466156

Composing in a Material World: Women Writing in Space and Time Author(s): Anne Aronson Source: Rhetoric Review, Vol.
17, No. 2 (Spring, 1999), pp. 282-299 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/466156 . Accessed: 14/02/2014 07:59
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ANNE ARONSON MetropolitanState University
Composing in a Material World: Women Writing in Space and Time

Certainlythe most famous comments on writing as a materialact occurring in material conditions are those of Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own. When Woolf says "it is necessary to have five hundred [pounds] a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry,"she means to be taken quite literally;women cannot write unless they have both a place to go that is away from unwanted intrusions and an income that makes them independentfrom men and thereby grants them time to write. The lock on the door means that the writer literally cannot be interrupted by a child in need, a husband with a question, a neighbor with a story. Woolf indicates, of course, that the room and the lock are also symbolic; the five hundreda year, she says, "standsfor the power to contemplate,the lock on the door means the power to think for oneself' (110).' Almost sixty years later in "The Fisherwoman'sDaughter,"Ursula Le Guin revisited Woolf's argumentabout the necessary materialconditions for women writers.Le Guin begins by documentingthe experiences of women who did not have rooms of their own. She describes, for example, the experiences of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote in the dining room where, she says, "there was all the setting of tables and clearing up of tables and dressing and washing of children,and everythingelse going on" (qtd. in Le Guin 220). In contrast,points out Le Guin, Joseph Conrad benefited from a wife "whose conscience was engaged to the full, hour after hour, day after day" in meeting the writer'sneeds (223). Le Guin acknowledgesthe gross inequity in the writing situationsof male and female writers, but she argues that women need not have rooms of their own-material conditions for composing that are free from domestic intrusions-in order to write. She describes, for example, the writer Margaret Oliphantwho felt that "her writing profited from the difficult, obscure, chancy connection between the art work and emotional/manual/managerial complex of skills and tasks called 'housework,' and that to sever that connection would put the writing itself at risk, would make it, in her word, unnatural" (222). Le Guin that to write about a is to the woman write about argues being very experiences of disruptionand chaos that constitute the materialenvironmentfor composing. In other words, one can write and bring up childrenat the same time; in fact, the raising of childrenenriches the writing.
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Le Guin concludes her essay with a rather bold statement about the necessary materialconditions for women writing: The one thing a writerhas to have is not balls. Nor is it a child-free space. Nor is it even, speaking strictly on the evidence, a room of her own, though that is an amazing help ... The one thing a writer has to have is a pencil and some paper.That's enough so long as she knows that she and she alone is in charge of that pencil, and responsible, she and she alone, for what it writes on the paper.(236) This passage is a directreferenceto Woolf's "Professionsfor Women,"in which the narratorbanishes the "Angel in the House," the over-accommodating,selfa la Conrad's spouse, who worries entirely too effacing mother/wife/daughter, much about what othersthink of her. To be "in charge of thatpencil," for Woolf and for Le Guin, is to act with agency as a writer,to fight the "phantoms" who would try to steer her away from "telling the truthabout my own experiences as a body" ("Professions"241). In other words, Le Guin argues that the material conditions for composing don't matteras long as the woman is not oppressed by voices that would distract her from her goals as a writer. She gently and eloquently parts ways from Woolf, her foremother,in insisting that the room of one's own need not be locked, that indeed thereneed not be a room at all. Woolf and Le Guin address the struggles of women writers who seek to share their work with a public audience and to have some impact on literaryor scholarly history. Their comments, however, are just as apt for women writers without writerly aspirations-undergraduate students, for example, who are often requiredto write in bulk for their college classes. Adult women students, like the writers described by Woolf and Le Guin, are women writing in the midst of-not on the thresholdof-a life. For the adult woman studentreturning to college, as for HarrietBeecher Stowe, there is always the "setting of tables" and the "washing and dressing of children," activities that can compromise efforts to write a researchpaper as well as a novel. And for many students, the setting of tables is only a minor mattercomparedto the strainof working 40 or more hours a week, caring for children and aging parents, contributingto the and, of course, taking one community, maintaininga home and transportation, or more college classes. As a teacher of adults, I often wonderhow my students find time and space-mental and physical-to think extensively about a topic and write about it. I wonder if their attentionis ever really fixed on the writing task at hand, or if they can only be partiallypresent,experiencingan intellectual and sensory fragmentation that seriously compromises their capabilities. I
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wonder, in other words, what materialconditions are necessary for these women in their efforts to write successfully in college. The purpose of this article is to examine the debate between Woolf and Le Guin over the necessary material conditions for composing as it is played out The article explores within one group of writers-adult women undergraduates. how the structureof adult women's lives affects their processes of writing for college. I am particularlyinterestedin how the materialconditions of space and time affect the specific moment of composing for these women. In what sorts of spaces do they write? What are the quantitativeand qualitative dimensions of of their days? Is time for this space? How does writing fit into the time structure writing really devoted to writing, or are these women multitasking?How do other family membersregardthe time women devote to writingfor school? Can women who are locked into roles involving virtually constant contact with others in spaces that are not their own function adequately,even excellently, as writers?My assumptionin asking these questions is that space and time are sites where power relations are negotiated. Workers,after all, compete to move from cubicle to enclosed office; family members jockey for time to themselves. Writing, particularlyfor those without privilege, does not rise above this fray, but occurs in the midst of what are sometimes bitterbattles over time and space. Gender is one such power relation that shapes the material conditions for composing. And