The Women’s Movement and Twentieth-Century Writing

How might Judith Butler’s notion of performativity be applied to the reading of any two novels?

Performativity in The Passion of New Eve and The Left Hand of Darkness

Science fiction plays an important part in feminism texts. According to Tom Moylan（1986）

science fiction can serve as a playground for feminist considerations and criticism of gender,
sexuality, social roles and oppression, reproduction, patriarchy, and much more(p.30). Le Guin
agrees with this definition and states that “pulling back from ‘reality’ in order to see it better, is
perhaps the essential gesture of science fiction. Butler (2004) has the similar idea that “fantasy is
what allows us to imagine ourselves and others otherwise” (p.28). Two feminist science fiction texts
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin and The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter both
deal with gender identity and its performativity with the engagement of a created alien world . Both
of the texts present their idea of the question of gender perfrmativity, whether the construct of gender
is innate or merely acquired through culture and performed. Engaging with Butler’s performativity
theory, the essay will first introduce the theory of gender identity and its performativity, followed by
a close examination of both the two novels and their interconnections with Butler’s notion of
performativity. And finally the essay will end with a brief conclusion.

“Gender is socially constructed” has been generally accepted. The leading character Simone de
Beauvoir initiated “one is not born but rather becomes a woman”. Based on the reading of de
Beauvoir, Butler further argues a new concept that “gender subsumes sex which indicates that
biological sex is also socially constructed”. Butler(1986) forms her new idea that “becomes a
woman” is a “process of constructing ourselves” and it is “a purpositive and appropriative set of
acts, the acquisition of a skill”. For Butler (1990), women can never “be” and gender is never a
noun but a set of free floating attributes. Hence, gender is proved to be performative(p.18-24). Her
idea co-relates to Nietzsche’s view of gender that there is no gender identity behind the expression
of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the expression of one’s gender(Butler, 1990,
p.24-25). It seems to Butler that de Beauvoir defines “gender” ambiguously because she misses the
performative character of gender. Butler claims that people need to understand the term woman “as

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the site of permanent openness and resignifiability”, which is different from de Beauvoir’s view
that women are subjects in situation.

A central concept of performativity is that one’s gender is constructed through the repetitive
performance of gender. Butler’s theory does not accept stable and coherent gender identity. For
Butler (1990) gender is “the repeated stylisation of the body, a set of repetitive acts within a highly
rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural
sort of being(p.33).” What Butler(1990) means that gender is performative is to say that gender is
“real only to the extent that it is performed (p.278).” Notably the repetition of the acts in
performativity is an imitation or miming of the dominant conventions of gender. Butler argues that
“the act that one does, the act that one performs is, in a sense, an act that’s been going on before one
arrived on the scene” (Butler, 1990, p.104). Butler (1993) also claims that all gender is like “drag”,
or is “drag”, suggesting that ‘imitation’ is at the heart of the heterosexual project and its gender
binarism, that drag is not a secondary imitation that serves as a condition of gender. She aims to say
that imitation of the gender idealisations with ones constant and repeat effort is a sign of hegemonic
heterosexuality. Based on the repetition of imitation, gender normalisation was established in order
to produce a correct sex, the binary gender norm that one can be either male or female. This
suggests that heterosexual performativity is beset by an anxiety that it can never fully overcome.
The effort to become its own idealisations can never be finally or fully achieved, and that it is
constantly haunted by that domain of sexual possibility that must be excluded for heterosexualized
gender to produce itself(p. 125).

In Butler’s opinion performativity of Gender can be subversive.Often the theory of

performativity can be reduced to “drag”(Melzer, 2006). “Drag is subversive to the extent that it
reflects on the imitative structure by which hegemonic gender is itself produced and disputes
heterosexuality’s claim on naturalness and originality” (Butler, 1993, p.125). But subversion
through performance is not at all easy. Butler complains that people have misread her book Gender
Trouble that people seem to form a misunderstanding that one can easily choose their gender by
wearing different clothes and behave according to the norm of a certain gender. However Butler
aims to argue that gender is not to be chosen and that ‘performativity’ is not radical choice and its
not voluntarism. Performativity has to do with repetition, very often the repetition of oppressive and
painful gender norms . . . This is not freedom, but a question of how to work the trap that one is
inevitably in” (Liz Kotz, 1992).
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Based on what has been discussed above, the next part of the essay will analyse and compare
the two science fiction feminist texts, The Passion of New Eve and The Left Hand of Darkness
engaging with Butler’s performativity theory from 2 major aspects. Firstly the essay will deal with
gender and its relationship with repetitive performance, how gender is constructed through mimicry
the gender norm and perform it repetitively. Another major concern is the subversiveness of gender
performance. To what extent the two texts present the theory will be closely examined and compared.

