Introduction
This paper is an attempt to introduce performativity theory with specific mention of the contribution of J.L.Austin, John Searle, Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler to this theoretical model. Exclusive attention is bestowed on Butler’s performativity theory. The major aim of this work is to analyze Margaret Drabble’s The Seven Sisters (2002) by using gender performativity theory of Butler for more productive and exhaustive exploration. To the best of my knowledge, no one has studied Drabble’s The Seven Sisters (2002) from this perspective. This makes the task challenging and daunting. Use of Butler’s performativity theory moves away from the traditional reading and provides postmodern reading of Drabble’s The Seven Sisters (2002). By using theoretical inputs of Butler, an attempt will be made to investigate concerns like gender discrimination, undermining gender stereotypes, cross gendering and others that are emerging in contemporary society and are reflected in Drabble’s The Seven Sisters (2002).
This paper is structured as follows. In section 2, Performativity theory is explained in detail. But, specific attention is given to Butler’s theory. Section 3 is devoted to how Butler’s theory can be successfully applied to Drabble’s The Seven Sisters (2002). Finally, in the last section we make concluding remarks.
Performativity Theory
In recent years, the concept of performativity has expanded from performing arts and theatre contexts into a heterogeneous range of sites of practice which identifies performativity in all expressive forms of behaviour and gestures. The term ‘performativity’ is derived from the verb ‘to perform’. It implies the capacity to execute an action, to carry something out actually as well as to do something according to prescribed ritual. The term performativity has taken a precise meaning in language theory since Austin. About performativity, Austin in Philosophical Papers (1979) states: “You are more than entitled not to know what the word ‘performative’ means. It is a new word and an ugly word, and perhaps it does not mean anything very much. But at any rate there is one thing in its favour, it is not a profound word” (233).
Austin used the word performative to describe utterances such as ‘I take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife’ or ‘I name this ship the queen Elizabeth’. In these cases, Austin claims that ‘to say’ something is ‘to do’ something. Austin in How to do Things with Words (1975) avers: “In these examples it seems clear that to utter the sentence (in, of course, the appropriate circumstances) is not to describe my doing of what I should be said in so uttering to be doing or to state that I am doing it: it is to do it” (6).
Promises, bets, curses, judgments and contracts do not describe or represent the action. They are actions because speaker executes something while articulating. Austin also makes a candid distinction between constative and performative utterances. Explicitly, performative utterances cannot be judged true or false as constative utterance might be. Performative utterances can only be judged either ‘happy’ or “infelicitous”. In addition, performatives are dependent for their validity on conventions. For example, marriage can only be said to have taken place if the right words were said at the right time in the right place, if the right kind of person was officiating. Moreover, Austin explicated three characteristics, or acts of statements: Locutionary acts, illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts.
Locutionary acts are roughly equivalent to uttering a certain sentence with a certain ‘meaning’ in the traditional sense. Illocutionary acts are such as informing, ordering, warning, etc. Illocutionary utterances have a certain kind of conventional force. Perlocutionary acts are what we bring about or achieve by saying something such as convincing, persuading, deterring or surprising. Perlocutionary acts are not conventional.
Searle in Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (1969) extended Austin’s investigation concerned to speech act theory. For Searle, illocutionary act is a refined way. For Searle, illocutionary is the minimal whole unit of human linguistic communication. Searle presented the improved version of Austin’s speech act theory. The discussion on performativity theory would not be complete without referring to Derrida. Derrida’s views on performativity theory are diverged from Austin and Searle. Bearing the stamp of postmodernist thinker, Derrida in Signature, Event Contexts (1972) criticizes the notion that the success of a performative utterance is determined by conventions.
Judith Butler, the acclaimed feminist theorist, has articulated a ‘theory of performativity’ which has been much discussed over the past decade. It was a sense of the pressing requirements of feminist political activism, rather than mere intellectual curiosity that led Butler to the concept of performativity as a theoretical resource. Applying performativity theory to the concept of gender, Butler in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1999) tries to provide postmodern view concerning gender. In this, Butler discusses how gender is performative, how performances are bound and how drag (men in women clothes and women in men clothes) performances are accepted in our society.
Invoking the concept of performativity, Butler in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1999) claims that gender identity is performative which means, quite simply to the extent that it is performed. Gender identity is not given by nature. Gender is the result of cultural process. So, we are what is made and remade through that process. In addition, gender intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities of discursively constituted identities. Consequently, “it becomes impossible to separate out gender from the political and cultural intersections in which it is invariably produced and maintained” (6). Butler says that “there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (33).
Being performative, gender is the result of stylized repetition of acts that involves bodily movements and gestures that are culturally approved for masculine and feminine gender. In particular, such acts produce us as men or women in a manner that reinforce the binary system of a heterosexual matrix. Heterosexual matrix bound the gender to behave in a binary term (masculine and feminine). Butler emphasizes that these styles are never fully self-styled. These styles have a history and limit the possibilities.