gender is particularlysignificant when writing occurs in the home, as it often does for adult students. In orderto pursue these questions about gender and the materialconditions for composing, I interviewed seven adult women students about the concrete situationsin which they do their writing for college. All the women are students at the university where I teach, an urban state institution that serves almost exclusively adult students (the average student age is 34). I chose women who represent a range of writing experiences and abilities (from basic to professional) and whose home situations reflect a wide range of material conditions, including living alone, living with a partner only, living with a partner and children, single parenting, and caring for an aging parent in the home. The ages range from the early 20s to the early 50s. Employment status varies as well: Two women work full time outside the home, two work parttime outside the home, one stays home with three small children, one is on AFDC, and one receives funding from a displaced-workergrant that enables her to attend school full time without holding a job. Five of the women are white; two are African-American.Economic status ranges from middle class to poverty. Although the interviewees representa variety of experiences and identities, the cases are admittedly biased toward women with partners and dependentswomen enmeshed in multiple relationships and their accompanying
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responsibilities.Had the study focused on single women, or on women without childrenor dependentparents,the results might have been quite different. Before doing the interviews, I conducted a survey on the material conditions for composing among studentsin several writing classes. Although I did a gender analysis of these surveys, most of the discussion in this paper is based on the interviews. I will, however, occasionally refer to the surveys when the results are relevant. The Gendering of Space The "context"of writing has been much debated in the last 20 years; while "context" used to be defined in largely linguistic and cognitive terms, compositionistshave now turnedtheir gaze almost exclusively to a sociocultural understandingof context. Linda Brodkey's important 1986 College English article, "Modernism and the Scene(s) of Writing" defines the shift from cognitive to social context in spatial terms. She contraststhe modernist"scene" of writing-the isolated attic or garret, where the writer (always male) is imprisoned by language, possessed by writing-to Woolf's room of one's own-a room that is connected to the materialand social reality beyond its four walls, where the writer (conceived as female) takes full responsibility for what she writes: "He is elected to write, she elects to write; the scene mystifies writing, the room demystifies it; he is alone, she is in the company of other writers(writingis a house with many rooms);he is product,she is process" (71). Brodkey proposes that the cognitivist approach to composition is merely a newer version of the romanticized "scene" of writing. She argues for a more social theory and pedagogy for writing, one that takes place in Woolf's "room" rather than in the modernists' "scene." Her analysis of Woolf is particularly relevant to a discussion of materialityand writing because it clarifies Woolf's distinction between material solitude (she must be physically removed from friends, lovers, parents, children, and house painters in order to compose) and the necessary sociality of the writer (she is in conversation with other voices, even as she occupies solitary space). Brodkey's focus on space as both materiallyand metaphoricallyrelevant to the study of writing is relatively unusual among composition scholars.2Elaine Chin makes this point in arguing that compositionists need to expand their common definitions of context to include "the bodily experience of occupying spaces and times that constitutethe materialworld from which writerscompose" (226). In order to do this, Chin examines the physical layout of a graduate journalismprogramthat serves doctoral studentspursuingacademic careers and master's students pursuing professional careers. The layout reinforces a
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hierarchy already at work in the program: While the doctoral students are centrally located and have easy access to faculty members and to phones, the dozen or so master's students are isolated in a wing of the building where they rarely see faculty and where they are forced to share a phone in a hallway. The sharedphone is particularlyproblematic;the students have difficulty contacting sources when doing news stories for their classes. Chin argues that the physical space of the programaffects how the master's students conceive of themselves as journalistsand how they performon assigned writing tasks. She says that the materialenvironmentin which students write forms "the basis of a social 'text' writers read in making sense of their position within the situation for writing" (472); in other words, the material conditions contribute to students' of their identities as writers. interpretations Chin's research suggests that access to space as a resource for composing will differ between groups depending on their power and privilege. Space, as Julia T. Woods says, "is a primarymeans by which a culturedesignates who is important,who has privilege" (160). The large office, the sprawling house, the acres of land all embody privileged status, just as the tiny, densely populated and the crampedcubicle embody a lack of privilege. Certainlygender apartment is one area in which power and privilege are distributedunevenly; it follows, then, that the bodily experience of composing within specific spaces will be gendered. One way in which space is gendered is that women and men often have unequal access to privacy. This point is amply demonstratedin the history of American architecture.Victorian homes and their smaller-scale imitations, the "cottageresidences,"were built with special rooms and spaces for each gender. While the women's quarterswere usually a parlor or drawing room, the men's quarterswere a smoking room or library.The parlor or drawing room was an open space designed for social interaction.The library,on the other hand, was often in the back of the house and had a separate entrance, so that "the gentleman could come and go without disturbingthe family" (Spain 122). In other words, male space was private,a retreatfrom the family; female space was open to human traffic-in fact, it was designed for such traffic. The is "Dad's workshop,"a space that is contemporaryanalogy to this arrangement from in the or the main flow of activity in the basement usually garage, away house. Even when there is no special place for the man of the house, "it is more common for a man to be allowed to hide behind his newspaper,surrounded by a is 'do that often his wife" not disturb' enforced by symbolic atmosphere (Sapiro 300). In the insidious pop psycho/mythology of Venus and Mars, men need to return to their "caves"-physical and psychological spaces where they regenerateafter a hard day's work; women and children are advised to keep out
