actually out of a review that I read that I think encourages those of us who are trying to write. And also those of us actually could be used as a criterion for looking at women's writing. She encourages us to build fires in the darkness clearing our names illuminating our identities. Thank you. Ed.. Thank you.

That was a Schwinn goal. A sociologist speaking at the introductory discussion of changes and choices the use of women through literature. Virginia Clark Professor of English at the University of Vermont gives a more technical viewpoint of the issue in her talk. Stylistic differences in the writing of contemporary male and female authors. Professor Clarke most English speaking people believe and apparently they have believed for at least the last 200 years although they're often not aware that they believe this until you ask them. That men and women write differently. That is that men and women have different styles. You can find evidence of this in the critical reception that Weathering Heights received. Now I don't want to say too much about this because you're reading Jane Eyre and I and I know that you will be talking about this but let me just mention that Weathering Heights was first published

under a pseudonym Alice bell and it was deliberately chosen by Emily Bronte and her sisters because they they thought it sounded like a man's name and yet there was a kind of ambiguity about it that wasn't definitely committing them to a male authorship. Assuming you nana mostly that Weathering Heights had been written by a man critics on both sides of the Atlantic initially praised it very very highly. When its authorship became known after Emily's death when the book was reissued critical opinion did a complete about face and critics condemned the novel for what they claimed at that point were its major falls on and all of these faults were attributable. They said to its having been written by women to take another example the American critic James Lane Allen.

I've never heard of him before but in 1897 he described something that he called the feminine principle in American fiction and it consisted according to Alan of refinement delicacy Grace smallness rarity and tact. And he set this in opposition to what he called the masculine principle which consisted of virility strength massiveness largeness obliviousness and a primary or instinctive action. Now clearly both Alan and the numerous critics of Wuthering Heights thought that men and women wrote differently and they also thought that the writing of women was inferior. There's been some very interesting recent work with college students who are a large captive audience with whom one can perform various interesting kinds of testing. They

were they also believe that men and women write differently. Presented with two hundred fifty word samples from. 10 contemporary novels and told truthfully that five of these were written by men and five were written by women. The college students were asked to indicate which was which and which were working. And they had no doubts. Nobody said what do you mean you know what unreasonable request how are we supposed to know they simply sat confidently to work and proceeded to identify the sex of the authors. There is a problem however. And this this experiment has been done over and over again. The students perform less accurately than chance alone would predict in terms of her identification. Clearly something is wrong. The students were reacting to something or some things.

But whatever it was they were reacting to did not in fact correlate with the gender of the author. There have been some other experiments. These are little peripheral but I think they're interesting in which actual articles are presented to students and they're asked to rank the articles in terms of how effective how convincing how well done they are. So again half written by men half by women except for some of your groups you switch the names. So the article really written by a man gets labeled as having been written by a woman. And it will not surprise you what happened. The same article written by a woman is ranked as markedly inferior to that same article when it is a dandified as having been written by a man and this happens with a great deal of consistency. Now going back to the students who are Dan defying the sex of the authors

there are two at least two possible explanations for the inability or their inability to match correctly the writing samples with the sex of the authors. One explanation would be well there are no differences in writing styles and the students are simply imposing their own stereotypes their own expectations onto the selections. There is another possibility. Perhaps there really are differences in the writing styles of men and women but the differences are not the ones we expect and hence not the ones we and the students look for. And it turns out that it's the latter hypothesis that that is correct. There are differences very real differences in the prose of published male and female writers. But these differences violate our expectations. They violate our stereotypes and they therefore pass and have passed

unnoticed. The first documentation that I've seen of this fact has been provided by Mary Hyatt in a very fascinating book entitled The way women write. Parent that is preceding the analysis of the writing styles. There's been a great deal of work and many of you have have alluded to this documenting the fact that there are a number of significant differences in the spoken language used by males and females and used about males and females. But it's only recently that linguists and critics have begun looking at differences in the writing styles. Now part of the difficulty of looking at differences in writing styles in hair is in the very term style because it's one of those words that has almost as many meanings as there are people who use it

and it is very difficult to deal with all of the aspects of style certainly diction is word choice is one aspect syntax the way people put sentences together is certainly an aspect of style. Do they sound like Hemingway or do they sound like William Faulkner in his famous 800 word sentence or are they someplace in between. Back to what Hyatt did she selected a number of features that most readers if you force them to consider the matter would agree constitute cumulatively an important part of style. Certainly her list is not exhaustive but she did deal with sentence length use of certain marks of punctuation such as exclamation points in parentheses and dashes. Rhetorical devices such as

