The contemporary feminist discourse—indeed, the whole of gender identity theory—finds itself anchored, intentionally or not, in a cultural struggle accurately described by Marxist theorists a century earlier. Feminist theory is a re-imagining of the same class structures identified by the Marxists and cast in terms of “anatomical sex, gender identity, and gender performance” (Butler 2549). Gender and sex serve as substitutes for economic class power structures. In framing a discussion in terms of “the institutions by which women have traditionally been controlled,” these theorists are inevitably entering into the same theoretical claims posed by Marxists as explanations of dominant and oppositional culture (Rich 1591). While the Marxists look at the state apparatus and the repression of a minority identity in relation to class, the feminist theorists replace class with gender and sexuality.
The Marxist conception of society’s structure is one with a dominate culture prevailing over alternative and oppositional cultures. Institutions such as schools and religions serve as forces of control towards maintaining that dominant culture; these apparatuses of the state have but one function and that function is maintaining the dominant state. To say then that Harold Bloom serves as a state apparatus is to suggest that his views on literature serve to fiercely promote the western tradition dominated by white male authors, a position he sticks to vehemently. In part because Marxists were concerned with the condition of political control, their focus tends to be in relationships within the political realm offering definitions of “the State as a ‘machine’ of repression, enabling the ruling classes to ensure their domination over the working class” (Althusser 1339). The struggle within the Marxist tradition focuses on socio-economic class; they champion the working class while chastising aristocracy’s dominant cultural position. The feminist theorists offer a fundamentally similar discourse and the alternative narrative they construct simply relies on a new lexicon charged with sexuality and gender.
Feminist and gender identity theorists identify a relationship between male and female authors on the same conditions as the Marxists identify the relationship between the working class and ruling aristocracy. In the feminist construct, the dominant culture is a white male tradition with female or non-heterosexual men acting in a minority role. “The fierce protection of white male privilege from minority encroachments rounds out a century of discourses of manliness and manhood” and thus serving as an institutional state apparatus defending the dominant white male hegemony (Halberstam 2638). The literary tradition, like government schools or the institution of the Church, has served primarily as means to continue the dominate white male culture—Harold Bloom is not the first nor only State apparatus promoting the white male literary canon. The normative concern of feminist theory focuses on “Western literary history is [as] overwhelmingly male—or, more accurately, patriarchal” and therefore feminists believe the traditional concept of the literary canon reduces women and femininity to a secondary, alternative culture (Gilbart and Gubar 1928). Women’s presence in the literary world is, as Deleuze and Guattari describe within the Marxist tradition, a minor literature constructed within the major language of white masculinity. At the same time, female characters are similarly overshadowed by mythological constructions of women created by the dominant male culture. These myths serve as “institutions by which women have traditionally been controlled;” such institutional myths serve to further undermine the female within the literary canon (Rich 1591). The mythology of women is an extension of the marginalization of femininity and serves as constituent component to female repression; feminine mythology serves the same function of a school or a church to maintaining the dominant culture. The mythology is another form of the state apparatus.
As the dominant culture, the male author and masculine characters do not endure the same challenges faced by their female counterparts because “woman is other than man;” yet for the white male “there is no such thing as a masculine mystery” (de Beauvoir 1265, 1270). The dialectic that feminists theorists pursue then is one of white male dominant culture with the role of the female artist and the female character participating in “in quite a different literary subculture from that inhabited by male writers, a subculture which has its own distinctive literary traditions” (Gilbert and Gubar 1930). Such a subculture would suggest also that female writers produce the culture for a female subculture. Again, such a position borrows from the Marxist tradition:
“Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields.” (Gramsci 1002)
Serving as the intellectuals of a distinct subculture, female writers bear the responsibility of bringing about a female subculture that is not alternative but rather oppositional. Adrienne Rich argues “feminist theory can no longer afford merely to voice a toleration,” suggesting a similar argument presented by Raymond Williams (Rich 1593). Williams explains that “there is a simple theoretical distinction between alternative and oppositional, that is to say between someone who simply finds a different way to live and wishes to be left alone with, and someone who finds a different way to live and wants to change the society in its light” (Williams 1431). It is here that the yoke between feminism and Marxism becomes forever interwoven; the minority female subculture identified by feminist theorists is being called to action to challenge the dominant white male hegemony precisely in the same way the Marxists see the conflict between the working class and the ruling aristocracy.
Once more, Mary Shelley rescues theorists’ assumptions by providing textual evidence supporting feminist approaches with Frankenstein a sandbox for yet another demonstration of theoretical claims. The critical moment for Victor is the destruction of the female monster before giving her life; by destroying the she-creature, Victor sets in motion the destruction of his own family and his inevitable premature death. The parallel between Marxist and feminist theory is at the forefront of his decision. The act of destroying the monster serves to protect the white male privilege from encroachment. Victor acts in the interest of the State to preserve the dominant culture; his act is a literal and figurative protection of white male hegemony. The creation of his male monster represents “Frankenstein’s implicit goal of creating a society for men only” (Mellor 274). The male creature alone presents no threat to the dominant culture Victor represents. It is only in the creation of a female monster that the dominant culture is threatened. The female creates the threat. Victor asks himself “had I a right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?” (Shelley 114). Creating a female monster would presumably allow the monster the capability of reproduction and thus allow the monster in future generations to displace the society Victor, as a member of the aristocratic class, is so much a part of. The fundamental component to Victor’s concern is the threat that a race of monsters present to the State. This threat manifests itself as a fear of the female because female subculture represents the same threat to dominant male culture. His refusal to complete the female creature suggests his concern that she “might assert her own integrity and the revolutionary right to determine her own existence” (Mellor 279). The fear of a she-creature rejecting the male monster’s plans is similar to Victor’s fear that the monsters present a threat to his own position as a privileged white male. With the creation of a female monster, the male monster ceases to be the other and instead takes his place as a ruling patriarch.
The feminist tradition reinvents the Marxist conception of dominant culture in new terms of sexual and gender identity. It serves as an extension of the Marxist tradition as a specific subset of the approach. In many ways, the feminist critical approach proves vulnerable to Harold Bloom; as a theoretical approach, feminist and gender identity theories are unable to escape the gravitational pull of the massive western literary tradition. They are in effect, under the same anxieties of influence experienced by male writers misinterpreting and reinventing a long line of western literary critiques.
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Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 2540 – 2553. Print.
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