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of this sacred space. Women's need for privacy and space for rejuvenationis ignored. The Gendering of Time Le Guin's account of Stowe, Conrad, and Oliphantdepicts a rigid division of labor in the home that has been remarkablytenacious duringthe last century despite considerable social changes. This division of labor translates into the concrete materialityof time: Women spend more time on domestic tasks than men do, even when women work comparable hours outside the home. Men's contributionsto these domestic responsibilitiesmay have increased,but the gap is still substantial. Robinson and Godbey found that men's contribution to family care increased from 15 percent in the 1960s to 33 percent in the 1980s; the change in men's contributions over 20 years amounted to only four additionalhours of family care per week (104-05). Hochschild reached similar conclusions in her researchon the "second shift"-the houseworkthat needs to be done after a day on the job is complete. She found that in only 20 percent of the couples she intervieweddid the man sharehousehold responsibilitiesequally with his spouse. One of the women Hochschild interviewed put the problem succinctly: "I do my half, I do half of his half, and the rest doesn't get done" (259).3 The gendering of time, however, is not only a matterof quantity.It is also about the different ways individuals experience time. In her study of unemployed women and time, Karen Davies identifies the dominantconcept of time in Western cultures as clock time or linear time. Arguing that time is socially constructed, she situates the origin of clock time in the medieval Benedictine monasteries. Benedictines, she says, introducednew approachesto time in their rigid adherence to scheduled activities, their strong emphasis on punctuality, and their introductionand disseminationof the mechanical clock. E. P. Thompson has documented how the industrial revolution furtheredthe supremacyof linear time in that farmers turnedfactory workers had to switch of from an understandingof time as seasonal and cyclical, to an understanding time as mechanical and clock-bound. Thompson says, "In mature capitalist society all time must be consumed, marketed,put to use; it is offensive for the labour force merely to 'pass the time"' (qtd. in Davies 90-91). Taylorism, the "scientific" approach to management developed by Fredrick Winslow Taylor boasted the prolific use of time studies (and later time motion studies) in which each activity involved in assembling a product was isolated and analyzed for how much was produced within specific time units. Clock time, it seems, is a powerful instrumentof capitalism.
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In contrast to clock time, according to Davies, is "cyclical" time, "taskoriented" time, or "process"time: "Under a cyclical time consciousness, it is assumed that people pace the events of their lives accordingto local and natural rhythmsand thatthe futureis a perpetualrecapitulationof the present.A precise time measurementis superfluous.On a day to day level, people are not subject then to clock time but rather to a time that is task or process oriented"(19). Davies argues that the unpaid work that goes on within the home-caring for children, partners,parents-operates more on process time than on clock time. Although we may try to confine caretakingtasks to the limits of clock time, it is difficult to do so. When a child needs to talk about a crisis at school, we cannot allot a time limit of fifteen minutes to the problem,althoughwe are often forced to do so. Caring for others, says Davies, puts women more than men into a conflictual relationshipwith the dominant linear model of time: "I assume that both men and women do not and cannot freely choose how to use and structure relations which have their time, but that for women, there are specific structural for is how their time used" (38).4 special implications An ideology that favors clock time over process time informs most institutions,includingthe schools. The school day is divided into units; students punch in and punch out; the precise number of days of the school year is uniform within a district;teachers and administrators complain that there isn't cover the This time to curriculum. latter enough problem is discussed in a 1994 the titled Prisoners Time National Commission on Time and of by report the The concludes that school report Learning. year should be expanded to accommodatethe learningneeds of students, a solution thoroughlygroundedin a linear understandingof time (Slattery). While clock time pervades K-12 education, it also rules at the college level. Take, for example, the student evaluation forms that are distributed at the end of most courses. At our institutionthere are numerousquestions on this form that addresstime: "Wasthe syllabus distributedby the end of the second class session?";"Did the class meet for the full three hours?";"How many hours did you put into this course outside of the class time?" A successful course, it is implied, is a course that uses time well, that producesthe most learningin the time allotted.5 All students, then, are prisoners of time; clock time predominatesin their work lives and in their academic lives. But because women are the principal caretakersin the home, they are more likely to experience a conflict when they compose between the clock-dominated work of doing school, and the processdominatedwork of caring for those aroundthem. Davies traces a similarconflict in her discussion of women involved in caretakingprofessions such as nursing and home health care; she finds that they are constantly strugglingbetween their employers' emphasison care as a commodity delivered on clock time, and their
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own sense that care is a process that cannot be accommodatedwith a linear system. Davies' theory and research provide a helpful framework for understandinghow the material condition of time can create conflict for the adult woman student who has multiple caretaking responsibilities inside and outside the home. Writing in Space The women I interviewed were concerned about both the quantityand the quality of the spaces in which they did their writing. One studentin particular, Pat, felt that she suffered from a lack of space for writing. Pat is a 43-year-old with her two teenage woman on AFDC who shares a 550-square-footapartment children. When she first returnedto college, she put her desk-an old drawing board-in the living room, but she soon discovered that she couldn't concentrate with the noise and activity of the household aroundher. She also tried putting her desk in her kids' room, but that arrangement put unacceptablerestrictionson the times of day that she could write. She finally moved her desk into her tiny bedroom, which now consists of a mattresson the floor, a drumon the wall, and a desk. The surface area of the desk is barely adequate;she sometimes has to shove a book aside in order to move her computer's mouse. The space is also difficult because her bedroom wall divides her from a noisy neighbor, and the sound insulation isn't particularlygood. "It's not