parallelism repetition repetition and similes. Modification by adverbs. Frequency of occurrence of 12 quote feminine unquote adjectives and the frequency of occurrence of quote masculine quote adjectives that the way you identify those is to find another handy class of students and ask them to write down a list of feminine adjectives and lists of masculine adjectives you always ask of the feminine first because everyone can do that. There's no problem when you say would you please write down a list. Typically masculine adjectives there's sort of a great rustling and shuffling of feet and people start scratching their head. But if you do this often enough the same adjectives keep turning up over and over that's how she got those adjectives. She selected 100 books 50 written by men 50 written by women one half of the

works 25 by men and 25 by women were fiction and the others were nonfiction she eliminated only such things as how to books on the theory that they would not reveal very much about style and cookbooks. But she had biography autobiography travel books. Gothic novels name it and others want to think that everything had to be available in paperback because she thought she might bias her sample if she stuck to just the hardcover books things that never quite made it in popularity. Now her basic question remember was. Does a group of women write in a discernibly different way from a group of men. All of the works were published in the late 60s or early 70s and there were the books together provided about nine million words of text. Now that was

larger than she cared to deal with even with the aid of her computer. So using appropriate random sampling techniques she selected for nonconsecutive 500 word passages from each book which gave her 2000 words per book or a total of 200000 words for her study. So what did she learn. Well she learned that men and women do write differently at least in terms of the variable she was looking at she says. Thus it may be cogently claim that there is indeed a feminine style as opposed to a masculine style. But and this I find even more interesting than the answer to the question she was asking. The popular stereotypes of the feminine style simply are not accurate. Now

I'm not going to try tonight to consider all of the variables that she looked at but I would like to look at sentence length the use of certain punctuation marks. And similes just those three things. First their sentence length. Now the stereotype is that women are wordy and women go on and on and on and on. The data revealed however that it's the women writers who are comparatively terse and the men who are long winded and wordy. Now let me explain that the women consistently wrote more very short sentences and they consistently wrote fewer very long sentences and they did this in both fiction and nonfiction. In addition the women sentences don't vary as much

in length as do in men's. So her conclusion was that in terms of sentence length the women's writing was more conservative less extreme less verbose than the writing of the men and so much for that stereotype going along with this is the fact that the women writers do use more varied patterns of sentence complexity more varied syntactic patterns come in different ways shall I say this more different kinds of transformations. If you diagram the sentences the diagrams would be more different than men do. Men tend to favor one particular pattern of sentence complexity and use that same pattern over and over again now. The second variable I'd like to look at has to do with tone. And there's an assumption here with which you may disagree.

I felt that certain types of punctuation reflected tone. The stereotype concerning women is that they're shrill and hysterical and illogical. She felt that the use of the exclamation point could be correlated with the shrill emotional hysterical part and as could many dashes. Well it turns out that that stereotype is wrong too. Men use half again as many exclamation points and in their writing as women do. She concludes that the tone of the women writers is more even controlled and moderate than that of the men. And to support this she

drags in the parenthesis and the dash which are in some ways the opposite of the exclamation point. And both can be used to indicate things that are sort of non-essential. Emphatic material which could eliminate from the sentence material that you enclose in a parenthesis isn't in a way disposable. You sort of put it in there. Now the 50 women writers used two hundred eighty five pairs of parentheses and dashes and the fifty man writers used two hundred forty seven which sounds as though I'm contradicting myself. But it's the kind of use that differs by sex and that's that's kind of interesting. Men use the dash to summarize to add on.

Not in pairs but a dash and then some more which is one reason the sentence gets along. The women use the dash in pairs to enclose material that well you know I'm sort of sort of adding it but it doesn't have to be here. I'm sort of being modest and unassuming high and concludes that the hysterical woman who isn't using the exclamation points is also the woman who tends to be somewhat self add negating and the somewhat hysterical man with all those exclamation points regards more of what he has to say as essential and indispensable as evidence by his not on use of the princes and the dashing peers. There's another stereotype which has to do with the lack of logic manifested by women. Women are illogical.

Well Hyatt says no but they do manifest their logic in writing in a very different way from that used by men. Women offer when they're writing an argument they offer reasons and justifications for their assertions. Fifty percent more often than men do. Men tend to just assert it and that's it. I have a conclusion. The last main thing I'd like to look at is similes the kinds of similes used by the men and the women. Hyatt found a considerable difference not quantitatively but qualitatively. And I cannot possibly paraphrase her. Let me read a paragraph or two. She's talking about the fiction now of the men

