March 2014

Friendship and Identity: Intimacy Among Women as a Means of Empowerment

Luciana Costa Brando*

Introduction In Women of Algiers in their apartment, the Algerian novelist Assia Djebar writes about the women's search for a voice. She states that the only way for Arabic women to overcome their voiceless past is through the action of conversation: "I see no other way out for us except through an encounter like this: a woman speaking in front of another one who's watching" (47). Although there are important singularities regarding women's position in Algeria during the mid-20th century, their struggle to find and express their own voice as subjects is a recurrent matter through history. In Audre Lorde's autobiography Zami: a new spelling of my name1, and in Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway2 two different contexts set the cases of women that empower themselves through friendships with other women. The analysis of these works conveys a reflection upon the role that female intimacy plays in their process of empowerment, challenging and transforming the patterns of a patriarchal society. I will argue that this constructed intimacy is a mean of empowerment whenever it establishes a strong influence over the subject, transforming the identity of the individuals involved in the friendship, and that it shall be understood next to ideas of sisterhood and companionship, which does not necessarily implies romantic connotations. In order to do so, I will look upon friendships in female duos plus how they expand towards the notion of sisterhood in bigger groups and communities. I will also address the obstacles that hampered the process of empowerment in these cases. I hope this work will help demystify the patriarchal idea that female relationships are inevitably impregnated with a resentful feeling and that it will shed some light over new possibilities of friendship among women, based in core values of cooperation and honesty, contributing in some extent to our processes of empowerment. The theme of female friendship has been object of analysis by several scholars, mainly during the 20th century and, moreover, as part of the research agenda in feminist studies. Sometimes it is marginally addressed in studies about sexuality (Helt); others, it is regarded as part of a larger process of community building, germinated inside the feminist movement (Weiss). Although these interpretations are valid ones, it is also important to look upon how female friendship affects the lives of women at the individual level. My argument considers that the process of "sharing" creates an intimate relationship, which amplifies the capacity of women getting in contact with their "true-self". When two women get together and talk about their experiences, knowledge and emotions, they create empathy towards one another. The empathy I am referring here is only possible among women, given that they share a common historical memory as secondary characters in a !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Luciana Costa Brando is a student of International Relations at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), in Brazil. This paper was written for a course on Gender and Literature, during an exchange programme in Leiden University College, the Netherlands. Email: luciana.costa.brandao@gmail.com.
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Audre Lorde's book was written in 1982. Mrs Dalloway was first published in 1925.

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society which institutions are dominated by men. Through the process of acknowledging another woman as a subject, and then feeling empathy towards her, one enables itself to recognize your own role as woman and subject. The result is that becomes easier for women to appropriate their own identity and transform it according to their own desires. This practice of a woman taking charge of her own life is an indispensable step towards her process of conquering autonomy, capable of thinking and acting on her own, despite the patriarchal institutions on which she finds herself placed (Beauvoir). Virginia Woolf used to argue that a "womens love for other women is a highly desirable and empowering emotive force common to most women" (Helt 142). This idea of love between women, as Woolf depicts in Mrs Dalloway throughout the characters of Sally Seaton and Clarissa Dalloway, does not imply a necessary relation with homo or bisexuality, as some scholars tend to argue. Although those relationships are permeated by a strong sense of desire, her interpretation is much more holistic, and cannot be reduced to the simplistic notion of sexual desire. To do this, would deviate the argument from a more crucial point, which is that the friendship between Sally and Clarissa, for instance, carried a unique "quality", capable of transforming their lives to some extent that other relations were not able to, as described: The strange thing, on looking back, was the purity, the integrity, of her feeling for Sally. It was not like one's feeling for a man. It was completely disinterested, and besides, it had a quality which could only exist between women, between women just grown up. It was protective, on her side; sprang from a sense of being in league together, a presentiment of something that was bound to part them (they spoke of marriage always as a catastrophe) [...]. (Woolf 51-52) Here Woolf characterizes the exceptionality of the effects that intimacy among women is capable of unfold. Their friendship transforms Clarissa's impression of her own life, as she reconsiders her position in the world. When they talk about reforming the world and abolishing private property (50), for instance, Clarissa starts to acknowledge her privileged position in a society of classes, and thus exercises her autonomy as a political subject. In the case of Sally and Clarissa friendship the issue of class does not appear as an obstacle in the construction of they intimacy. On the contrary, the creation of intimacy as a "space" where those two women, from different backgrounds, could exchange ideas and experiences, results in a transformation in their perception of the world, where Clarissa liberates herself from the pre-conceived and expected political position as someone from the British aristocracy. Instead, she revolts against it. Even if just in the realm of conscience because one could argue that, in the end, Clarissa gets married and reproduces the patterns of her class, just as expected - their friendship transformed her identity and empowered her, at some extent, in order to exercise her role as subject. Here the issue of marriage must be highlighted, for Sally and Clarissa saw it as a "catastrophe" that would put an end to their companionship. The interpretation I would like to

