The Icelandic Canadian - 01.04.2009, Qupperneq 16

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 62 #2
her problem with femaleness. It was rooted
in the deaths of her mother’s infant chil-
dren, the effect of which “was a kind of
fearful distaste for all babies. They were
such unstable entities, predictable in noth-
ing save the certainty of their sure depar-
ture” (1939: 138-9). Buss continues on with
a recognition of Salverson’s awareness that
the maternal function “can enslave other-
wise powerful beings” (176). Which lead
to, what Buss claims was, an alienation
from her own female body (176). She could
not articulate her own subjectivity, that is,
a womb narrative; though not for a lack in
herself “but in the social structures, the dis-
courses, and the generic forms in which she
had to map her identity” (175). Buss then
concludes her criticism of Confessions of
an Immigrant’s Daughter with a call for
“the need to unearth and remap our lin-
guistic formation and our generic tradition
to find the parts of ourselves patriarchy has
suppressed, disallowed, so that we may
address the maternal pre-text on a personal
and cultural level” (179).
Amongst the few twentieth century
scholars that have examined Laura
Goodman Salverson’s work, this line of
judgment appears to prevail. It is paralleled
in Barbara Powell’s assertion that
Salverson “never did learn an authentic
woman’s tongue to tell her story” (1992:
78). It is mirrored again in Daisy
Neijmann’s claim that Salverson had to
suppress her female voice in order to gain
recognition as a serious Icelandic-Canadian
writer (2001: 153). Each of these scholars
appear to share a similar view of how
women write, or should write. “Female
voice”, “women’s tongue” and especially
“maternal pre-text” are terms that have all
the telling earmarks of a “universal femi-
nist” rhetoric. This is the philosophical
belief that all women share some sort of
universal subjectivity, in fact, this was the
flag under which woman were encouraged
to unite in the feminist protests of the
1960’s and 1970’s. But this view, though
present stdl in scholarship nowadays, has
been widely criticized, especially by third
wave thinkers.
The third wave is the latest chapter in,
and some would say the natural progres-
sion of, the historical feminist movement.
One of its tenets is the criticism of its pre-
decessor’s rhetoric. Where the second wave
was popular for its universal approach to
feminist scholarship, the third wave
attempts to challenge any universal defini-
tion, while representing pluralism and dif-
ference. In order to resurrect Laura
Goodman Salverson from wherever this
criticism sent her, I think its useful recon-
sider her under this new light.
Earlier I mentioned Margaret Atwood,
a very important figure in the Canadian
culture chronicle as well as feminist
thought. Her essay, entitled “On Being a
‘Woman Writer’” addresses exactly what
Buss, Powell, and Neijmann exercise in
their negative criticism of Salverson’s
work. Atwood calls it “one-dimensional
Feminist Criticism” (1982: 192), the
approach to literature by women, which
awards points “according to conformity or
non-conformity to an ideological position”
(192). In this case, their criticism rests on
Salverson’s non-conformity to a universal
feminism, a “maternal pre-text,” or an
“authentic women’s tongue.” And not only
is this sort of criticism one-dimensional in
scope, it exhibits what Atwood calls
“Quiller-Couch Syndrome.” Based on an
essay by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch,
Atwood diagnoses this as an affliction of
the critical capacities where one’s mind is
bound up in engendered differences.
Namely, it is a view that women write dif-
ferently than men and vice versa, and that
this difference must be the foundation of
feminist scholarship and literary criticism.
Another giant in third wave discourse,
who has written extensively on this mis-
named “woman-writer” figure, is bell
hooks. In her piece Writing Without
Labels, hooks addresses the issue of the
identity of the writer and the problem it
often presents to literary criticism. She
claims labels and identifiers, whether based
on “race, sex, or some other characteristic
that sets an individual apart from others ...
is always limiting” (1999:54). Unlike our
three, second wave inspired, feminist critics
listed above, who view Salverson as a
woman who writes, hooks would make the
important distinction that Salverson was