really my bedroom; it's my work room.... I don't rest well because my work is always there."As a single mother on AFDC, she simply does not have the financial resources to rent or own a space that might more adequatelyaccommodateher needs as a student. Another theme that emerges from the interviews is space and privacy. As the researchon space and gender would predict,most of the women in this study lack a private space to write and study. Although several, like Pat, write in their bedrooms, these rooms are by no means off limits to other family members. Anothercommon place for writing is the kitchen. Martais a 41-year-old woman who works full time (and sometimes overtime) and does all her writing for school in the kitchen, a space she shares with four other membersof her family. Like Pat, she suffers from a lack of adequatespace. She can't spreadher books out when she's studying, and every time she finishes working,she has to put her books and papersaway to make room for other uses of the kitchentable. Privacy is also a major issue for Sandy, a woman in her late 40s who takes care of her invalid 85-year-old father. Although Sandy has a small office, she does most of her writing at the kitchen table, so she can hear her father and check on him every few minutes. Paula, finally, who stays at home with three children under the age of six, does some of her writing in the living room while her childrenare
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watching videos. Needless to say, she has neither quiet nor privacy when she composes. These women's struggles are reminiscent of those of Maxine Hairston,who wrote her thesis while seated in the back seat of the family car. Writing in this space was the only way that she could have privacy and quiet while at the same time watching her children. (Crowley 203). Hairston, however, may have been more successful in creatinga room of her own than the women I interviewed, whose spaces are entirely permeable to the bodies and voices of family members. The genderingof space was most apparentfor Carol, a white woman in her mid thirties who works part time in public relations. Carol lives with her husbandand their four children (ages 9-17). Her husband is a design engineer, who does some of his work in the evenings at home. Carol also does her writing for college at home in the evenings. Interestingly, her husband has his own office in the basement of the house while Carol has a small space off the in the house is that Dad's office is off limits to the bedroom.The understanding children,but that Mom's work space is fair game. Carol used to put a "Do Not Disturb"sign up on her door, but recently she has put the sign up less frequently because she feels too guilty about closing her childrenout so forcefully. Another discrepancyin the household is that Carol's husbandhas a much more powerful computer; Carol understands that her husband needs a computer with sophisticatedcapabilities for his work, but there is still a trace of resentment when she talks aboutthis technological imbalance. When the women in my study write in public spaces within the home, they not only face the challenges of trying to concentratein a bustling environment, but they are also subject to surveillanceby others. Carol, for example, remarks that her kids periodically peek in on her "to be sure I'm alive and breathing." Their gaze ensures that Carol never strays too far from her maternal role. Surveillance can also pose a threat. Several years ago I interviewed an adult studentfor a similarstudy who tried to avoid writingin the dining room because she feared that she would leave her writing on the table and her roommates would read it before she was ready to shareit. A lack of privacy may not only be a violation of personal writing space but may also lead to a violation of the writing itself. Surveillance is a form of control; the woman writing in public spaces within the home can never confidently remove herself from the discipliningeyes of others who feel entitled to her space, her time, her body, and her writing. Only one of the women I interviewedwas entirely satisfied with her writing space. Candaceis in her early 50s and sharesa large home with her husband;her two children are grown and living on their own. Candace has her own office with a window in the basement of their house. She is the only woman I
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interviewedwho mentionedthat she has some freedom of movement aroundher writing; she sometimes stops off at the libraryon her way home from work if she's having problems getting started on a writing project. Her work space is plentiful, quiet, and private:"At this point in my life I have complete control of whetherthere are distractionsor not." Candace has a number of privileges that distinguish her from other interviewees: she is firmly in the middle class and owns a spacious home; her children are grown and out of the house; she works part time; and, perhapsmost importantly,her husband is supportiveof her and shares fully in household responsibilities. She says of her husband: "When I made the decision to go back to school, he wanted me to do that. He thought it would make me happy."Her situation suggests that a less gender-differentiated household in combination with significant material resources (including those resultingfrom the emptying of the nest) create ideal circumstancesfor writing. At the end of the interviews, I asked the women to imagine a better space for writing. Candace imagines that she would move her work space from the basement (which has limited naturallight) to a porch upstairs that she and her husband now use for reading and relaxing; her image is concrete, specific, realizable. For the other women in the study, however, this question evoked rathervague images. Pat longs for a writing space that would only be available in a largerhome: "It would be nicer to have a separatespace for writing, so that I couldn'tprocrastinate. It would be away from the rest of life. Maybe connected to my home, but separate."She imagines something comparable,perhaps,to the male enclave of den or workshop.Marta's imagined writing space is even more vague: she says that her family would have to buy a largerhome if she were to have a larger space for writing. For Pat and Marta,a lack of materialresources makes it difficult for them to imagine in any detail a better writing space. Paula encountersanotherkind of conflict when she tries to imagine a better space for writing: "I could move to the office in the basement, but that wouldn't work very well. If the kids woke up, I couldn't hear them very well." Paula begins to constructan image of a better writing space, only to tear it apart.Space for her has become saturatedwith the needs of others;she cannot yet imagine a room of her own. Writing in Time Given the prevalence of linear time in our culture, it is not surprisingthat interviewees' writing sessions are organized around the clock. Some of the stories of how women squeeze time out of their days to do their writing for classes are quite amazing. Paula, for example, sometimes sets her clock for 3:00 a.m. so that she can find a time that is free from interruptions to do her writing.
