Analysis of the female character's discourse in "Disappearing" by Monica Wood

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Analysis of the female character`s discourse in “Disappearing” by Monica Wood

Mariela A. Lassalle

Professor: Cecilia Acquarone

2014

Introduction

A patriarchal society is based on the belief of male supremacy over women. Males make up the meanings for society and create a reality with rules according to what they believe is right. Women are not excluded from this reality but they are not supposed to question it. As Dale Spender (1990) in Man Made Language sustains: “Women live under the reality of the dominant group. They are required to `know´ it, to operate within it and to defer to its definitions” (90). If women fail to meet male standards, this is interpreted as their own personal inadequacy. As with many other issues, Patriarchy creates its own images of women. In the postmodern world, these images are ruled by a slender supremacy and fat oppression, therefore, a woman whose body does not conform to the standards of the privileged dominant class has little value. Throughout the years, Patriarchy, through the mass media (mainly TV, magazines and films) and the fashion industry, has been trying to control people's views and ideas to ensure female subordination in the world today, in that the nourishment comes from women's insecurities. It is implied that women must try to achieve the thin ideal and that beauty is the emblem of success. This, in many cases, causes women to suffer from dieting disorders, inferiority complexes and low self-esteem. And this is exactly what men want: the “perpetuation of Patriarchy” (Spender 1990: 1) and thus, power.

In view of this, women have two choices: either pursuing the ideal beauty image and submitting to the values imposed by society (and consequently lose their identities) or reacting against those rules and alienating themselves from the environment that tries to oppress them.

The short story “Disappearing” (pp. 168 - 170) In Marcus, Sybil. Comp: A World of Fiction: Twenty Timeless Short Stories. 1995. by Monica Wood will serve as the corpus of analysis of the present paper. The main character and narrator of the story is presented as an overweight woman who decides to take up swimming lessons to lose weight. With the time, not only does she become thinner but she gradually gains confidence in herself. However, in her attempt to be slender and fit in society, her swimming and dieting become obsessive to the point that she eventually disappears, vanishing in the water. As Susan Bordo states in her book Unbearable Weight (1993) “[This] psychological struggle characteristic of the contemporary situation of women [...] is one in which a constellation of social, economic, and psychological factors have combined to produce a generation of women who feel deeply flawed, ashamed of their needs, and not entitled to exist unless they transform themselves into worthy new selves (read: without need, without want, without body)” (47).

The analysis will be mainly based on the clash between the values of a contemporary image and male dominated society according to which women must be slender to please others, especially men, on the one hand; and the female character's reaction to those imposed values on the other, as expressed in her discourse. As Nelly Furman asserts, “It is through the medium of language that [women] define and categorize areas of difference and similarity, which in turn allow us to comprehend the world around” (qtd in Showalter, 20)

For the purpose of understanding the context of the society in which this woman lives, Patriarchy, Feminism and Postmodernism will be explored. Can we make a connection between Patriarchy and the Postmodern world? Catherine Keller (1987) claims in Toward a Postpatriarchal Postmodernity Keller, Catherine. “Toward a Post-patriarchal Post-modernity.”(Conference Paper: Toward a Post-modern World, January 16-20, 1987.) Santa Barbara, CA, USA. In Spirituality and Society: Postmodern Visions edited by David Ray Griffin.:

The question of the relation between feminism and postmodernity breaks into two antecedent subquestions: Is modernity in any important sense, that is, fundamentally, patriarchal? And is patriarchy fundamentally modern? No suspense needs be sustained here. Yes, modernity […] is intrinsically and not accidentally sexist in its erection of the machine metaphor for the universe, in its assertion of dominion over nature. But no, patriarchy is not essentially modern, for it long predates modernity, which represents only a latest stage of patriarchy. Therefore, from a feminist viewpoint, postmodernity may or may not herald a postpatriarchal age. Because any number of premodernities, reaching back into the prehistorical mists, have assumed and strengthened the dominance of the male in culture and his prerogative to define the roles of both men and women, we can imagine a postmodern patriarchy as well (64).

