The Most Dangerous Presumption: Women Authors and the Problems of Writing Satire
1“Why is it that women write so little satire?” (“Warum schreiben Frauen so wenig Satiren?”) is a question posed in 1984 by Hilde Wackerhagen, and one that is still valid today. Even though gender theories have been informing literary scholarship since the development of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, the theory of satire (so far) seems to have been largely untouched by them, and companions to (German-language) literature even now mention (almost) exclusively male writers,[1]The only exception in more recent German literary lexica is Elfriede Jelinek (Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft 359; Metzler Lexikon Literatur, 679). The Encyclopedia of Satirical Literature (Snodgrass) mentions Aphra Behn and Colette. without discussing in any shape or form why this choice has been made. Paul Simpson notes in this regard “that the tradition of canonical satire is overwhelmingly male-dominated” (56). This is all the more surprising, since German-speaking writers such as Gisela Elsner and Elfriede Jelinek were drawing attention in interviews early on to the discrimination taking place against satire by women (Interviews with Hoffmeister) and Anglo-American studies are now also bringing into the discussion the aspect of satire as a “gendered genre” (Knight 6 f.; see also Simpson 55 f.) or “‘manly’ genre” (Kairoff 276).
The Absence of Women Authors from the Canon of Satirical Writing
2In an essay anthology published in 1992, literary scholar Christiane Rasper noted that “the specific features of ‘female’ satire [had] not yet [...] been made the subject of theoretical consideration in studies of satire” (“die Spezifika ‘weiblicher’ Satire bisher [...] noch nicht zum Gegenstand theoretischer Überlegungen innerhalb der Satire-Forschung gemacht worden [seien]”; 292). Not much has changed in this regard even up to now. It is true that a few comprehensive studies on the Grotesque and Satire as literary genres have been published over the past few years, but hardly any of these raise the thorny issue of the problematical position of female writers and their work. In one recent study on the literary tradition of satire, Charles A. Knight claims that, because of a “virtual absence of women as satirists before the twentieth century (and hence their absence from much of the study as well)” (7 f.), satire is “more-or-less a masculine genre” (6). Even younger female writers such as Felicitas Hoppe note that “[i]n this country of ours, even satire is firmly in male hands. In fact, it is all relatively fixed and hardly includes any women at all” (“In diesem unseren Lande ist auch die Satire in festen Händen. Das ist eigentlich alles relativ festgelegt, und Frauen sind da kaum dabei”; 254). Against this background, it is all the more surprising, that feminist literary criticism has up to now hardly addressed this topic (Rasper 292).[2]Exception to this are the studies by Heidemann-Nebelin,and Stauß. The same is true of the theory of satire, at least in the German-speaking countries.[3]The Anglo-American and French traditions are different, cf. among others the studies by Nussbaum, Kairoff, and Duval/Martinez. So why is it, then, “that no woman has ever made a mark in satire” (Worcester 13)? And why is it that there are hardly any works of literary scholarship yet that deal with satirical texts by women writers?
Satire as the Most Aggressive Form of Humour
3The arguments raised against satire have always been many and varied. Some of the most common accusations levelled, and of interest here, are the “built-in obsolescence” (“Zeitverfallenheit”; Gaier 333) of satire, the suggestion that it reduces characters to caricatures (Gregson 4 f.; see also Hodgart 188), with, concomitantly, its supposed lack of empathy with its characters and, finally, its tendency to take political sides with a one-sided moral and political stance (Arntzen, Satirischer Stil 1). But the most serious criticism of satire has less to do with its aesthetic status than with its gesture, specifically its aggressive potential, “[b]ecause satire is so close – in intent, effect, and often in form – to actual vituperation” (Eden 589). The humour of satire, unlike other forms and genres of humour, is not conciliatory, but aggressive, hurtful. Aggressiveness is an essential feature of satire in various social and cultural contexts: “All satire attacks something.” (Elliott 22) Ulrich Gaier, following Robert C. Elliott, interprets satirical language as a “weapon” (“Kampfmittel”; 335) in an “assault upon an ‘outrageous reality’” (“Angriff auf eine ‘empörende Wirklichkeit’”; 4). Christoph Deupmann, sees the grounding of satire’s problematical position as being in particular in the “tabooisation of aggression” (“Aggressionstabu”; 20) in modern bourgeois society: “the exiling of the satirical from the civilised world is thus in line with the stated aim of the banishment of violence from the culture” (“Dem postulierten Ausschluß der Gewalt aus der Kultur entspricht daher die Exilierung des Satirischen aus der zivilisierten Welt”; 8). For Deupmann, who follows Brummack’s definition of satire as “aesthetically socialised aggression” (“ästhetisch sozialisierte Aggression”; Brummack 282), this means that the aggression inherent in satire as a form of writing renders its position precarious (12).
4The problematical status of women writers who dedicate themselves to satire as a mode of writing is largely due to the fact that the literary attitude inherent in satirical texts harbours a potential for aggression which, in the final analysis, is intended destructively (Arntzen, Nachricht 572; see also Rasper 291). If we look at the history of women’s writing, we see that aggressiveness, brutality and negativity are literary gestures which have been appropriated by only a very few women writers. “The more aggressive the jokes become, the less we see women involved in making them.” (“Je deutlicher die aggressive Tendenz im Scherzen ist, umso weniger wurde die Aktivität von Frauen betrieben”; Kotthoff 214). Even in work being written by women today, aggressive forms of humour are still the exception.
5While the tabooisation of aggression, which to a certain extent undermines satire, also applies to male authors, the position of the female writer, already rendered precarious by its deviation from the norm, is exacerbated by her position as a satirist and as a woman. The prohibition of female aggressiveness, and even denying its existence, has a long tradition (Musfeld; Stauß 73). Since rejecting female aggressiveness involves a taboo which has been and is still propagated and upheld by women themselves, this aspect is more or less a blind spot even now in feminist interrogations of constructions of femininity (Musfeld 17 ff.). Studies arguing from an essentialist and/or biologistic point of view and proceeding from the assumption of a more or less ‘natural’ inhibition in women against aggression are still doing the rounds, such as the one by Zita Dresner on Femininity and Humour:
Perhaps because women have been the child-bearers and homemakers, assumed or been prevailed upon to accept the role of civilizers and stabilizers of society […]. Perhaps because women have had a history of coping with powerlessness, lowering their sights, modifying their needs, and compromising their desires, their humor has been less volatile and nihilistic than men’s. (153)