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She then goes to sleep for a couple of hours before waking up at 6:00 to take care of the children. Charlene, the only woman I interviewed who does her writing for school at work, goes to her job early, squeezing a few minutes in before the employees she supervises start to hammer her with problems and questions. Marta's schedule amply demonstratesthe conflict between clock time and process time in the lives of adult women students.Her day begins at 6:00 a.m., when she wakes up to get ready for work. She works an 8-hour shift and is home around4:30. Although her husbandis also home at this time, she is responsible for household duties, which include cooking dinnerand washing her oldest son's football uniformon a daily basis. On any given night, Martaor her husbandwill have to transporttheir kids to a sports event; on Saturdays,they typically have two games. They also end up giving rides to other kids: "We're the parentswho give the rides to other kids. I'd ratherdo that than have my kids alone with people I don't know." After dinner,Martais sometimes able to rest for aboutan hour. This break enables her to stay up later doing work for her classes. She tends to begin her writing at about 10:00 at night, after the kids are in bed. She finds it difficult to work earlier in the evening, when the boys are frequently interruptingher. On weekdays, she does her writing until around 12:30, when she finds that she's "not thinking anymore. My body shuts down." On Fridays and Saturday nights, when she isn't working an extra weekend shift, she sometimes stays up until 4:00 a.m. doing academicwork. Marta's life is immensely complicated. She is a parent, partner, friend, worker,and student.Each piece of her life demandsa significant amountof time and energy. Like many of the women in this study, Martaexperiences a conflict between writing and caring. Although at an earlier point in her education she tried to write during the time her kids were awake, she eventually gave up this The plan, and now writes and studies late into the night to avoid interruption. in division of labor her home makes her burden all the more She acute. gendered describes her spouse as "an old-fashioned guy" who is not accustomed to household responsibilitiesoutside of doing the dishes. Martadoes almost all the household work plus she is a student. Her husband, who is virtually free of household and otherresponsibilitiesoutside of work, has time on his hands. Marta's choice to write late at night rather than risk interruptionmakes sense. Of all the problems students identified in the material circumstancesof their writing, the problem of unwanted interruptions loomed the largest. tend to fragmentthe time devoted to writing, and they are likely to Interruptions decrease the overall amount of time available for writing. While interruptions may vary from work phone calls to diaper changes, the women I interviewed identify interruptionsrelated to care of family members as the principal issue.
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As KarenDavies' study suggests, the needs of children,partners,and parentsdo not fit well into the time painstakingly carved out for an activity like writing. Interruptionsare the prime site where clock time and process time come into conflict. Examples of interruptionsabound in the interviews. A case in point is Sandy, the woman who cares for her ailing father. Although there is a nurse in the house part time and her husband and daughter are helpful, Sandy is her father's primary caretaker.Her father is virtually immobile and must be fed, assisted in the bathroom, and bathed. When Sandy composes at the kitchen table, her writing sessions are highly fragmented.She stops writing to help her fatherdo something,to check on him, or to answer phone calls at least every 15 minutes. It's also difficult for her to set aside a chunk of time for writing: "I don't even try to work unless I have a half hour or 45 minutes." Carol is interruptedfrequentlyby one or more of her four children. She calculates that she is interrupted up to ten times during a writing session of two to three hours: It's not that any one kid does it a lot. But every one "We counted it once..... does it two or threetimes ... Sometimes they want attention.Othertimes one of them really has a problem, and I might stop for a half hour. I'm very cognizant of the idea that the kids aren't going to be there very long. [The oldest] only has a year left. I have to take that time." Her children are much less likely to her husbandthan Carol: "He just says, 'Get out of my space."' Carol's interrupt story illustrateshow deeply time and space are sites where power relations are enacted. While her husbandhas the right and authorityto close childrenout of his space and his working time, Carol can only tentatively put up a sign indicating that she wants to be alone. As Michael Young points out, one measure of status within capitalist societies is how much time a person has available for others. Those who are truly important (or aspire to be truly important)have schedules that are virtually impenetrable(except to those with equal or greaterstatus);availability increases, however, as status declines (217). Carol's husbandconstructsand displays his higher status, then, in his claim that from the children. he doesn't have time for interruptions As Davies claims, the act of caring clearly does not fit neatly into a life run on a suffocatingly tight schedule. The process time spent on kids, parents,and both in terms of when it will be needed and how long it partnersis unpredictable will take. Interruptions-and the caretakingresponsibilities that cause themtake a toll on studentsand their writing processes. One such consequence is that writers experience a break in their thought processes. Paula still attemptsto do some of her writingwhile the kids are watching videos: "I find my childrenonly allow me about 15 minutes at the most before they want something. They sense thatI'm workingon something, so they have to be there with me. I get frustrated