Although our postmodern society is characterized by multiple truths, multiple roles and multiple realities, we cannot deny the binary opposition male/female that still exists. And in this, we do not refer to biological differences, but the male superiority and oppression of women that still remains, no matter how pluralistic the postmodern world is claimed to be. wood patriarchy feminism

The Objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997 cited in Szymanski, Dawn et al. Sexual Objectification of Women: Advances to Theory and Research. Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA, 2011. will provide a framework for understanding the experience of being a woman in a sociocultural context that sexually objectifies the female body, and closely related to it, the concepts of “male gaze” in feminist theory and the “dominant and the muted” Spender, Dale. Man Made Language, 1990. by Dale Spender (1990). Moreover, the feelings of women living in an image and male dominated society will be supported by Susan Bordo (1993) in the analysis of the impact of culture in shaping the female body. Finally, the study of the narrator's discourse will show how the female character perceives reality and how she handles it in view of the obsession with image in the postmodern / patriarchal society in which she lives. For this purpose, the works by Robert Humphrey (1954) and Manfred Jahn (2005) which will serve as the theoretical framework to explore how speech and thought are represented.

The context in which discourse is expressed can shape the way a person signifies his or her reality. Therefore, in order to analyse the short story “Disappearing”, context and discourse cannot be separated since the ideas of women's body, language, and psyche must be interpreted in relation to the contexts in which they occur. This paper sustains the idea that in order to live in a postmodern society which is mainly dominated by men and which uses the slender body as the only path to success and power, women must surrender and accept the cultural demands or otherwise, alienate or oppose to the culture´s grip on women's subordination. A patriarchal society is dependent on female subordination and based on the belief that the male is the superior sex. If a society can come to accept the male supremacy, that males are more worthy and more deserving, then the system is perpetuated (Spender 1990: 1) . While it is true that in many countries advances have been achieved in asserting women's rights, some women worldwide still earn less and own less property than men, and have less access to education, employment and health care. Pervasive discrimination continues to deny women full political and economic equality with men. In view of this, women whose lives do not conform to society's expectations are often the victims, not only of ostracism but also of violent treatment. Much of the violence faced by women in everyday life is at the hands of the people with whom they share their lives, whether as members of their family, of their community or as their employers. There is an unbroken spectrum of violence that women face at the hands of men who exert control over them. In the story under analysis, this violent behavior is mainly manifested in the use of language as well as in indifference.

The opening paragraph in Disappearing depicts the female character having mechanical and indifferent sex with her partner. She does not seem to be interested in it or attracted to him but she must please her husband:

“When he starts in, I don't look anymore. I know what it looks like, what he looks like, tobacco on his teeth. I just lie in the deep sheets and shut my eyes. I make noises that make it go faster, and when he's done he's as far from me as he gets. He could be dead he's so far away” (lines 1-4).

He is not kind to her either. He is critical of her weight and careless with her emotions. In lines 23 to 28 her husband sees her eating “a cake and a bottle of milk” and comments on this:

“No wonder you look like that he said. How can you stand yourself. You're no Cary Grant I told him and he laughed and laughed until I threw up. When this happens I want to throw up again and again until my heart flops out wet and writhing on the kitchen floor. Then he would know I have one and it moves.”

One of the first days she returns from the swimming pool, the narrator lets readers know a dialogic exchange between them: “He says it makes no difference I look the same. But I'm not the same. I can hold myself up in deep water. I can move my arms and feet [...] and not be afraid. It makes a difference I tell him. Better believe it mister” (lines 41-45) This passage illustrates well the idea of anticipation of the end, she is not doing it only to lose weight. There is more that her husband cannot see. In a similar fashion, there is anticipation of what is going to happen in the end when one night, her husband tells her that “it won't last, what about the freezer full of low-call dinners and that machine in the basement.” to what she answers that she is “not doing it for that and he doesn't believe me either. But this time there is another part. There are other men in the water,” she tells him. “Fish he says. Fish in the sea. Good luck” (lines 41-74).

As Spender (1990) explains “When the meanings of women are consigned to non-existence, when the registers for discourse are male decreed and controlled, women who wish to express themselves must translate their experience into the male code. They are then a muted group” (81). Therefore, if women want to be heard and understood they must adapt their discourse to that of the “dominant group”, i.e. the language men speak. Her discourse is further emphasized by the relative inarticulateness she suffers. Instead of trying to explain and rationalize her motivation, she describes her feelings and actions in simple sentences or fragments. The reason could be that she does not know what drives her or maybe she cannot explain it, for she tells her friend and husband that she is not just interested in losing weight and she knows they cannot “imagine” what she is attempting to do or why. “The problem is not that language is insufficient to express women's consciousness but that women have been denied the full resource of language and have been forced into silence, euphemism, or circumlocution” (23), explains Showalter.

