For Feminist Narratology

Abstract

Every feminist knows that too many stories end with fantasy marriages or with barely concealed threats directed at women. The latter type ofstory features fascinating, transgressive women: Guenevere, whose love brought down Camelot; Eve, whose curiosity exiled 'man' from Paradise; or Clytemnestra, who murdered her husband to revenge their daughter, and whose Furies hounded her son and murderer until the other Gods intervened. Their's are the stories of Camelot, of 'man's' fall from grace, and of the founding of the Athenian City State. Yet each heroic female figure has been rewritten; from a subject who dared to act, she has become anobstacle to the stability of a patriarchal institution. In narratological terms, these actors have changed actantial function. The shift in narrative form encodes a basic patriarchal message: the human subject is generically male.