Her Flesh Speaks True: Écriture Feminine and Woman’s Desire in Fleur Adcock’s Poetry

FACULTAD DE FILOLOGÍA TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO GRADO EN ESTUDIOS INGLESES CURSO ACADÉMICO: 2024/2025 TÍTULO: Her Flesh Speaks True: Écriture Feminine and Woman’s Desire in Fleur Adcock’s Poetry AUTOR: Cathrine Voldsgård Eriksen TUTOR / A: Juan Antonio Prieto Pablos FECHA: 28 de mayo de 2025 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 3 1. METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................... 5 2. ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................. 13 2.1. “Against Coupling” .......................................................................................... 13 2.2. “Smokers for Celibacy” ................................................................................... 18 2.3. “Choices” ......................................................................................................... 20 2.4. “Incident” ......................................................................................................... 22 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 24 WORKS CITED .......................................................................................................... 26 3 INTRODUCTION Fleur Adcock’s poem collection, Poems 1960-2000, was published in 2000. It contains various poems of different types, often concerning place and immigration, human relationships, and everyday life. Fleur Adcock herself was a New Zealand poet and editor; still, she spent much of her life in England. Thanks to the poem collection, she was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, one of Britain’s most prestigious poetry awards, and she was also made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to literature. She won many prizes as she was a prolific writer, editor, and translator until she died at the age of 90 in October 2024. This work focuses primarily on Adcock’s stance when it comes to feminism and female discourse, as some of the poems from the poetry collection, especially those written from the 1970s and onwards, adopt notions that can be seen in relation to French Feminism. This is particularly present in the formation of female identity, when woman sees, uses, and understands her body and what it can be independently from patriarchal discourse. To analyze the poems, my approach is based on ideas drawn from French feminist thought. This will be initially explored by drawing from the symbolic and literal concepts of jouissance and écriture feminine, as explained by Hélène Cixous in “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1976). Cixous advocates for a female writing that manages to connect with the Mother and in that context decensor what patriarchal discourse has censored. She argues that women need to stand together and be subversive in order to escape the heteropatriarchal binarism that reduces women to nothing more than half of a couple, as a new definition is needed. The poems will also be examined through the lens of the distinction between the genotext and the phenotext, as outlined by Julia Kristeva in Revolution in Poetic Language (1974; translated into English in 1984). She draws on the idea of the Semiotic and pre-linguistic chora, which is related to the Mother as well, as something powerful enough to disrupt the Symbolic Order, which are the rules and the norms of language determined by heteropatriarchal order. Textually, this is especially evident in poetry, where the genotext —where the Semiotic rules— can disrupt the phenotext —the Symbolic— to such an extent that jouissance can be reached. This paper will use those theories to illustrate how Adcock diverges from general beliefs about gender roles and how she creates a space for female emancipation in her poetry, not only for her own time of writing but also for contemporary readers of her 4 poetry. She seeks to redefine womanhood without relying on patriarchal definitions, opting instead for something new. She aims to define woman as seen from the gap: the part of discourse not dominated by heteropatriarchy. The following analysis will more specifically revolve around the idea of female empowerment and the deeper, symbolic meaning of female self-pleasure —mainly, masturbation— as opposed to heteronormative sexual relations. This paper will, on that account, attempt to showcase exactly that: how Adcock, using metaphorical language, her writing style, and symbolic elements, attempts to create a non-phallogocentric narrative, advocating for the recognition and validation of a more nuanced female identity beyond what has been seen through patriarchal discourse. 