There is a moment in the middle of the story when the relationship seems to evolve, once she starts losing weight, her husband starts paying attention to her: “He says I'm looking all right [...] I haven't been invisible.[...] Even on days when I don't say no [to having sex] it's all right, he's better.” (lines 67-70). However, she does not seem to enjoy the attention she gets. By the end of the story, she expresses she prefers to be invisible for him “He doesn't touch me and I smile into my pillow, a secret smile in my own square of the dark.” (lines 94-95). She is somewhat obtaining what she has been looking for since the moment she decided to go unnoticed.

The contradiction between her desire of being noticed vs. being invisible is found in many instances throughout the story. The basic motivation of the woman in the story is suggested in the title; she wishes to disappear. At first, people ignore her, she is “invisible” despite her weight; then she starts becomes thinner and gains confidence while being noticed by her husband and even other men; and finally becomes “invisible” again. Despite an early consideration as a text based solely on a woman's desire to be slender, it would be interesting to point out the deeply problematic nature of the female character which goes beyond the mere adjustment of the body to social conventions. She decides to lose weight and realizes she is in control of both her body but this reaction can be interpreted as her ultimate victory over a patriarchal system that consistently denies women the equality they deserve. The main character, though profoundly disturbing in her claims, does not seriously engage in an open battle against the system that oppresses her. In spite of some replies to what her husband says, what she does is to keep silent.

One fundamental absence in this story is any possibility of a sustained alliance with members of the same devalued sex. Female bonds are simply not there or, if they are, they do not work. Her friend Lettie starts taking swimming lessons with her but then stops, and tries to give her advice out of magazines to cut down on certain foods lo lose weight, to what the narrator expresses “I'm not doing it for that [...] but she wouldn't believe me. She couldn't imagine” (lines 36-37). She again tries to explain what she is doing, but neither her husband nor her friend seems to understand or take her seriously. Later in the story the narrator tells readers that Lettie is not going to the pool anymore “now that she's fatter than [her].” (line 64) and she even accuses her of being “uppity”. “All this talk about water and who do you think you are” (line 66). Towards the end of the story, when the narrator has lost weight and looks really skinny, her husband suggests he should take her to hospital and Lettie says “what the hell are you doing” to what she answers “I'm disappearing [...] and what can you do about it not a blessed thing.” (lines 96-98).

The difference between men and women, and all it entails, has been one of the chief concerns of feminist criticism. It is worth mentioning in the present analysis the Objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997 cited in Szymanski, Dawn et al. Sexual Objectification of Women: Advances to Theory and Research. Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA, 2011., which postulates that many women are sexually objectified in a socio cultural context that equates a woman's worth with her body's appearance and sexual functions. From the very beginning of the story and all throughout it, there is a recurrent use of expressions and terms related to the body, which centre around two main binary oppositions: fat / bad vs. thin / good. The female character describes herself as having “three hundred pounds” (line 5), “the fat one parting the Red Sea” (line 14) and describes her weight as “the heft of me” (line 39). She also mentions her “skin like tapioca pudding” (line 6) and “dry flesh” (line 21). On the contrary, the people at the swimming pool where she takes lessons are described as being little and thin. Their skin is “like milk” (line 13), “white” and “wet” (line 17), and their hair is “gold” (line 13), red and “white milkweed” (line 48). The instructor is also seen by her as having “no stomach, a depression almost” (line 16), a “skinny voice” (line 32) and “thin calves hard as granite” (line 57).

According to Fredrickson and Roberts (1997), women to varying degrees internalize this outsider view and begin to self-objectify by treating themselves as an object to be looked at and evaluated on the basis of appearance. Self-objectification manifests in a greater emphasis placed on one's appearance attributes when comparing themselves to other people. In this case, the mirror for this constant reassurance of her “imperfect” body is the environment that is around her, which “encourages and deepens Sexual Objectification (SO), thereby constituting a sexually objectifying environment (SOE)” (Szymanski, 2001: 21)

The environment of the pool certainly helps to assert her body flaws. There is an instance when one cannot help smiling at the humorous description of the time when the main character and her friend Lettie first start their swimming lessons. She describes the experience as being “awful”. “First it's blow bubbles and breathe, blow and breathe. Awful, hot nosefuls of chlorine. My eyes stinging red and patches on my skin. I look worse. We'll get caps and goggles and earplugs and body cream Lettie says” (lines 8-11). Certainly this description stands in opposition to the rest of the place where “wearing tight and revealing clothes that show the body serves to place women in the `objectification limelight'” (Szymanski, 2001: 23) and this contributes to self-objectification, as women are constantly reviewing their own appearance in the “surrounding mirrors”. As it has been noted before, the swimming instructors, as one expects, are thin and have a well-built body and this clearly increases women's anxiety about physical appearance and their opportunity for body shame which in many occasions, as in the case of the main character in Disappearing, can lead women to disordered eating, depression, and sexual dysfunction (Szymanski, 2001: 24). Although the narrator anticipates she “is not doing it for that”, the constant references to body parts lead readers to think that she is obsessed with physical appearance.

