Woman Must Write Woman.

Can women only write in the style of a "woman?" Do women have an obligation to write at all?

For Helene Cixous, the answer to both seems to be yes. Cixous writes like a general rallying her troops for battle, urging women to write for women, as women. "I write woman: woman must write woman. And man, man" she writes, rallying women to not only be readers, but writers of literature, a literature written as woman literature.

It's hard for me, as a female English major, to not be a bit moved by the words of Cixous. She is at once rational and irrational, proud, angry, and inspiring. She nails some things on the head - in particular, I really resonated with her section on why women don't write. Though I am an English major and by extension, a writer who writes not in secret but for assignment, openly and often, I have experienced much of what Cixous discusses. Did I feel my writing wasn't good? Of course. Is writing too great for me? Yes, probably. Have I written in secret before? Often enough.

What makes Cixous intriguing, then, is the way she stirs the woman writer out of this secrecy, shoving inhibition aside in favor of finding a female voice, a voice that will not, in Cixous' view, be hampered or determined by man, but will speak in spite of man. She writes, "Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously, violently, they have led them to have women, to be their own enemies, to mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs." While I don't know that I would necessarily agree that men have caused me to hate women, I would argue in Cixous' favor that the oppression of women by men for centuries has resulted in women, and women writers especially, viewing themselves as less than they are.

Though I don't want to pursue writing after graduation, I found myself surprisingly inspired by the work of Cixous. Why shouldn't women write for woman, as woman? Going further, do we have an obligation to write for woman, as woman? While I don't think that female writers are obligated to write in any fashion, I do think it's important to female writers to be fearlessly independent, not imitating the work of men, but instead, forging out on their own as the intelligent, powerful writers they are capable of being.