5 1. METHODOLOGY Various critics have studied Adcock’s poems; however, when it comes to her view on female liberation, especially concerning bodily liberation, they have focused mostly on her way of using wit and humor rather than the deeper meaning of the topic. This can be seen in Lorraine Mariner’s “‘Looking worse and worse and worse’: Humour in the Poetry of Fleur Adcock” (2018) as she writes about how the humor and wit results in the speaker “mocking herself as much as the lady from Leeds and the school drama mistress” (Mariner 23) rather than seeing the female liberation of the solitary act. Barry Wood, in “Eros and Imagination” (2007), also only mentions how “the selection of Fleur Adcock’s ‘Against Coupling’ and ‘Smokers for Celibacy’ brings a degree of wit to the book” (Wood 2). Still, nothing more is commented on the topics of either, and it therefore seems that Fleur Adcock’s wit is celebrated more clearly than her feminist viewpoints. Other critics, such as Carmen Zamorano in “Mapping the Self in Fleur Adcock’s Poetry: From a Postmodernist Sensibility to Postmodern Feminism” (1999), comment on Adcock’s formation of identity, and in this case, her rejection of the term “women poets” as a distinction from “poets”; but this is related more to Adcock’s general view of the topic than to her poetry. This paper will, therefore, use French feminist theories to comment on an aspect of her poetry that lacks recognition among critics. French feminism, a part of second-wave feminism around the 70s, is deeply concerned with women’s sexuality and how to redefine the patriarchal view of women. French feminists were also influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis and post-modern philosophy, especially related to Jacques Derrida. In general, French feminists try to expose how the dominance of patriarchal discourse represses women’s identity. They believed that all language is patriarchal, meaning that the definition of womanhood is exclusively provided by The-Name-Of-The-Father —that is, by man in general— and that woman in this discourse type becomes a specular image of man. Instead of defining woman as what she is, man will look at her as an image of himself but lacking “something” —namely, a penis. That is to say, in the patriarchal discourse, men do not seek to establish a clear separation between men and women but rather see woman as a lesser version of man, definable by the lack of masculine features. This places man above woman, or as the basic, fundamental version of a human, and in some way gives way for man to possess what woman (the marginalized version) is and has and repress what he deems unsuitable. In this sense, woman’s real presence is unseen, or even invisible. 6 French Feminism, therefore, wants to see woman from the point of view of what is a lacking presence in the patriarchal discourse. This point of view leads to the promotion of difference rather than equality between males and females, as equality, according to French feminists, constitutes an entrapment for the woman. Equality expects women to submit to patriarchal rules, and it ultimately encourages women to identify with these oppressive, patriarchal values. Woman’s identity, then, must be defined only by privileging what makes woman different from man, and by seeing the differences between the male and the female body not as something negative. In this manner, women can discover and enjoy what they really are, without depending on man; and through this process of independence, the female body can become a source of jouissance for women, both in a literal and metaphorical way. The pursuit of difference also prompted French feminists to disregard the reductionist mother, defined as a means for the preservation of patriarchy, and instead opt for being Mothers, which figuratively is the essence of a woman’s identity. This idea of the Mother is related to Lacanian psychoanalysis. According to this theory, in the Symbolic Order of the human psyche, which is reached when a child learns to speak, the child will submit to The-Name-Of-The-Father, that is, the norms and rules that the child must learn and comply with. The-Name-Of-The-Father and language are closely attached. Before entering this stage, the child will have a pre-verbal relationship with the Mother in the Imaginary Order of the human psyche, where the child and the Mother communicate without the restraints of language. The Mother rules in the emotional way of communicating until it is repressed by the patriarchal discourse introduced by The-NameOf-The-Father. Taking the role of the Mother is a way of resisting the assimilation of patriarchal discourse, embracing non-patriarchal discourse, and undoing the strategies that invisibilize women. Hélène Cixous’s “The Laugh of the Medusa” is, as she mentions in the very first line, about women’s writing and the potential it has. She states that writing is marked, phallocentric, and somewhere “where woman has never her turn to speak” (Cixous 879). Already from the beginning of her essay, she relates writing to masturbation, as she states that women feel embarrassed for writing in the same way as they feel guilty for masturbating. In the patriarchal society, woman dares not to write because it is a space “reserved for the great—that is, for ‘great men’” (Cixous 876), and if she does end up writing, she does it in secret, like pleasuring herself just enough to take the tension off. The literary tradition —as well as sexuality— is reserved for men because it is part of 7 patriarchal discourse. What she calls “true texts of women—female-sexed texts” (Cixous 876) scare men, so they attempt to repress and conceal them. On many occasions, Cixous compares the female discourse and body to darkness, something dangerous: a forest or a sickness. Cixous believes that woman is made to forget her childhood and, therefore, her relation to the maternal while she is also “kept in the dark about herself, led into selfdisdain by the great arm of