In The Passion of New Eve, Evelyn, highly patriarchal professor, who mistreats a young girl, is
kidnapped and transformed into a woman by Mother, the queen goddess of the desert. After mimicry,
Eve undergoes a process of changing his gender from male to female. The fascinating story reflects
Carter’s view that gender is performative. To illustrate gender as a set of repetitive performance and
has little to do with biological sex, Carter creates a all-woman city, Beulah. The women living in
Beulah are not necessarily born female, that is, they also become women through various
procedures. Eve, who was born male, serves as a typical example of gender identity is performative.
After being kidnapped, Evelyn goes through his transformation from man to woman, undergoing a
series of surgeries. “She’s (Mother) going to castrate you, Evelyn, and then excavate what we call
the ‘fructifying female space’ inside you and make you a perfect specimen of womanhood” (Carter,
1982, p. 68). However, a woman’s body doesn't guarantee Eve’s gender as a female, even though he
has all the woman’s features. Masculinity could be seen from his thoughts and behaviours after
transgender surgery. Right after he is turned into a woman, he has his artificial virginity, but he still
finds himself “unfemininity”, which is still significant to him(Carter, 1982, p.
81). He described himself as an unhatched egg. Although in a woman’s shape, he has not yet
become a woman(Carter, 1982, p. 79). When he later becomes Zero’s 8th wife, he still distances
himself from an actual female, which could be told from his desire for women. With a woman’s
body, he still keeps on having sexual relationship with Zero’s other wives by fingering them(Carter,
1982, p.98). Apparently, Eve doesn't include himself as a real female because his repetitive
performance clearly indicates that he is still a male living in a woman’s body. This can be related to
Butler’s core concept of gender is “doing” but not “being”. To further illustrate gender is a self-
decision and is shown by stylised repetitive performance, Carter creates a an androgynous character
Tristessa, who is considered as the perfection of femininity and a goddess figure. She is described
by Eve as an “illusion in a void,” a “reflection on the screen.” Ironically, Carter reveals the truth

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that Tristessa is in fact androgynous. Having the sex organs of a man does not necessarily make her
a male. The way she is behaving and thinking, through years of repetition, is very much feminine, so
that she could not be categorised into a male.

Similar to Carter, le Guin also sees gender as “no absolute category, but rather something that
must be viewed as flexible and fluid” (Call, 2007, p. 92). In Unlike Carter, who explains gender as
performativity through describing how Eve and Tristessa do their gender by repetitively perform
their gender identities, le Guin introduces an ambisexual world and from the other side indicates
that the performance that is not repetitive could not be understood as gender. As there is no fixed
gender among the Gethenians, there are also no fixed gender roles. One can be both a mother and a
father at different periods in their lives which means that bearing and rearing of children is a shared
responsibility rather than being just the responsibility of a woman: “No physiological habit is
established, and the mother of several children may be the father of several more” (le Guin, 1997, p.
91). Therefore, the reimagining of the gender system shows that the Gethenians are “agenders”
because their performance of gender is not repetitive. Le Guin, from another angle, supports
Butler’s performativity theory.

Like Butler, Carter also agrees that performativity is an imitation of the convention of gender,
which could be seen clearly from Eve’s transgender process. As mentioned above, Eve doesn't
accept his gender as a female after the surgery. Carter describes doing a gender as a process of
learning and mimicking. Eve has been shown 3 video-tapes assigned to assist him to adjust to his
new body. He is shown Virgin and Child and animal offsprings to evoke his maternal instinct. He is
also shown “feminine” things like, rose, sea and moon. The videos aim to help him learn to be a
woman by showing conventional feminine stuffs. The mimicking process is more obvious when he
becomes Zero’s wive. He tried to imitate the way other wives behave and the way they speak. More
significantly, the experience of being a man’s wive teaches him how to be a woman and finally he
has to admit that the mediation of Zero turned me into a woman.