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and my mind wanders off. Then I have to go back to what I just wrote or thought, and I can't even rememberwhat I was thinking."Carol finds that after an interruptionshe ends up revising what she wrote instead of producing new text. For Sandy, interruptionsare sometimes so disruptive, that she just quits because she can't get restarted. Two other consequences of the conflict between caring and writing are fatigue and guilt. The results of my survey of student-writingenvironments indicated that a significant percentageof the women said they ended a writing session because of fatigue while more men said they were likely to end a writing session because they had finished the task. Several of the women I interviewed talked about fatigue interferingwith their writing. Paula, for example, says that she fights off drowsiness when she wakes herself up in the middle of the night. Martalies down for an hour in the evening in order to stave off exhaustion. She has grown accustomed to this grueling schedule: "I know I need four to five hours of sleep. I'm used to it. I know how much I can take." Several women also expressed an emotional conflict over the time they give to family members and the time they give to writing for school. For many women, the returnto college is an act of reclaiming their lives. According to Jerilyn Fisher, "The single greatest source of strain for both prospective and matriculatedadult women students is finding the courage to 'take time' for themselves, usually after years of deferringtheir interests to others' needs and goals" (137). Sometimes family members make it difficult or even impossible for women to "taketime" for themselves. Paula, for example, must contend with a spouse who opposes her choice to pursue an education: "My husband is against me going back to school. He does everything in his power to make it worse. He won't bring the laptop home for me. I have to go to the neighbors to to me. I need an outlet for me." At the use the computer.But school is important same time, Paula places her children in primaryposition in her life: "They are first, school is second." This conflict between the desire to claim time and space for themselves, and the belief the family is primaryin their lives, creates intense guilt for many adult women students. Carol is a case in point. She spent 16 years at home taking care of her children before assuming a near-full-time job doing public relations for a sheriff's office. Although she attended college classes frequentlyduring these years, the addition of work responsibilities has tightened up her schedule considerably. She describes the conflict she experiences between caring and creating: I crave time to write, but to me laundryis a responsibilitythat takes precedenceat this point in my life.... As soon as your husbandsays
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"I'm out of socks," you can't write anymore because he's out of socks, your guilt stops you. He says, "I can go and wash my own socks." But I do it because it was kind of the agreement when he worked and I stayed home. Those were my jobs. It's difficult to say, "Time out; those aren't my jobs anymore."He would do it, except that I don't let him. It's easier for me to do it, ratherthan push him to do it. Carol says that she stops writing to wash her husband's socks because that is what she has been conditioned to do over 16 years of homemaking. Her comments, however, are contradictory.On the one hand, she indicates that her husband is willing to do the socks; on the other hand, she comments that she would have to push him to wash the socks. Carol suggests that both she and her husbandare powerfully conditioned to assume traditionalgender roles, and that it takes a greateffort (too much effort, it appears)to overcome this conditioning. For Pat, a single parent, the conflict is more explicitly between her commitment to her children and her commitment to her work for school. Pat describes her guilt when she tells her kids not to botherher: "If they come home, and I'm working on somethingthat needs to be done, they're used to me telling them 'Don't turn on the TV,' 'I really need the music off,' 'I can't talk to you right now. I'll talk to you later, but not now.' And then if I have PMS, I feel like razorblades.And I feel really guilty, I feel really bad if they want to come home and talk to me about somethingand I can't listen. I hate it." The fact that women feel guilty when their roles conflict is news to no one; my point is that these conflicts are acted out hour by hour, minute by minute, within the specific, concrete materialconditions in which women write. As Elaine Chin points out, students "read"their writing situation and draw conclusions from it about who they are as writers. When students experience guilt as a result of the material conditions for composing, they may integrate that guilt into their identities as writers. Nancy Atwell says that "writers need time-regular, frequent chunks of time that they can count on, anticipate, and plan for" (55). The women I interviewedrarelyhad this kind of time to compose. It's difficult to assess what they would be capable of if they had the kind of writing situationAtwell says is necessary for growing writers.Carol guesses what her writing would be like in a better situation:"I would produce a lot more work. I would feel free to spend more time on research.The finished productwould probablybe better."Another woman in the survey writes about her ideal writing situation: [My writing] would be more thoughtful, deep and reflective. Detail and colorful use of language may increase because my concentrationwould be greater for longer