parental-conjugal phallocentrism” (Cixous 876). That is, women’s texts, as well as female bodies, are put into this darkness, where they are not truly defined and where the only definition is the one allowed by phallocentric discourse —one which will never disable the patriarchal power position. It, therefore, perpetuates the repression of her as it is “run by a libidinal and cultural—hence political, typical masculine—economy” (Cixous 879). According to Cixous, what woman needs to do to set herself free from this darkness is to write herself anew. The Old Woman has this internalized phallogocentric idea of her identity; she is brainwashed to forget her name and her childhood and taught to hate women. To change this and create a new form of writing, the New Woman must write herself, and this will allow her to transform her history at two levels: The first level is how, by writing, woman can decensor her body and give her back her “native strength; it will give her back her goods, her pleasures, her organs, her immense bodily territories which have been kept under seal” (Cixous 880). By writing, woman will emancipate her bodily text and learn her womanly, anti-patriarchal language, and she will be a whole woman, not a slave of man. In this relation, Cixous connects body, speech, and text, as her body is her text, and when she writes and breaks free from the restraints created by patriarchal society, she will be decensored in sexuality and her womanly being as well. In this case, she will break free from the shadow of man, and this false definition of the woman will be killed. The second level is how writing will let woman seize her right to speak and not be oppressed in history. Cixous says that women need to break out of the silence and write and speak in public with their bodies as the source of logic, and challenge the speech governed by the phallus (patriarchal discourse) that places women in silence. According to Cixous, the act of speaking, as well as the act of writing, has to do with the body since female language, as opposed to male language, is bodily: She doesn’t “speak,” she throws her trembling body forward; she lets go of herself, she flies; all of her passes into her voice, and it’s with her body that she vitally supports the “logic” of her speech. Her flesh speaks true. She lays herself bare. In 8 fact, she physically materializes what she’s thinking; she signifies it with her body. In a certain way she inscribes what she’s saying, because she doesn’t deny her drives the intractable and impassioned part they have in speaking. (Cixous 881) Women’s bodily language is related to the idea of the Mother. In fact, Cixous claims that even though phallocentric language has attempted to mystify woman, she will always have a connection to the Mother and the “first music from the first voice of love which is alive in every woman” (Cixous 881). Cixous states that it is a language that cannot be either theorized or enclosed and coded, but this does not mean that it does not exist. It simply means that it goes beyond the rules that control phallocentric language: it will only be conceived by “breakers of automatisms, by peripheral figures that no authority can ever subjugate” (Cixous 883). The current sexual opposition advocates for male writing, and if woman attempts to write in this way —which Cixous compares to masculine masturbation— she will end up reproducing this phallocentric language that diminishes the definition of what she is. Nonetheless, Cixous rejects the idea that writing is feminine as well, and she rather says that woman’s writing takes place in the in-between. While men, according to Cixous, persist in glorifying phallic monosexuality, women are naturally bisexual, referring to the readiness of women to accept the omnipresent exchange between her and the other: the male and the female. Her notion of bisexuality differs from the one given by patriarchal discourse; it is another bisexuality, freed from the constraints of conventional sexual binarism, on which every subject not enclosed in the false theater of phallocentric representationalism has founded his/her erotic universe. Bisexuality: that is, each one’s location in self (reperage en soi) of the presence … of both sexes, nonexclusion either of the difference or of one sex. (Cixous 884) By accepting this bisexuality, one can celebrate the differences and reach a pleasure of no boundaries. Cixous criticizes the Freudian notion of being afraid of being a woman, and she wants to emphasize the in-betweenness, which women seem to accept more than men. Again, this idea is related to the celebration of differences between the male and the female, rather than the idea of seeing one (the female) as being inferior to the other (the male), and it is a way of de-phallocentralizing the body, both eliminating the male fear of castration and the female fear of decapitation by society. Being bisexual in this context, according to Cixous, therefore, is about having a place for everyone to express themselves using their sexuality, free of socially constructed constraints. 