By presenting Eve’s transgender process and Tristessa’s ambiguity of gender, Carter seems to
share the same view with Butler that gender is subversive and the subversion could be painstaking.
Tristessa has approached Mother in search of a sex change, which is rejected by Mother, not just
because she is “too much of a woman, already,” but also that “she was struck by what seemed to her
the awfully ineradicable quality of his maleness”(Carter, 1982, p. 173). Carter,in this sense proposes
a new type of “doing” besides the traditional thought of male and female, a hybridity of gender,
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being both male and female. Eve explains after his own experience of being both a man and a
woman: “Masculine and feminine are correlatives which involve one another. But what the nature of
masculine and the nature of feminine might be, whether they involve male and female. Though I
have been both man and woman, still I do not know the answer to these questions(Carter, 1982, p.
149-150).” Eve’s confusion also suggests there might be a state of being both masculine and
feminine, differing from the binary thinking of one can either be male or female. Subverting the
conventional norm of gender binary to sustain heterosexuality and suggesting a third type of
possible gender act as a subversive force against the conventions set by the patriarchal society.

Similarly, The Left Hand of Darkness includes the same concept of androgyny to challenge and
transcend the limitations of patriarchal, heteronormative culture. For Carolyn G. Heilbrun,
androgyny is a “metaphor for gender liberation” and “a physical fact of life that highlights the
performative nature of gender identity and symbolizes sexual emancipation” (Van Leeuwen, 2006).
Le Guin in her essay also questioned “Is Gender Necessary?” Gender is built around certain cultural
notions or “proper” behaviour and social contracts. It is a cultural product, a set of ideas
that are appropriated by individuals through cultural “training” reinforced by media, political
structures, fashion industry, which define what it should look like to be masculine or feminine. The
Left Hand of Darkness is set on Gethen, where the residents are sexless for the three quarters of
each month. However depending on the circumstance, they can be sexually active for a short period
of time every month when they can turn either male or female. The sexual state is called Kemmer
while their normal state is Somer. When a partner who is also in the state of Kemmer is found, one
arbitrarily become male and the other female. Le Guin appears to challenge this gender norm of
society based on biological determinism and try to deconstruct the conventional idea of femininity
and masculinity to see what hides beneath them. As mentioned previously, for Gethenians, there is
no absolute gender. The fluidity and flexibility of gender, leads to no fixed gender roles. The terran
Genly Ai has difficulties in understanding Gethenian’s androgyny: “He was so feminine in looks
and manner that I once asked him how many children he had. He looked glum. He had never borne
any. He had, however, sired four” (le Guin, 1997, p. 48). In this way le Guin manages to challenge
not only fixed gender identities, but the concept of conventional of binary sex encouraged in the
patriarchal world.

To conclude, both The Passion of New Eve and The Left Hand of Darkness adopt their own
way present views towards gender identity and its performativity. Both of the novels agree that

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gender is performative, which overlaps with Butler’s opinion that performativity of gender is a
stylised repetition of acts. Additionally, The Passion of New Eve coherent with Butler’s idea that
mimicking or miming of the dominant conventions of gender. However, due to the lack of gender of
the Gethenians, there is no conventional gender role in the Gethenian society. Therefore, there is no
such term of mimicry of gender. Besides, the two novels could be seen as supporting evidence of
performativity as a subversive force against patriarchal gender norm and by presenting the concept of
androgyny, the two novels successfully challenge the heteronormative culture which is normally
used to sustain patriarchal order.

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References

Butler, J. (1986). “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex” Yale French Studies, 72,
winter.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. London: Routledge.

Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of "sex".London: Routledge.

Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender. London: Rutledge

Call, L. (2007). “Postmodern Anarchism in the Novels of Ursula K. Le Guin.” Substance 113/36.2
2007: 87-105.

Carter, A. (1982). The passion of new eve. London: Virago.

Kotz, L. (1992). “The Body You Want: Liz Kotz interviews Judith Butler,” Artforum 31, no. 3
(November 1992): 82-89.

Le Guin, U. K. (1997). The left hand of darkness. London: Virago.

Ledwon, L. (1993). The Passion of the Phallus and Angela Carter's "The Passion of New Eve".
Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 5(4 (20)), 26–41. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/
43308171(assessed 27th April, 2016)

Melzer, P. (2006). Alien constructions: Science fiction and feminist thought

Moylan, T. (1986). Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination. London:
Methuen.

Van Leeuwen, E.J. (2006) “Anarchic Alchemists: Dissident Androgyny in Anglo-American Gothic
Fiction from Godwin to Melville.” Diss. University of Leiden, September 2006.