Arachne and Athena : literature, politics and women's classicism

The object of the book "Arachne and Athena. Literature, politics and women's classicism" was to develop a new way (slightly wider than before) of understanding the concept of "women's writing". Associated with (over)expression of her own "self", emotional profusiveness, autobiography and sexuality, "women's writing" was very often described in contrast to "masculine literature" (or men’s writing) - i.e. rational, disciplined, self-limited, non-personal and nonsexual. As it turns out, this approach leads to a number of simplifications and puts the texts of women in a kind of "gender ghetto”. The idea of the book was to trace so-called "double-voicedness” (E. Showalter) present in women's texts. It results from the specific tension between what is culturally considered as feminine and masculine, as well as what is "corporeal" and "rational" or - in different terms - what is personal and political. The authors, whose life and work have been studied here, had a problematic (and sometimes critical) attitude towards their own sex. Irena Krzywicka, Maria Dąbrowska, Stanisława Przybyszewska and Anna Bojarska sometimes met with accusations of symbolic disloyalty to other women, suppression of their femininity or attempting to adopt a "masculine language" and "androcentric" perspective on the world. Like Athena - born from the head of her father Zeus - they were also seen through the prism of their "phallic" or "patriarchal privilege". The Greek goddess was presented in this way in the famous feminist essay by Nancy K. Miller Arachnologies. Only Arachne - her mythological rival - was considered here as a figure of true, female (which means anti-patriarchal) authorship. Athena, however, had her feminine or even matriarchal genealogy, forgotten also by most feminist critics. As a the daughter of Metis and Zeus - the pre-Olympic goddess of justice and wisdom, devoured by Zeus when she was pregnant, Pallada seems to be a great figure to show woman’s ambivalent involvement in the mechanisms of patriarchal power. On the other hand, the book raise a question if Athena might become a patron of "new classicism" - a poetics different from "arachnology" and not necessarily female, but still remaining a part of women’s literary tradition. This poetics can be described by reference to: rationality, realism, everyday life and most of all, faith in the power of literature and human’s ability to understand and describe the world. Contradictions and tensions between gender and mimesis, art-craft and art of life, representations and reality - are of crutial importance here. Since the two mythological figures - Arachne and Athena - are inextricably linked (they are different, even antagonistic but at the same time mutually related), the mythological narrative re-interpreted in this book enable to emphasizes the importance of the contradictions which twentieth-century female author must have dealt with in order to become a part of literary tradition. The writings of Krzywicka, Przybyszewska, Dąbrowska and Bojarska reveals many non-obviousness inscribed in modern emancipatory project: an acknowledging their own sex and, at the same time, negating the importance of it. Showing that a woman author cannot allow herself to reject entirely patriarchal ("father’s") heritage, the project underlines the cultural significance of the "female affiliation complex" (Gilbert, Gubar) in the history of literature. "Women’s classicism" - understood here as the poetics which go beyond body-mind opposition, and is far from mythologizing of sexual difference - demonstrates how women authors in the 20th century were searching for nondualistic (aesthetic) discourses to express their complex identity and relations with the artistic past and present. The mythological duel between the goddess Athena and Arachne, in a new, deconstructive way of reading, serves as a tool for demythologizing the category of femininity (understood too homogeneously in both patriarchal and (some) feminist interpretations). This perspective in the project leads to highlighting particularly two things: ambivalent tensions hidden in the texts of women and stemming from ambition (the need to be socially appreciated) as well as different ways in which 20th century women’s authors have perceived the place of literature in society. The book "Arachne and Athena" also draws attention to the various models of women’s engagement in the community, as well as different notions of what "modernity" and "tradition” are. Though they are different, they share strong convictions about the ethical and political importance of literature itself, as well as the role of intellectuals and artists in (re)shaping our reality.

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