9 Women have been led to believe in what Cixous refers to as the white continent, a phallocentric land lacking in the area of female definitions, where their true identity is too dark to be explored. In this context, Cixous says that women have so far believed in these male myths, such as the abyss (the dark, inexplorable space), the Medusa, and the sirens. These myths are created out of the male fear of castration and femininity, and Cixous suggests a rather simple solution to end them: to stop listening to this absurdity in order for history to change. That is, if one goes beyond these misogynistic myths, the truth can be discovered, and as Cixous says, “You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing” (Cixous 885). Woman has, therefore, always existed as a component within male discourse, “a signifier that has always referred back to the opposite signifier which annihilates its specific energy and diminishes or stifles its very different sounds” (Cixous 887). Woman should explode this space “within”; turn it around, seize it, contain it, dislocate it. When this space explodes, she will be able to break free and create her own definition of herself—this is the exact place where she will overflow; it is the moment when the female body can become a source of jouissance. While men fear castration and fight to keep their titles and dominance, woman does not fear decapitation, and her true text cannot be anything but subversive. In this new space, Cixous says woman will see that her body is without an end and without a “principal part” as she is a whole, composed of whole parts. She is cosmic and traversed by Eros. Her libido, as well as her writing, is without an end as this language —or languages— she contains rather makes possible than prevents. The woman has desires, but as Cixous says, it is not a desire for the male genitalia to fulfill her. It is, perhaps, a desire to explore the unexplored, to be a woman outside of the attachment to The-Name-Of-The-Father or the phallic mother, that is, a desire to become, and as Cixous says, to find “not her sum but her differences” (Cixous 893). Cixous also values sisterhood as an important factor in the fight for female liberation. She uses the word “woman” as a general term to talk about women as a group or women in general, and this unites women in a community: “As subject for history, woman always occurs simultaneously in several places. … In woman, personal history blends together with the history of all women” (Cixous 882). She believes that women will be able to find inspiration among other women: “I wished that woman would write and proclaim this unique empire so that other women, other unacknowledged sovereigns, might exclaim: I, too, overflow” (Cixous 876). Cixous believes in the power of the female community and the empowerment of such but, at the same time, she does not exclude men either. She 16 Although the poem does not follow a common meter pattern, perhaps Adcock intentionally incorporates iambic feet in certain lines to show how the phenotext and genotext coexist. The very first line of the poem could be read in the following way: “I wríte | in práise | of the sól | itár | y áct” (1). This line is an almost perfect example of iambic pentameter — perhaps the most widely used meter in the classic, male-dominated field of poetry — while at the same time, it seems to recreate the classical poetic tradition of odes; however, it is interrupted when the “solitary act” is introduced. The act does not destroy the meter, but the disruption, which is created by this female experience, shows how the genotext can disrupt phenotextual norms, and this break leads to jouissance; that is, quite literally, the pleasure drawn from the solitary act — and, to some extent, even from the challenge to normative order. In the second stanza, the meter pattern shows little regularity, possibly due to the textual focus on the female body, a concept that male norms should no longer define. Nonetheless, when the woman is subjected to the man, and “her ówn | eyes blúr” (12), this fragment could be read as two iambic feet, emphasizing how the phenotext has now taken over from the genotext in the same way that her body is becoming a subject to male discourse. This, however, is contrasted with “the obscúre / sea-béd of her bódy” (11-12), which perhaps does not follow a meter pattern, yet could be read as an irregular anapestic sequence. In the same way that the iambus meter is the natural, neutral metrical foot, used to convey meaning and language, anapestic rhythm favors melody, and therefore foregrounds the genotext over the phenotext, as the meaning is transmitted dramatically and in a non-natural way. Adcock, therefore, challenges expectations of poetry both by rejecting common meter patterns but also by implementing less favored ones. This means that the essential part of her will never entirely be submissive to the patriarchal oppression, and it symbolizes the capability of the woman to break free and get in touch with herself if only she goes deep enough. Adcock also incorporates anapestic sequences for the third and fourth stanzas. This rhythm is commonly known for its lighthearted and galloping quality, and it can be observed in lines such as “when / one féels | like the lá | dy in Léeds | who / had séen | The Sóund | of Mú | sic éigh | ty-síx tímes” (16-18). Here, the lady is both trivialized within the male discourse, which the rhythm reflects with its lighthearted anapestic feet, but the repetitiveness of her routines is also reflected, especially as the last two syllables