Further, we discuss how gender performativity is restrained by language. Butler concedes that gender identities are constructed by language and discourse. Butler has used the term discourse in analyzing her views concerning gender and sex. So, it is pertinent to be familiar with the terms of discourse. Michel Foucault in History of Sexuality: An Introduction (1976) defined the terms ‘discourse’. For Foucault, discourse is a system of statements to understand the world. Discourses are modes of constituting knowledge together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations that inhere in such knowledge and the relations between them.
Application of Butler’s Theory to Drabble’s The Seven Sisters (2002)
The postulates of Butler’s performativity theory enable us to analyze women’s condition in Drabble’s novel The Seven Sisters (2002). This novel echoes Butlerian thoughts offering numerous instances. With the help of this theory, we will study how women’s performances are restrained by culture factors that cause gender discrimination and how women can undermine their gender stereotypes. Here, specific attention is given to female gender that is oppressed in contemporary culture.
Margaret Drabble’s The Seven Sisters (2002) is divided in four chapters: a) Her Diary, b) Italian Journey, c) Ellen’s Version and d) Dying Fall. The whole story of this novel revolves around the female character, Candida Wilton. This novel evolves Candida’s quest for a life after divorce. Deserted by her husband, Andrew, headmaster of a Suffolk school, rejected by her three daughters Ellen, Isobel, and Martha, Candida leaves Suffolk and moves to the anonymity of London. To build up her confidence she joined the night classes on Virgil, health club and purchased lottery tickets. She also made the circle of seven sisters and went on a tour from Carthage to Italy.
The summary of this novel suggests that it presents women’s conditions and their problems in prevalent culture. Butler claims that gender is performative but she also accepts that gender performances are restrained by cultural factors. Cultural factors play an important role in causing gender discrimination. Shulamith Firestone stated in The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970) that “Culture is so saturated with male bias that women almost never have a chance to see themselves culturally through their own eyes” (187).
Candida was expected to establish heterosexual relationship with her husband. But she was not feeling fit in this heterosexual matrix due to her frigidity. She accepts “I have always been a passive person” (18). But she passively followed her husband in this relationship. She had three daughters from her husband that indicates the pressures of patriarchal culture on Candida as she followed the norm against her wish. Being bold and assertive, Candida also criticised her husband. She finally accepted that she disliked her husband.
Butler in Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory (1988) claims that “Performing one’s gender wrong initiates a set of punishments both obvious and indirect, and performing it well provides the reassurance that there is an essentialism of gender identity after all” (528). So, gender has cultural survival as its end. In essence, those who do not do their gender correctly are punished by society. This theory also echoes in The Seven Sisters (2002). In this novel, Candida was not able to give sexual satisfaction to her husband. So, her husband divorced her. She felt moneyless, childless, futureless and even hopeless because she was totally dependent on her husband for everything.
Julia is another female character. Julia’s parents did not restrict her to do anything. “She did exactly what she wanted” (31). She challenged her feminine norms being free like a bird. She was free to do anything without any restriction. She had multiple sex partners. She did not feel shy even discussing sexual matters and experiences with her friends unlike stereotypical women. But, she was notorious on this count. She was highly ambitious and wanted to be a writer. But, her works were not appreciated by people. She says: “I never get invited to literary events or festivals or anything artistic. Nobody thinks of me as a literary writer” (92). But she did not care — she did what she desired. These paradigmatic instances validate Butler’s concept of gender as a fluid variable.
Conclusion
So, the novel The Seven Sisters (2002) presents the complex case of gender performativity. Butler’s theory aids us to accept the fact that women should not be bound to follow feminine traits. They should be free to follow masculine traits if they so desired. They should strive for equality. It is an undeniable fact that Butler’s performativity theory is instrumental in understanding women’s condition in Drabble’s The Seven Sisters (2002). Some postulates of Butler’s performativity theory reveal how women can challenge their gender stereotypical roles performing masculine traits. This will help in building up the confidence of women and raising their status in society. Gender equality will lead us in the upgradation of our country and the world by envisaging equality of sexes. In other words, demand for equal rights means to create a social climate in which variety can flourish without being exploited and all persons may have the opportunity to earn respect and advancement.
Works Cited
Austin, J.L. How to do Things with Words. 1962. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
---. Philosophical Papers. J. O. Urmson and G. J.Warnock (eds), 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” Theatre Journal, 40.4 (1988): 519-531.
---. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge 1993.
---. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 1990. New York: Routledge, 1999.
---. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Drabble, Margaret. The Seven Sisters. London: Viking, 2002.
Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume I. 1976. London: Vintage, 1990.
Searle, John. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Shulamith Firestone. The Dialetic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. New York: William Morrow. 1970.