translation studies - Facultatea de Litere - Dunarea de Jos

Violeta Chirea
Translating and Interpreting Feminist Writing into Metalanguage
gives her comfort for it is a symbol of femininity, being of a cyclical nature herself as
opposed to the sun, the symbol of masculinity, of power and strength.
Only with her kind does Martha eventually find her inner peace: with Janet, the
lonely, misunderstood Janet (“Janet was rather like Martha, quieter and duller then her
husband.” (323) She used to like Janet for they were kindred in motherhood, and implicitly
in sisterhood, soul mates, silently understanding each other. Like the moon.
Furthermore, Weldon approaches the working problem of women. Martha had a
hard time convincing her husband to “allow” her to go to work to earn enough to pay for
“drink holidays, petrol, puddings, electricity, heating” (318) from her wages which were
considerably “creeping up, almost to the level of Martin’s.”(318) Martha is now a market
researcher in an advertising agency, this being an autobiographical instance, the author
ripping it off her own life experience. So, one day she would be able to support the whole
house and at this point the author mercilessly pops up the question: “Then what?” “For
her “work […] was a piece of cake”“(319), compared of course to the work at home,
because she could finally be herself, act naturally, neither caring about her broad hips or
her bosom. Work was relaxation indeed. This may be considered, according to Kristeva’s
theory, an instance of subject-in-process which says that we are always negotiating the
other within, that is, the return of the repressed, and Martha has long waited for the return
of her “working-self” which gives her a social status, independence and most importantly
identity. Thus she implies that a change in attitude from the “muted” group towards the
“dominant” group would be inevitable and absolutely necessary in order to create a
balance in accomplishing the duties around one’s home.
This may be an example of changing places, a theory also promoted by Julia
Kristeva which emphasizes the idea that women can go to work and men should be
practically involved in the upbringing of children. In Motherhood according to Bellini, she
suggests that in relation to her child the woman is separated from both love and desire,
hence the idea that the one fulfilling the maternal function is not sexed. Therefore, the
parental image projected over the infant may be either feminine or masculine.
Weldon wants to culminate her story with a great event in Martha’s life as a
mother, more precisely her daughter’s starting her first period. Thus the cycle of life is
renewed and her passage from childhood to womanhood is marked; the same cries, same
worries, same faith, will all follow the wheel of time, again and again. (“Her daughter
Jenny: wife, mother, friend.” - 325)
There is, however, a solution, born out of the necessity of a new woman, embodied
in Katie. She is the voice of a new generation pulling down old beliefs and bias, barriers
and traditions, prejudices and preconceptions. She would not marry (“I’m never going to
get married” - 322). She would live her life to the full, pushing away, effacing, dissolving
old times: Janet, Martha, Beryl. Katie rejects the cycle of life by not wanting to get
married, she only wishes to be “an earth mother” (323), thus the concept of fertility is not
destructive any longer, but spontaneous, regenerating as opposed to the fertility of flesh:
sinful, sacrificial, self-deforming. She is the answer of a society dominated by men, where
women need to change their code of values in order to survive, even reject their very
essence, namely their fertility and femininity. Consequently, Katie becomes a literary
means of expressing an upheaval of values as theorized by Kristeva in Tales of Love
(1987) who suggests that misplaced abjection is one cause of women's oppression. In
patriarchal cultures women have been reduced to the maternal function, meaning that it is
vital for them to abject maternity and femininity in order to live up to the society’s
expectations, women being in this way oppressed and degraded.
As a conclusion, it can be stated that the short story was translated and interpreted
in feminist metalanguage providing a survey of this analysis. A piece of écriture
feminine, Weldon’s work provided material for gynocriticism presenting the common
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