could be read as a spondee, which then emphasizes the heavy amount of repetition. What is curious, though, is how there is a use of enjambment, literally breaking the syntax of 17 the lines, perhaps, so that the lady in Leeds is symbolically given a hope to break free from the feminine role she is believed to take, as the poetic voice shows that her feminine voice exists, even in an environment where she is made to believe the opposite. Additionally, in the lines “but / the hóle | in the wáll | can still bé | troublesóme” (2324), the anapestic rhythm is perceived as something lighthearted, which may show a rupture with the masculine seriousness of the iambic meter. Furthermore, the emotional aspect of the anapestic feet also adds a genotextual aspect to this rather multifaceted line. If the line, then, is read positively concerning women going against patriarchy and their sexual liberation, the use of the anapest and the genotextual layer that this rhythm adds seem to emphasize this subversive female discourse that can break with common patriarchal discourse. Even if the line, on the other hand, is read negatively concerning female liberation, its genotextual layer might be suggesting that the female voice is somewhere to be found, even though the context is phallocentric and oppressive. In the last stanza, a sort of conclusion is reached, and in many instances, a metrical pattern can be observed. When the poem goes “No need | to set | the scene, | / dress up | (or undress), | make speeches” (26-27), the sequence of iambic feet which is related to the fact that the poetic voice is talking about the typical heteronormative way of preparing a sexual act. Furthermore, at the end of the poem, the lines “in the báth, | or to fíll | / that gáp | betwéen | the sún | day pá | pers and lúnch” (29-30) feature a mix of both iambic and anapestic feet, but in this context, the poem is talking about female masturbation, and there is therefore a mix of the female discourse and the phenotext. This not only suggests that the chora disrupts the phenotext, but it also states, somehow, that there is a space for the genotext even in a space dominated by the phenotext and the Name-Of-The-Father. This might also be symbolic of Adcock’s way of trying to show that there is space for female, bodily language, even in the patriarchal discourse. The so-called “gap” she mentions becomes symbolic of the woman and her language, as it is found there; it is found where patriarchal discourse cannot reach. Adcock might find herself in the middle of the male-dominated world, but by using her female voice, she reaches into the gap and emphasizes that it does, in fact, exist and that there is a space for woman outside the shadow of man. And therefore, jouissance happens as a kind of epiphany when the genotext and the maternal break with the phenotext and the paternal, and this is what the poem does both on a textual level in its symbolism and ideas, but also on a prosodic level when it comes to the text itself. 18 The title of the poem, “Against Coupling,” clearly reflects its central theme: the speaker’s advocacy for female liberation, particularly in relation to traditional expectations of a woman’s role within a heteronormative relationship. “Coupling” refers to the act of pairing or joining, and Adcock repeatedly challenges the assumption that such union should be the normative ideal. Throughout the poem, she critiques the repression of female identity as a product of patriarchal domination, not only at the level of personal relationships but as a deeply internalized societal structure. In this context, being “against coupling” demands the recognition of female identity and voice as autonomous and distinct from the male, rather than subordinate or derivative. Liberation from the expectation of being merely an extension of a man allows a woman to rediscover and assert her own authentic voice. Thus, the poem serves as a call to action, urging women to claim visibility and agency where patriarchal discourse has traditionally rendered them invisible. 2.2. “Smokers for Celibacy” While “Against Coupling” shows explicitly the idea of female masturbation as a form of empowerment, other of Adcock’s poems revolve around the same notion, but in a more indirect manner. So, for example, “Smokers for Celibacy” is a poem about the unacknowledged dangers and implications of sex in contrast to the commonly acknowledged idea that smoking is harmful and bad. What should be considered when reading this poem is, again, the contrast to what patriarchal discourse offers, that is, the symbolic meaning of cigarettes. The very first couplet of the poem offers the reader the general message of the poem: “some of us are a little tired of hearing that cigarettes kill. / We’d like to warn you about another way of making yourself ill” (1-2) followed by an enumeration of sex-related diseases. The poetic voice then concludes in the third couplet that, “if you want to avoid turning into physical wrecks / what you should give up is not smoking but sex” (5-6). The problem does not lie in sex per se, however, but in the cause that leads to these diseases: they are ‘still being generously spread around by men’s cocks” (18). It is at this point, which is more or less the middle of the poem, that the wording seems to become symbolic, and the