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periods of time." Still another writes: "I would be able to spend the time to concentrate on details and especially on the revision of my paper." Students' desire to linger longer over details, to producemore writing, to expand the scope of their research, and to revise more fully, suggests that in a better writing situation they would care more for the writing they do. By "caring"I don't mean simply that the writingwould matterto them more, but that they would be better able to nurturetheir creative efforts, to engage in process time when they write. Under better material circumstances, perhaps, some of the energy of caring that they spend so plentifully on family, work, and community, could be reserved for the act of writing. Conclusion In describing the writing environmentsof the women I interviewed, I have been trying to demonstratehow the materialconditions in which adult women students compose are inscribed with numerous messages about gender and power. The women I talked to write in cramped spaces that are subject to relentless trespassing. The time they spend on writing is never continuous but that deeply disturbthe process of subject to multiple, unpredictableinterruptions and studying into days that are temporal composing. They squeeze writing battlefields, where multiple demands lead to intense guilt and ultimately to exhaustion. I am not suggesting that men do not experience the extraordinary stresses of an overworked America. Rather, I'm suggesting that material constraintson the act of composing take a particularshape for women and that these constraintsare relatedto women's lack of economic and social privilege. It is precisely this issue of economic and social privilege that puts Le Guin's argumentfor only "a pencil and some paper"in question. Le Guin makes her case from a position of considerableprivilege. Her account of her own history as a writerin "TheFisherwoman'sDaughter"suggests that financial constraintsare irrelevantto her personal struggles with writing. Her husband is a university professor, and it goes without saying that Le Guin has had financial success of her own through her many publications. For women with class privilegeincluding adult students like Candace-the material constraints on composing are different, are less constraining. Le Guin also has the advantages of a supportive spouse: "If I needed help he gave it without making it into a big favor, and-this is the central fact-he did not ever begrudge me the time I spent writing, or the blessing of my work"(233). Le Guin can say that a pencil and paper are enough for a woman to write because her work space probably isn't shoved between a fruit bowl and football uniformon the kitchen table. She can say that a pencil and paper are enough because her husbanddoesn't demand
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clean socks at the moment she is composing a sentence with the potentialto be something quite beautiful. There is anotherproblemwith Le Guin's position, however. She says that a pencil and paper are enough for a woman to write, "so long as she knows that she and she alone is in charge of that pencil, and responsible, she and she alone, for what it writes on the paper."Le Guin suggests that the materialconditions for writing are "immaterial," so to speak, as long as the writerhas the conviction to follow her own meanings and perspectives, as long as she refuses to be the angel in the house. Such a viewpoint suggests that assuming responsibility and control of one's writing is an act that is somehow separate from the material conditions of writing. It suggests that internal conviction is independentfrom externalconstraints,that our internalselves can carryon lives of their own apart from the spatial, temporal,and other resources of the external environment.My interviews with adult women studentsreveal quite the opposite, that our internal lives are deeply wrapped up in our material lives, that, as Woolf puts it, "Intellectualfreedom depends upon material things" (112). For the women in my study, material conditions take a significant toll on their internal lives-I think of Pat's shame aroundbeing on AFDC, Marta'sexhaustion after a day of working, caring, and writing, Paula's rage when her husband denies her the laptop computer. This is not to say that the women I intervieweddon't succeed; they manage remarkably well and produce writing for their classes that ranges from acceptable to outstanding. They even have moments when the writing is everything. Pat sometimes is so deeply involved in her writing that she has to put a clock up in her face in order to rememberto stop, a strong indicationthat her writing has left the realm of clock time and entered the realm of process time. I am also not saying that what AdrienneRich calls the "energyof relation" and the "energy of creation" are totally separate. Certainly the material conditions of women's lives are not simply constraints on their writing, but assets to their writing. Sandy talks about how virtuallyevery paper she produces as a human services majoris connected to the experience of caring for an aging parent. What concerns me about Le Guin's statement is that it can be used against women. It can be used to justify the kitchen table, the endless interruptions,the demands that demoralize. If women really only need a paper and pencil, then why give them computers? Women, and all those who are materiallydisadvantagedbecause of class, race, or disability, deserve more than a pencil and paper;they deserve the time and the space to think creatively and deeply, to write somethingthey never thoughtthey could write, to piece together their lives throughlanguage:
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And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total? I will start and there will be an interruption and I will have to gather it all together again. Or I will become engulfed with all I did or did not do, with what should have been and what cannot be helped. (Tillie Olsen)