Another interesting component worth recognizing here is the notion of “gaze”, which is a term that describes the anxious state that comes with the awareness that one can be viewed and considered an object. By gazing at the people in the environment and evaluating physical appearances, the narrator becomes the spectator, not the object of the gaze, therefore, acquiring a position of mastery and control. The moments she goes to the swimming pool and her body is sustained by and hidden in the water, she is powerful, the others are the objects, not her. “For one hour a day I am thin, thin as water, transparent, invisible, steam or smoke” she says (lines 61-62)

However, there are other instances, outside this environment of the pool, where the “male gaze” is enforced. This concept is, as Western culture constructed it, the privilege of men to consider and turn women into objects of desire, thus asserting their dominance (Beth Newman 1990: 451) and sometimes taken as a form of violence against them. And the female character of “Disappearing”, when noticing she is being looked at, especially now that she is thinner, reacts to this situation. At first, she seems to enjoy the attention, as she has been ignored for so long, but then she expresses “For a long time in the middle of it people looked at me. Men. And I thought about it. Believe it, I thought. And now they don't look at me again. And it's better” (lines 99-101). She cannot surrender to the idea of being the object of the gaze anymore because she would be losing the position of control. By being ignored, or invisible again, she is not an object and nobody can exercise power on her.

Edgar Roberts (1969) in Writing Themes about Literature states that “Style is understood to mean the way in which a writer employs his words, phrases, and sentences to achieve his desired effects.” A close study of style in the story under analysis will consider aspects such as diction (the choice of words); sentence patterns (the arrangement of words into sentences); and use of imagery.

It is important to explore how speech and thought are represented in fiction. Robert Humphrey (1954) in Stream of Consciousness in the Modern World and Manfred Jahn (2005) in Narratology: A Guide to the Theory of Narrative provide the theoretical framework for the analysis in the present paper.

The short story seems to be using the stream-of-consciousness technique, by which, as Humphrey (1954) states, “the depicted consciousness [of characters] serve as a screen on which the material [...] is presented” (2). By shifting readers' attention to the point that narrative reports blend with representations of speech and thought, there is an effect of drawing readers into the heads of the characters in ways that cannot be achieved by simpler, more straightforward representations, so that the characters' consciousness are exposed to view. According to Humphrey (1954), the basic techniques used to present stream of consciousness are interior monologue (divided into two types designated as “direct” and “indirect”), omniscient description and soliloquy (23). The analysis in this paper will be centred on the interior monologue technique and more specifically, on the “indirect” type.

As regards styles of discourse representation, there three traditional forms: the “direct” style, the “free indirect” style and the “indirect” one (Jahn 2005). A fourth category, “free direct” style, is also mentioned in some works. Tom McArthur Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language , 1998. indicates that the major markers of direct speech (DS) are the exact words in the report and the quotation marks in writing and print; indirect speech (IS) conveys the report in the words of the reporter, with verbs generally `backshifted' in tenses and changes in pronouns and adverbials of time and place are made to align with the time of reporting; free direct speech (FDS) lacks a reporting clause to show the shift from narration to reporting, it is often used in fiction to represent the mental reactions of characters to what they see or experience; free indirect speech (FIS) resembles indirect speech in shifting tenses and other references, but there is generally no reporting clause and it retains some features of direct speech (such as direct questions and vocatives).

It is in the scope of this paper to find out how, through the use of language, the female character expresses her discomfort and personal inadequacy to the world around.

The analysis of the narrator's discourse portrays the psychological state of a woman profoundly influenced by her obsession with image. The story is told by a first person narrator, thus allowing readers to have intimate access to her mind, i.e. that readers see reality through the narrator's eyes, and the choice of the lexis and sentence structure act as indicators of how this reality is perceived. As it has been noted before, the choice of words is not done at random. There is a recurrent use of expressions and terms related to the body, the narrator's desire to be invisible, to become “a new self without body,” as Bordon expresses. This idea of disappearing and becoming invisible is present throughout the story but is more explicitly expressed in the middle and towards the end. When she first starts swimming, people “smirk” (line 30) at the “groan of the water” (l. 29) but then she is ignored now that she does not “splash the water, know[s] how to lower silently and [...] can cut the water cleanly” (lines 58-60).