cigarettes and the poem in itself gain a metaphorical meaning. The sentence “some of us aren’t too keen on the thought of micro-organisms travelling up into our brain / and giving us General Paralysis of the Insane” (19-20) refers to one of the effects of syphilis: dementia paralytica, a process combining mental deterioration leading 19 to dementia and physical symptoms like paralysis, which usually has a fatal outcome. Adcock’s use of the image of brain infection through conventional heterosexual relations could be seen as establishing a link between the dangers of physical disease and the psychological or ideological dangers women face when they submit to patriarchal norms. Again, the notion of female subordination to the patriarchal discourse appears in a negative context, and the reader can connect this notion of a change in the central nervous system to the blurred eyes of the woman in “Against Coupling”; in both examples, the woman will not be truly in touch with herself due to male interference with her body. The poetic voice rejects this subordination by contrasting the sexual act with smoking. Cigarettes also seem to gain an added, symbolic meaning. They are the alternative to the other object of “cylindrical shape” —that is, the penis—and are described as something sterilized and clean, non-aggressive (they “lie there ... in their packs until you call on one of them” and will never be “guilty of rape,” 24-26) that helps to relax. The cigarette could therefore be understood symbolically as a dildo and smoking as masturbation. In the same way that smoking cigarettes is commonly seen as something bad (and indulging in it as a “guilty pleasure”), female masturbation is often seen as something shameful. However, the poem does not agree with this shameful notion; rather, it emphasizes how cigarettes will not “go in for sexual harassment and threats, / or worry about their performance” (27-28) and—like in “Against Coupling”—they will not bore the women and “keep you awake all night telling you the story of their life” (29). The last couplet sums up the thesis in the poem: “Altogether, we’ve come to the conclusion that sex is a drag. / Just give us a fag” (33-34). As in “Against Coupling” the patriarchal notion of a sexual relationship is related to the idea of something tedious and not beneficial to the woman, whereas the “fag” (i.e. the cigarette or pleasure outside of the heteronormative relationship) is what women actually want and something rather harmless to the female body. An important difference in this poem from “Against Coupling,” which is worth mentioning, is the speaker and the addressee. The poetic voice in “Against Coupling” seems to be alone and frustrated, trying to be heard by women and trying to convince women of her idea. But in “Smokers for Celibacy,” the poetic voice is a “we,” indicating a sort of community. The unity of the “we,” the so-called ‘smokers,” together with the language used in the poem gives the notion of a demonstration speech at a protest, but addressing “you,” which seems to be other women they want to educate about their own bodies — a part of the discourse that has been censored by patriarchy. The notion of 20 sisterhood, women supporting each other, is therefore connected to the idea of how to get in contact with the female voice through real female pleasure. It seems to be a way of showing the power of the female not only when in contact with the bodily, but also when it is heard and respected, which has often not been the case in patriarchal discourse. Another important notion found in “Smokers for Celibacy” is the idea of the “inbetweenness,” as mentioned by Cixous, as the writing in some way seems to be bisexual, using elements of patriarchal discourse while also using feminine discourse. This is also related to Kristeva’s theory of how the chora, and therefore the genotext, intervenes and disrupts the Symbolic Order of the phenotext. This mix is seen in its metrical structure, as the poem is written in unrhythmical couplets and it is therefore not quite free verse, hence not completely free from conventional male poetry but the rhyme also does not quite limit the form as to say that it is a conventional poem. The poem is also not a syllabic poem like “Against Coupling,” as each line seems to follow its own syllabic pattern according to what sounds more natural in a certain context. This, perhaps, shows the “inbetweenness” that women (according to Cixous) are more willingly taking, and by embracing this, their chanting becomes more and more powerful, reaching a conclusion and reaching the ability to demand and listen to themselves, and they escape the role they were given by the patriarchal discourse. This could be the point of jouissance because it is here that the genotext not only disrupts the phenotext, but it breaks through it. The in-betweenness might also be shown in the use of the cigarette as a phallic symbol. The point of denouncing sexual relationships in a heteronormative way is not, as Cixous would argue, to castrate man, and the symbol of the penis is, therefore, not necessarily negative: it is rather the relation to patriarchal standards which is criticized. By using the cigarette symbolically, Adcock creates a non-phallogocentric penis; one which will not bore the woman; one which is not harmful to the body; one which will not rape, harass, and/or threaten. This culminates in the idea of how women are ready to accept the in-betweenness, the pleasure in their bisexuality, but only when it is not controlled by patriarchal standards and power differences. 