Notes 'The author wishes to thank Rhetoric Review peer reviewers Andrea Lunsford and Winifred Bryan Homer for their very helpful comments on an earlierdraft.Thanksalso to the seven women I interviewed, who generously sharedwith me theirexperiencesand most importantly-their time. 2One exception is Susan Miller, who, like Brodkey, uses a spatial metaphorto examine gender relations and composition. In the chapterof TextualCarnivals titled "Sad Women in the Basement," Miller points out how composition has historicallyhad a feminine and subordinaterole in English departments while literary studies have played the male, subordinate role. She posits that composition teachers take on the specific female roles of mother (disciplinarian in the rules of of the bodily mess of infancy), and breeders(ensuringthe survivalof the language), maid (caretakers species). 3Formore on time, gender, and the division of labor,see Negry, Shelton, and Schor. 4Other researchershave noted a similarly gendered conflict between clock time and process time. Meg Fox analyzes the ways in which traditionalmedicine imposes a linear time structureon the act of giving birth. The pregnant and birthing woman, however, experiences time quite differently:"For her, time stands still, moments flow together,the past and the futuredo not lie still behind and before her" (132). Bonnie Urciuoli explores a similar conflict between the standardsof clock time promulgatedby the social welfare system and the more process-basedorientationto time experienced by recipientsof social services. 5See also John Lofty's study of time in a Maine fishing village. Lofty examines how conceptions of time within the school context conflict with conceptions of time within the fishing industrythat forms the center of life on the island. While school time is on the clock time, fishing time is an example of cyclical or process time; it is fluid, responding to tides, weather, daylight, and the seasons. Lofty takes his point one step further,however, and argues that the "timescape"of school affects students' writing. His study suggests that within the structure of clock time, students' thoughts are frequently interruptedand they never discover a productive rhythm to their writing process. He concludes that students"needto experiencetime as the medium in which they create, in contrastto time as the enemy, the constrainton creativity"(219). Works Cited Atwell, Nancy. In the Middle: Writing,Reading, and Learning with Adolescents. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook, 1987. Brodkey, Linda. "Modernismand the Scene(s) of Writing."College English 49 (April 1986): 396418. Chin, Elaine. "Redefining 'Context' in Research on Writing."WrittenCommunication11 (October 1994): 445-82. 9 (1988): 202-06. Crowley, Sharon. "ThreeHeroines:An Oral History."PRE/TEXT Davies, Karen. Women,Time and the Weavingof the Strandsof EverydayLife. Aldershot,England: Avebury, 1990. Fisher, Jerilyn. "Teaching 'Time': Women's Responses to Adult Development." Taking Our Time: Feminist Perspectives on Temporality.Ed. FriedaJohles Forman. New York: Pergamon, 1989. 136-49. Fox, Meg. "Unreliable Allies: Subjective and Objective Time in Childbirth."Taking Our Time: Feminist Perspectives on Temporality.Ed. FriedaJohles Forman. New York: Pergamon, 1989. 123-34.
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Hochschild, Arlie. The Second Shift. New York: Avon, 1989. Le Guin, Ursula."The Fisherwoman'sDaughter."Dancing at The Edge of The World:Thoughtson Words,Women,Places. New York: Grove, 1989. 212-37. Lofty, John. Time to Write: The Influence of Time and Culture on Learning to Write. Albany: SUNY, 1992. Miller, Susan. TextualCarnivals.Carbondale,IL: SouthernIllinois UP, 1991. Negrey, Cynthia.Gender,Time,and Reduced Work.Albany New York.: SUNY, 1993. Olsen, Tillie. "1Stand Here Ironing."Tell Me a Riddle. New York:Dell, 1956. 1-12. Rich, Adrienne. "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision." On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. New York:Norton, 1979. 33-49. Robinson, John P., and Geoffrey Godbey. Timefor Life. UniversityPark,PA: Penn State UP, 1997. ed. MountainView, CA: Mayfield, 1994. Sapiro, Virginia.Womenin AmericanSociety. 3rd American.New York:Basic, 1990. Schor, Juliet. The Overworked Shelton, Beth Anne. Women,Men and Time: Gender Differences in Paid Work,Housework and Leisure. Westport,CT: Greenwood, 1992. Slattery, Patrick. "A Postmoder Vision of Time and Learning: A Response to the National Education Commission Report Prisoners of Time." Harvard Educational Review 65 (Winter 1995): 612-33. Spain, Daphne. GenderedSpaces. Chapel Hill: U of North CarolinaP, 1992. Urciuoli, Bonnie. "Time, Talk, and Class: New York Puerto Ricans as Temporal and Linguistic Others."The Politics of Time. Ed. Henry J. Rutz. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1992. 108-26. U.S. GovernmentPrintingOffice. Prisoners of Time: Reportof the National EducationCommission on Timeand Learning.Washington,DC: US Departmentof EducationP, 1994. Wood, Julia T. GenderedLives: Communication,Gender, and Culture. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994. Woolf, Virginia. "Professionsfor Women." The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. New York: Harcourt,1942. 235-42. .A Room of One's Own. New York: Harcourt,1929. Young, Michael. The MetronomicSociety: Natural Rhythmsand Human Timetables.Cambridge: HarvardUP, 1988.
Anne Aronson is an associate professor in the Writing Department at Metropolitan State University, Minneapolis/St.Paul, Minnesota, where she teaches composition, professional writing, and women's studies. Her research on adult students and the intersections of feminist and composition theory has been published in Frontiers: A Journal of WomenStudies, Research and Teaching in DevelopmentalEducation, and in a recent anthology,SituatedStories: ValuingDiversity in CompositionResearch, Heinemann/Boynton Cook.

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Composing in a Material World: Women Writing in Space and Time Author(s): Anne Aronson Source: Rhetoric Review, Vol.

ANNE ARONSON MetropolitanState University

Composing in a Material World: Women Writing in Space and Time

RhetoricReview, Vol. 17, No. 2, Spring 1999

Composing in a Material World

Composing in a MIaterial Wortld

Composingin a Material World

Composingin a Material World

Composingin a Material World

Composingin a Material World2

World Composing in a MIaterial

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