“I am thin, thin as water, transparent, invisible, steam or smoke” she says (lines 61-62). Towards the end, Lettie becomes surprised at how thin she looks, to what she comments “I'm disappearing” (line 97). Then, readers get an impression of her ultimate goal when in the last lines she expresses that she is “almost there. Almost water.” (line 102) and how she can “vanish like a needle into skin” (line 104).

Taking into account that syntax addresses the way words are put together, in the short story under consideration the words and ideas are arranged breaking the syntactical rules to achieve a certain effect. The Free Direct Style lacks a reporting clause to show the shift from narration to reporting and it is often used to represent the mental reactions of characters to what they see or experience. In the following examples, the main character lets readers know what she or other characters say but there is a lack of adequate punctuation. Every time characters speak, there is an omission of commas, speech or interrogation marks (or a combination of the three) in their utterances.

“A little redhead in an emerald suit, no stomach, a depression almost, and white wet skin. Good she said you float just great” (lines 16-17)

“At home I ate a cake and a bottle of milk. No wonder you look like that he said. How can you stand yourself. You're no Cary Grant I told him” (lines 23-24)

“One night he says it won't last, what about the freezer full of low-cal dinners [...] There are other men in the water I tell him. Fish he says. Fish in the sea. Good luck.” (lines 71-74)

“Oh my God Lettie says what the hell are you doing what the hell do you think you're doing. I'm disappearing I tell her and what can you do about it not a blessed thing” (lines 96-98).

The story is almost entirely told in this way and this might be done with the intention of showing the character's emotional state, that is to say, making readers feel as if they were inside her mind, perceiving the world around in the same way as the narrator. A few sentences in this story are grammatically correct or complete by strict standards, because one does not speak or think spontaneously in well-written discourse.

Moreover, the great deal of dialogue that the story presents has the intention of reflecting the characters and the relations among them.

The language used in this story is mostly informal, conversational and colloquial, which echoes the natural, unforced speech rhythms and vocabulary of everyday speech. The narrator and the other characters, as it has been noticed in the examples, express themselves very informally all the time, even using slang in some cases. The intention may be to show characters acting naturally, as if there would be no mediation between them, their utterances and the narration of the story. Examples of this use of language are when the narrator's husband refers to “a freezer full of low-cal dinners” (line 71) and Lettie calls her friend “uppity [...] and who do you think you are (lines65-66)” and suggests leaving “Doritos out” (line 36).

Another characteristic of the syntax in this short story is the use of sentence fragmentation, which is achieved by the use of stops and commas within the same sentence favouring a looser and more incomplete style. In first-person narration, fragmented sentences are used to show a character's disturbed state of mind. The short, jumpy quality to the sentences mirrors a character's emotional state and emphasises certain words in the text, making readers slow down and pause at those fragmented sentences. Examples of these are when she mentions physical attributes of others and her feelings towards certain things that occur to her. When the narrator realizes that other men start noticing her, she says:

“Other men interest me. I look at them, real ones, not the ones on TV that's something else entirely. These are real. […] The meter man from the light company, heavy thick feet in boots. A smile. Teeth. I drop something out of the cart in the supermarket to see who will pick it up. Sometimes a man. […] Young. Thin legs and an accent. One was older. Looked me in the eyes. Heavy, but not like me. My eyes are nice. I color the lids.” (lines 46-53).

Other instances in the story let readers get the impression of being in direct, unfiltered contact with the thought or feelings of the woman narrating. When she compares herself unfavorably with the thin swimmers around her, she describes them as “Gold hair, skin like milk, chlorine or no” (line 13), “no stomach, a depression almost, and white wet skin” (line 16-17). Here the absence of verbs makes the visual impact stronger and reminds readers of her less flattering description of herself as “skin like tapioca pudding” (line 6) and “the fat one parting the Red Sea” (line 14). Her feelings, towards the end of the story, can be sensed more real by the use of these fragmented sentences. Readers pause and even sense the tranquility conveyed in her words in lines 99-102:

“For a long time in the middle of it people looked at me. Men. And I thought about it. Believe it. I thought. And now they don't look at me again. And it's better.

I'm almost there. Almost water.”