2.3. “Choices” The notion of cigarettes is repeated in another poem by Adcock called “Choices.” The poem is about figuring out, or not figuring out, how to choose the right book, the right outfit, or the right man to bring on a desert island. What connects this poem to “Against Coupling” and ‘smokers for Celibacy” is the third and last stanza, in which the 21 poetic voice talks about her imperfect/perfect choices: the outfit that the poetic voice ends up with is what is redeemed as unfit and laughable by society; the book she brings is a blank notebook; instead of a man, she brings “a sea-and-sun-proof crate of cigarettes” (19). All these elements gain a symbolic meaning. For example, clothing in Western culture is supposed to express a person’s identity, but at the same time, style is heavily influenced by norms created by society. Especially women have had to dress according to male standards, so for the poetic voice to end with a non-conventional outfit instead of what society dictates to be perfect, is a symbolic liberation. The empty notebook instead of the perfect book, which would “drive you crazy within six months” (line 3), symbolizes the same notion but is more directly related to patriarchal discourse. Cixous believed that to get free from the patriarchal discourse, the woman would have to write herself, and by having a blank notebook, the poetic voice seems to be ready to reject male language and start writing in her own female language, and she is, therefore, symbolically declaring her willingness to emancipate. Lastly, she chooses cigarettes over “just one man” (line 8). As in “Smokers for Celibacy,” here cigarettes have a rather symbolic meaning too. The poetic voice says that the male would have criticized women for smoking and “lecture you / on how he managed to give them up” (lines 20-21). The speaker’s resistance against male lecturing can be interpreted as the expression of her rejection of the patriarchal discourse, which seeks to eliminate or at least demean the idea of female pleasure not involving the male genitalia. Choosing the cigarette—the non-patriarchal phallus—over the penis—the real patriarchal phallus—is, therefore, yet again a way of female liberation and emancipation. This poem is a true free verse poem, as there are no patterns in either the rhyming scheme or the meter. It is also not a syllabic poem as the syllable length of the verses varies greatly. One rhetorical device that the poem does make use of is enjambment. An example of this is seen in the first stanza when the poem goes, “just as there was never one all-purpose / ideal outfit, unquestionably right / for wearing at the ball on the Titanic” (4-6). Since the poem is a sort of build-up of thoughts, the use of enjambment emphasizes this idea of a stream of consciousness. In this sense, its enjambement could be interpreted as a sort of rejection of the norms of language connected to the phenotext. It also emphasizes the main theme of the poem, namely, to be skeptical about what is supposedly the ideals created by society, and it is the intervention of the genotext that helps emphasize this idea. 22 2.4. “Incident” In “Incident,” cigarettes are mentioned too, but this poem is different from the others discussed previously. Here, the poetic voice addresses a person lying on the beach, “circled by dead shells” (3). The person’s gender is never specified: their gender may not be relevant, since the person is the vehicle for a string of symbolic references. If at all, from the image of the cigarette at the end of the poem, which the other person smokes while the speaker is almost drowned, it could be inferred that the person is male (and the cigarette a phallic symbol here), or an entity that seeks to smother female sexuality. According to J.E. Cirlot’s Dictionary of Symbols (1958), shells, and especially those connected with water images, are symbolic of fertility and the goddess Aphrodite. The fact that they are dead shells, then, seems to foreshadow a certain darkness towards the idea of fertility, love, female beauty, and pleasure. Yet, at the beginning of the poem, the speaker is invited to “lie down” and relax, and they start talking and smoking, something the poetic voice calls “easy” (7)— although the sea is “grovelling” behind them. Suddenly, the speaker falls asleep, into “a cavernous dream of falling” (10). Cave myths, Alice’s rabbit hole, and Orpheus’s “spiral” path are mentioned as if they had been in the dream: they are all related to a place which is not the real world. The cave myths are commonly related to the idea of only seeing shadows of the real thing; the rabbit hole is a distorted and alternate reality; Orpheus is in the underworld, where he descended trying to save Eurydice. Connected to the story of Orpheus, there is the notion of “danger and doubt” (15), which is what makes the poetic voice wake up. She finds herself wet, surrounded by water, while the addressee is sitting “on the grey sand / waiting for the lapping tide to take me: / watching, and lighting a cigarette” (18-20), while waiting for her to, perhaps, drown. The