Reclaiming virginity, liberating desire : a study of three women's novels

Bibliography: p. 145-151.In my study of Brontë's Jane Eyre and Rhys's Voyage in the Dark and Wide Sargasso Sea, I adopt a reading of Luce Irigaray's concept of virginity to explore these writer's search for an identity beyond that defined by patriarchy. Traditionally, virginity is informed by a series of dichotomies (for example, man/woman, active/passive, day/night, etc.) associated with silence and stasis, which I term static virginity. In her project of resymbolisation, Irigaray reconceives this definition in terms of a utopic goal that will provide women with the mobility or incentive to represent and articulate themselves in their own terms, which I distinguish as dynamic virginity. This paradigm allows me to interpret the dual roles that the female characters of these novels assume, on the one hand miming a discourse which implicates while it alienates them, and on the other hand struggling to articulate an authentic 'voice' beyond the confines of patriarchy. The discovery of an autoerotic awareness linked to the motherdaughter relationship, introduces virginity as a legacy of spiritual embodiment enjoyed by all women at all stages of their lives. The autoerotic becomes a means of distinguishing, representing, and therefore liberating feminine desire from its current predicate position within language. In the novels I study this process can be traced in metaphorical transformations which allow these women writers to simultaneously redeem their sexual identities from a negative patriarchal definition and speak from a dignified collective