The narrator here is addressing the readers directly “Believe it,” she says, as a form of complicity with them, showing she is calm now and has finally succeeded in achieving the goal she had set herself since the very beginning of her narration: disappearing.

There are moments in the story when the narrator's voice becomes less colloquial and more poetic, and readers can feel the pathos underlying the situation. This is accomplished through the employment of vivid pictures that appeal to our visual, auditory and tactile senses. Many of these images are related to the water and what she does in it. The narrator mentions a “groan” (lines 29-30), encouraging readers to imagine the water´s strained sound as of pain or displeasure as the fat woman tries to swim in it and then says “it was as heavy as blood” (line 83) showing readers how she felt during her first attempts to swim. On the other hand, she later describes her improvement: “I don't splash the water, know how to lower myself silently […] I cut the water cleanly (lines 59-60) vanish like a needle into skin” (line 104). Readers cannot but sympathize with the narrator when for example she says she “want[s] to throw up again and again until [her] heart flops out wet and writhing on the kitchen floor” (lines 26-27) and “in the pool it [the color on her lids] runs off in blue tears” (line 53). With the use of these powerful images, readers can easily see how she feels.

Symbolism in Literature is an object or reference that provides meaning to what is narrated. In the story being analyzed, water can be considered the most powerful. When the narrator starts swimming, she finds the water in the pool rather scary as “drops of gray shadow rippling” (line 20) appear at the bottom of the pool. However, when she masters the technique, she feels at ease. It is the only place where her weight is not significant, the water does not resist, it is transparent and invisible, in the same way she is. Moreover, the image of water evokes ideas of uncertain suspension and imminent dissolution of the self, since for her, to become one with the water is to lose the physical self completely, towards freedom and liberation. “I'm almost there. Almost water. […] vanish like a needle into skin, and every time it happens […] I think, this will be the time” (lines 102-105)

Conclusion

It has been the aim of the present paper to examine how the short story “Disappearing” by Monica Wood can be read from a different perspective, since it more than a woman's account of losing weight. It is a glimpse into the mind of a woman who strives for power in a context where she feels alienated, a Patriarchal Postmodern society that oppresses her.

Christiane Makward describes the female language as being:

“open, nonlinear, unfinished, fluid, exploded, fragmented, polysemic, attempting to speak the body i.e., the unconscious, involving silence, incorporating the simultaneity of life as opposed to or clearly different from pre-conceived, oriented, masterly or `didactic' languages” (qtd in Nina Baym, 1984: 282).

Her discourse is a clear example of this way of expressing against the language of the dominant group. Language, the same as any other form of representation, is immersed in cultural ideology and it is this cultural ideology that gives shape to the perceptions of the world and that of human beings. The language of the narrator in the story is emotional, fragmented, unfinished, unconscious and inserted at the various stages of the story much like a running commentary of what she is experiencing and that discloses her own beliefs against domination and the world around.

Her impossibility to communicate in “male standards” and her will to liberate from the grasps of cultural values and to the power of men, forces the main character to confront reality in a particular way: by trying to be invisible. She could transcend her sex, setting herself apart and refusing to conform to the requirements of social ordering and prejudice.

Works cited

1. Baym, Nina. “The Madwoman and her Languages”. Feminisms: An Anthology of literary theory and criticism. Ed. Robyn E. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. Macmillan Press Ltd. UK, 1997.

2. Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. University of California Press, 1993.

3. Humphrey, Robert. Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel. University of California Press, 1954.

4. Jahn, Manfred. Narratology: A Guide to the Theory of Narrative. English Department University of Cologne, 2005. http://www.uni-koeln.de/~ame02/pppn.htm

5. Keller, Catherine. “Toward a Postpatriarchal Postmodernity”. Spirituality and Society: Postmodern Visions. Ed. David Ray Griffin. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1998. Available in http://books.google.com.ar/

6. Newman, Beth. “The Situation of the looker-on”. Feminisms: An Anthology of literary theory and criticism. Ed. Robyn E. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. Macmillan Press Ltd. UK, 1997.

7. Showalter, Elaine. “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness”. Writing and Sexual Difference. Ed. Elizabeth Abel. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1982.

8. Spender, Dale. Man Made Language. 2^nd ed. London: Pandora, 1990.

9. Szymanski, Dawn and Moffitt, Lauren et al. Sexual Objectification of Women: Advances to Theory and Research. Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA, 2011.

10. Wood, Monica. “Disappearing” (pp 168-170). Comp: A World of Fiction: Twenty Timeless Short Stories. Ed. Marcus, Sybil. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995.

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