foreshadowing of the beginning, therefore, seems to give the idea of a “you” who is harmful towards female and fertile energy —which would be the poetic voice in this case. This poem, as well as the previous one, does not follow conventional poetry rules, and it is, therefore, classified as a free-verse poem; that is it too shows many instances of enjambment, such as in “I came to you / and you said, reaching to take my hand, / ‘Lie down’” (3-5); however, in this case, the enjambment functions to recreate this idea of something unstable and uncertain —exactly how the poetic voice feels at the end of the poem. 23 The poem can be read in a symbolic way, and perhaps that is Adcock’s intention. The addressee could be read as a source of anti-feminine energy. At first, the references to white sand and welcoming smiles suggest innocence and warmth but, like the cave myths, this is just a shadow of reality, because after she wakes up, the sand has turned grey and the other person is smoking apart. Cirlot mentions that grey is often symbolic of egoism and neutralization. Perhaps, that is what the cigarette means too: if the cigarette represents the female pleasure not connected to the male genitalia, then the smoker has taken that away from the woman and attempts to neutralize it, so that it is reappropriated by heteropatriarchal discourse, while the woman is kept in the cave. What is important to notice here is the fact that she wakes up. Perhaps, it is actually the waves and the sea that save her — a symbol which Adcock also uses in “Against Coupling” in connection with the profound maternal aspect which can be found deep down in the woman. That is, she finally wakes up, sees him, and realizes the truth. In a way, she fights the danger and doubt in the underworld, and she breaks free from the cave myth and sees the true image of what is in front of her, that is, oppression. 24 CONCLUSION In many of Adcock’s poems, men are often generalized and looked upon as something negative, and although “Against Coupling” was written around 1971, I believe that it is useful for the so-called I-hate-men-movement which originally stems from Pauline Harmange’s 2019 blog post about misandry. In this context, men again are generalized and referred to as a group, but as the article “Yes, All Men” explains: when women make statements like “men do X,” “I hate men,” “men are trash” or “men suck,” they are not critiquing the male gender as a whole, but rather the privileged position that the gender occupies and the harm that it causes women. It is a criticism of oppression, which is pervasive in almost every facet of our lives. When women make these statements, they do not literally mean every single member of the privileged gender. (Pejchinovska et al.) That means that when men are generalized and criticized, it is the role and privilege of the role that is being criticized and not every male person. This therefore emphasizes the idea found in “Against Coupling” that the problem is patriarchy and how women are looked upon through patriarchy because, as Cixous said, men who are not afraid of femininity, the ones who support us, listen to us, and give us a space to write and talk freely, are not the problem. As seen in “Smokers for Celibacy,” the non-patriarchal phallus is not problematic; the problem comes from the phallus —or its owners— which puts us in a box, labels us, silences us, and takes ownership of us because they see us as objects belonging to their inherited power. Likewise, in “Choices,” the woman wants to escape that one man who is supposed to be her perfect match, because she knows that she does not need him or what he represents to be complete. And in “Incident,” the solution is given: the poetic voice might be having a rebirth in the waves, and she tells us to wake up and see the reality from beyond those men who believe they have the right to drown us and steal our cigarettes. What makes Adcock’s poetry so profound is the fact that she not only manages to convey these messages on a semantic level, but she also shows how the chora — the maternal, pre-language element we all carry in us — can be powerful enough to break through the norms of language itself. In her poetry, the genotext not only disrupts the phenotext, but it is predominant on countless occasions. Adcock creates a female discourse; she not only promotes écriture feminine, she manages to reach it herself. 25 Adcock is, therefore, in my opinion, not preaching misandry, but she is simply advocating for the acceptance of women as a different entity from men, as the woman is, in fact, not a lesser version of a man. She is different, but not inferior. She is not just the other part of a couple. When she is set free from the socially constructed constraints created by patriarchy, she can emerge in the gap and discover what she really is, in a place where she is allowed to use her body and demystify it. She can become her own jouissance, and through the functions of language as well as the metaphorical and symbolic language, that is exactly what Adcock herself does; she reaches into the gap and discovers what the woman is or can be when she is not subject to the patriarchal discourse and in this metaphorical masturbation, she shows what could be “real” equality, namely the female right to be more than just part of a couple.