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76 LITERATÛRZINÂTNE, FOLKLORISTIKA, MÂKSLA
My analysis consists of two parts. Since the novel includes explicit thematisation
and problematisation of language, I will discuss the notion of the prisonhouse of language3
and following from this, theories of metafiction (theorised mainly by Patricia
Waugh and Linda Hutcheon) are invoked to discuss how the narrators are self–conscious
of their medium. This framework is the basis for expanding the notion of linguistic
self–consciousness into the analysis of the novel from the point of view of
ècriture feminine and the bisexuality of language (Luce Irigaray). The theory of
écriture feminine, elaborated mostly by Hélène Cixous in the middle of 1970s, claims
that due to the specificities of women’s body and sexuality, women potentially possess
an extraordinarily special language of their own desire and pleasure that, ideally,
is written down into the so–called feminine texts. Luce Irigaray explores a similar
idea when she aims at redefining women’s sexuality on the basis of female pleasure
which is supposedly fundamentally different from male pleasure. 4
Thus I will first discuss the novel as a text that is self–conscious about its language.
Then I will continue by analysing Gut Symmetries from the point of view of
écriture feminine, relying on Cixous’s and Irigaray’s works on sexuality, language and
writing, arguing that this novel itself is a piece of écriture feminine. In the end I will
combine the two lines of argument into a whole to claim that literary self–consciousness
and the so–called feminine writing are interdependent and rely on each other to
a rather remarkable degree.
Self–consciousness about Language
As pointed out above, Gut Symmetries includes elements of linguistic self–reflexivity
so that language becomes one of the novel’s primary themes. Narrators in Gut
Symmetries reflect on language and its limits as well as potentials which contributes
to their quest to go beyond the conventions of language and find alternative ways of
expressing oneself. According to Waugh, an important conviction in metafiction is
that “language is not simply a set of empty forms filled with meaning, but that it actually
dictates and circumscribes what can be said and therefore what can be perceived.”
5 That this novel is self–conscious about its own status as a piece of fiction is
explicitly expressed by Alice:
So I go on puzzling over new joints for words […]. Walk with me. Hand in hand
through the nightmare of narrative, the neat sentences secret–nailed over meaning.
[…] And if I were not telling this story to you but to someone else, would it be the
same story? (24) […] It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will
invent what you want to hear. (25)
These revelations in the text underline the three basic concerns of all metafiction:
the problematisation of narrative and linguistic structures as well as of the role of the
reader. Here I will mainly concentrate on the linguistic structures of the novel. Alice
is concerned about the complexity of reaching another person through language when,
after her father’s death, she wants to communicate with her grandmother. She
struggles with the feeling that her words cannot reach her grandmother: “Each speaks
a private language and assumes it to be lingua franca. Sometimes words dock and
there is a cheer at port and cargo to unload and such relief that the voyage was worth