MARIANNE MOORE: NO WAY OUT, GENDERING BODY THROUGH POETICS AND POETRY AS ECRITURE FEMININE

Abstract

This study analyzes Marianne Moore’s poems Marriage, To be Liked by You Would be a Calamity and Feed Me, Also, River God from a poststructural feminist framework as posited in the writings of Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. The study approaches the poems as examples of ecriture feminine, which is literally the feminine writing aimed at relocating the feminine and female body back into discourse. Women’s non-representation in the male-centered discourse, female essentialization based on her biology and perception of the female body as the locus of male desire are among the primary concerns of these feminist thinkers. In line with the ideas of these theorists, Marianne Moore subverts the traditional patriarchal understanding of what a woman is through her poems and gains poetic subjectivity through re-writing the body. She mimes the language of the father, and masquerades gender roles showing the performativity of these roles while at the same time distorting and revising them to open up space for female subjectivity. Therefore, ecriture feminine turns into a means to politicize writing and female body through its subversive, revisionary, multiple and fluid aspect.