and women writers. The women similes concerning themselves and men demonstrate vastly different perceptions of themselves and men from those similes used by the men concerning themselves and women as expressed in their similes. The women's views of themselves and of men indicate considerable ambivalence and conflict. Those similes applied to women by the women range from highly self denigrated to threateningly aggressive to completely passive as a group. The women do not see themselves in any one way although all the similes have negative connotations for even passive A-T albeit approved by men as a mode of behavior for women cannot be considered a true positive quality. If women in the US consider themselves no good or castrating

or quiet or non aggressive These are the views that are internalized by the women writers and brought forth in their fiction. The women's view of men as even sed in their similes are not so wide ranging but are more polarized and equally negative manner seen women writers again to be monsters or monkeys brutes or fools to be feared or to be made fearful and threw up 25000 words of women's fiction. There is only one simile applied to a man that connotes any sort of admiration. By and large the no good woman or the passive woman is likely to consider men monsters or beasts whereas the castrating are dominating woman is likely to perceive men as fools. In all however the women writers as a group vary widely in their perceptions of women

and are distinctly polarized in their pursuit in their views of men. These findings are in distinct contrast to the men's similes concerning men and women. The male writers predominantly view women as children as failed adults to a lesser degree they perceive women in romanticized terms as angels arpeggios of violins etc.. Both views of course are equally unrealistic but certainly contain no evidence of women being perceived as in any way threatening or dangerous. The woman as a child similarly which is used most often by the man implies that women are helpless innocent immature creatures who need the strong protective aegis of males to survive. There is an overwhelmingly paternalistic perception of themselves revealed in the male similes for women as for the men similes concerning men.

They are as consistent as their similes for women with one exception. The men view themselves as harmless animals and ageing that is impotent men. Again there is nothing whatsoever threatening in their perceptions of themselves. Thus the men present women as children and themselves as friendly a sexual beings. There are so many ways for both men and women are consistent and simple. Their similes for both men and women carry definite implications of complacent belief in their own superiority. I'd like to make one minor point concerning the use of the word really are you. Women Writers use that word three times as often as men. Oh that's interesting. Let me go back to two to Chaucer in the General

Prologue to the Canterbury Tales he is describing the night and he writes Hey wass a comma Parfitt commish. He was a very calm a perfect gentle knight and the very they're genuine true real. It's lost that meaning now. Now it's just an intensifier. I had a good time at a very good time. That's a pretty house that's a very pretty house. Something like that is happening to really. We can still use real in the sense of genuine true that's a real diamond but we can also say it was a terrible party it was a really terrible party. Now what women seem to be doing with their use of really is. Revealing that they fear that they're not going to be believed.

So they insert a really in an effort to make what they're saying more suasive more convincing women writers. In other words may doubt the effectiveness of what they're writing not the truth but the credibility and the effectiveness. I don't know but I find this book absolutely fascinating. I haven't done justice. I would like to stop with with one paragraph from her conclusion. It's almost on the last page. From a consideration of all the aspects of style covered in the study a profile of women's writing style emerges individual writers in each group may vary from the predominant style of each group but the profile of the women's writing is quite different from that of the men. And it is also quite different from

many hackneyed sexist impressions of women style. In fact the way women write is quite the opposite of the way they are frequently thought to write. Far from presenting a shrill tone a rambling irrational hysterical hyper emotional or disorganized style. They show themselves to be moderate in tone as compared to the men well-balanced rational organized and an extreme in almost every aspect of their writing style as compared to their male counterparts. Their style is rhetorically more effective at the same time that is more conservative in other aspects of expression. It is in general a middle of the road style not given to extremes of length or brevity not given to extremes of emotion or action. Not given to extremes of feminine concerns to the exclusion of masculine concerns.

I hope there will be a lot more work done on the analysis of the pro-style of men and women. There's there's a difference there. We sense it but we're sensing the wrong thing. Thank you. Thank you. That was Virginia Clark Professor of English at the University of Vermont. Professor Clark and Pam showing a sociologist where the keynote speakers at a discussion of changes and choices and views of women through literature. This crosscurrents program is available on cassette. If you would like a cassette copy of this program send $1 in check or money order to the University of Vermont's IDC media library Burlington Vermont 0 5 4 0 1. That's from $1 to the University of Vermont DC media library. Burlington Vermont 0 5 4

0 1. Ask for the cross-currents program changes and choices. A few of women through literature. Crosscurrents a series of programs exploring issues of public concern in Vermont is produced at the studios of Vermont Public Radio by Joshua Landis and Marion a Blake in addition to being broadcast on Vermont Public Radio crosscurrents is also heard on W. R. F. D in St.. Vermont the cross-currents program you've just heard will be broadcast on the on March 9th at 1:00 in the afternoon for Stowe area listeners w r f b is at 1 0 one point seven on the FM dial. Crosscurrents is made possible by a grant from the Vermont Council on the humanities and public issues.