For centuries, the destiny of every good young woman was marriage. Through him, women were expected to find the true meaning of their lives by caring for their husbands and children.
The wedding day was, in most traditional societies, the most important day of a woman’s life, as her future seemed closely linked to finding the right husband. This moment also marks the transition from youth to adulthood: from submission to the father to submission to the husband.
Literature, written primarily by men, played a key role in perpetuating and legitimizing this model. In countless novels, poems and plays, the representation of the married woman as virtuous, submissive and devoted is common. Servant to her man and whose well-being is always subordinate to that of the rest of the family.
In these literary works, the domestic and emotional sphere was that of women, while the public and rational space was reserved for men. Women who dared to deviate from the norm were often punished or marginalized in these stories, as was often the case in the real world.
However, there were also other works which, with great difficulty and little editorial support, were dedicated to denouncing the situation of inequality, injustice and pain in which many women lived, especially within the institution of marriage. This literary tradition, buried by the male voices of the canon despite the artistic quality of his works, continues to try to emerge.
In this sense, the recent publication of Like a ring around your neck. Marital oppression in women’s literaturewritten by the professor of the Purificació Mascarell University of Valencia, where she is dedicated to analyzing, and surely discovering for some readers, works such as Whose fault is it? of Sofia Tolstoy, wife of Tolstoy, a woman, by Sibilla Aleramo, hidden path, by Elena Fortún, or A woman in front by Alaine Polcz, as well as many others by authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft, George Sand (Amantine Aurore Dupin), Mercedes Pinto, Caterina Albert or Aurora Bertrana, to name just a few examples.
“My goal in writing this book was to trace a constellation of female voices which, at first glance, may seem disconnected from each other because they belong to different literary traditions, eras or countries,” explains the author. “However, if we listen carefully, these voices are linked by their feminist consciousness and their defense of human dignity. “I wanted to recover them and connect them, to offer readers a springboard towards little-known texts or towards texts which deserve to be revisited from another angle. »
A journey which also shows how literary discourse has outpaced legal, political and media discourse when it comes to denouncing female oppression and demanding laws to protect women. “Literary writing was a mechanism for criticizing patriarchy while neither justice nor society took responsibility for the pain of female victims. This served to record suffering, but also solutions to oppression,” Mascarell explains.
An open and ongoing investigation
The author herself is also very present, through her own experiences, in a book whose objective is not so much to establish a literary canon of authors who have spoken about the relationship between women and marriage, but rather seeks to trace “a personal and critical journey through authors whom I consider significant for their commitment to the cause of female freedom, but also, of course, for their commitment to the creation of works of first-rate aesthetic quality.
SO, Like a ring around your neck It is a book about engaged female art which, according to the author, could continue to be enriched by other voices and other female experiences: an open and ongoing investigation.
Fortunately, our times also make it easier to read these authors whose works have been relegated for decades to the most remote shelves of second-hand bookstores. According to Mascarell, it is much easier to find books by these authors today than it was ten or twenty years ago. “Beyond the work carried out from the academy by researchers, especially the youngest, we now have publishers who have saved and published texts that are difficult to find,” he says. “I think of all the female voices from the Silver Age that the Renacimiento publishing house, with which I myself collaborate, has recovered for the reading public. Or in the rescue work carried out by publishers who only publish women, like Bamba, Espinas, Torremozas or Ménades. The entry of independent publishers onto the literary scene favored this rescue.
In the same sense, the book is also a kind of exorcism: talking openly about what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. “Talking about the different forms of violence that women have suffered and are experiencing within marriage is the first step in identifying and fighting against them,” explains Mascarell. “Patriarchy has always doomed us to silence, as the theorist Hélène Cixous explains well. The simple fact of breaking this silence and daring to speak or write is already a radical gesture of subversion.
A whole catalog of oppressions
By covering such a wide variety of periods and cases, the range of calamities recounted by the authors is very wide. From the explanationthis paternalistic and condescending treatment which places women in the position of minors ad eternaleven sexual violence, that is to say rape within marriage. A practice that has been normalized for centuries and silenced by the same women who have suffered from it and still suffer from it.
“Abuse of power, control, contempt for female intellectual capacities, objectification… And, of course, physical violence of all kinds,” explains Mascarell. “And the corsetage in the face of angel at home either mother-wife. Under the idea that there is no greater happiness for a woman than to devote herself body and soul to her husband, her children and her home. A hoax that Betty Friedan has already dismantled with her study The mystique of femininity“.
An optimistic book despite everything
Finally, the author does not hesitate to describe the message of his book as purely optimistic. In fact, she very briefly outlines the marital experience of her ancestors to contrast it with her own life and the freedom she enjoyed. “It would be an absolute lie to say that we have not improved compared to our mothers or our grandmothers: of course we have made a lot of progress in a century,” he admits. “Which in no way means that we are in an ideal phase.”
For the teacher, the future of human relations requires tolerance and respect at the highest level. Also for mutual support. “Men who don’t understand this, who don’t want to share their ancestral privileges, are doomed to find themselves alone – women tolerate them less and less – and therefore to be more and more angry,” he reflects. “And I don’t really like living in a world with angry people. I would prefer that there was more education about what feminism really is (a dignified life for every human being in the world, regardless of gender) and that men understand this by oppressing or subjugating 50% of the population, as is the case in Afghanistan. “In addition to harming women, they do it to themselves: they create a hell of injustice and pain instead of a full-fledged society where everyone can develop their project of free life,” he concludes.