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bring is that marriage, in this case, stands as representative for the patriarchal institutions that ruled women's life in the beginning of the 20th century. It is an external limit on the possibilities of their empowerment given the historical circumstances that surround them and their relationship. In other moments and cultures, different obstacles emerge. The story of Zami takes place in the United States during the McCarthy administration, in the 1950's. Audre Lorde constantly regards the question of being Black as an invisible barrier that differentiates her from other women, despite the same political stand or sexual orientation. In this case, the concealed racism hinders the establishment of a broader intimacy between Lorde and her female friends. During her life, as told in Zami, Lorde established intimate relationships with several different women, that ended up influencing and transforming her at some extent, leaving their print upon her (255). It is undeniable that her amorous relationships exercised a very strong influence over Lorde. Despite of that, it is important to look upon the attempts of Lorde and her friends to create a community of shared intimacy among women, better described by the concept of sisterhood. Together they would envision a group of women living together based, mainly, in the principles exchanging and cooperating with each other, in order to construct a female collective. The involvement in sisterhoods permeated Lorde's life during her entire youth (81; 179; 203). A constant element underlining all these experiences was the existence of differences that separated their members, and the one mainly highlighted is the issue of race. Mostly those women were united by similarities such as their political stand against the anticommunist government, or their shared experience women-orientated women. It was a sisterhood of outsiders. However the fact of Lorde being Black was always a constant underlining factor that made her feel different from the others. During her teens, with The Branded, it was an ignored subject, something that would not be talked about; later on, in her adult life, she reports that the bond of gayness was never sufficient for her, and that talk about the fact of her Blackness with other gay-girls always left a breach in their friendship (181). It means that even within a female "outsiderhood", a woman may still feel an outsider herself. As this was the case of Lorde during her experiences of shared intimacy in female communities, she explains in one of the most poetic passages of her book: Being women together was not enough. We were different. Being gay-girls together was not enough. We were different. Being Black together was not enough. We were different. Being Black women together was not enough. We were different. Being Black dykes together was not enough. We were different. (Lorde 226) Actually, it is understood that the aspects creating a distance among the women in Lorde's community are deeper rooted in matters of individuality. While the question of race is a rather prominent one, there are elements that cannot be enumerated. They are part of the blanks left by Lorde in her discourse when not mentioning what, exactly, "was not enough". Women are, simply, different and those differences are imbedded in one's individual self.

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While social differences might intensify some of them and originate bigger obstacles towards the construction of female intimacy in communities, the possibility of creating a space where those differences can actually be discussed is, by itself, an empowering action. Lorde explains that, although their engendered female community was not perfect, it was, indeed a network of mutual support and one of the only "places" where Black and white women were communicating with and learning from each other (179). In her introductory essay for the book "Feminism and Community", Penny Weiss argues that the existence of these differences inside a feminist community is not, necessarily, a problem, but rather one of the ways to empower women. The inner struggle in a female collective, when followed by a critical and honest debate, allows women to congregate their individuality with the group. It also opens room for the development of innovative conflictsettlement institutions, opposed to the model perpetuated by patriarchies, rooted in hierarchical, sexist and racist dictates (3-18). In Lorde experiences, however, much of this inner critical communication was still veiled, imposing a limit to how empowering those communities could be. The act of conversation inside a community of women is largely recognized as contributing to female liberation. In another cultural and historical context, this idea comes attached to the notion of having a voice. During the War of Independence, Algeria was a society in transformation, seeking its freedom from the former status of French colony. The political liberation, however, was not followed by women's liberation. Although they took part in the Revolution exercising a strategic role, once the new order was settled, the Algerian women kept struggling to find their voice in a society still dominated by men. Assia Djebar then proposes, in Women of Algiers, that, for women to empower themselves, to "unlock everything" (50), they must share their experiences and "talk, talk without stopping, about yesterday and today, talk among ourselves, in all the women's quarters" (50). The intimacy that those Algerian women cultivate, however, is found in other elements that are not, necessarily, limited to the act of conversation. They construct it by occupying physical spaces, through the gaze of each other's scarred body and on the act of sharing memories. Those elements are much more subtle in their way of empowering than the intellectual progression lived by Clarissa or than the political strength conquered by Lorde's friends. However, the existence of this "world without men" in Women of Algiers, originates an important arena were women can become subjects unto themselves (Zimra 211). In the story "Women of Algiers", women get together in a Turkish bath, were their voices permeate the space; for some of them, this is the only place where they are allowed to go, for they "are the ones locked inside for months or years" inside their houses by the males (Djebar 32). This is the atmosphere that later on will enable Sarah, an Algerian married woman, and Leila, a woman recovering from drug addiction to develop an intimate contact that ease their pain. Their encounter is a moment of revisiting the events that happened and left them eternally marked: the involvement in the war as a bomb carrier for Sarah and the torture suffered by Leila in the clinics under the excuse of a "health treatment". This talk, this moment of complicity, is reinforced by the exposure of their bodies. In the lack of word to explain her feelings, Sarah chose to share with Leila the image of her own body and

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"uncovered the blue scar that started above one of her breasts and stretched down to her abdomen" (Djebar 45). The outcome of this encounter is that they strongly question the role of men in their society. Leila asks: "Were there ever really any brothers, Sarah...?" (45). The instant of freedom that emerges in this moment of female intimacy is of utmost importance, since it enables women to share a voice, to speak and, therefore, to create their own narrative, one that empowers them and that carries their version, their own truth about History. The female narrative created from their intimate conversation is a way of combat against, what Zimra called, a "selective and lethal form of amnesia" (201) perpetuated in a patriarchal society that confines women, their memories and their History. When women talk among each other, finding a common voice, they construct their own narrative and, thus, start to break the vicious cycle of male dominance. In Women of Algiers, this is how their empowerment and liberation begin. Conclusion The intimacy women develop among themselves can take several different forms. They can create it in pairs or in bigger groups; by sharing knowledge, ideas or memories; arguing about politics or simply gazing at each others body. This kind of relationship carries an intrinsic potential for individual transformation, which can be enhanced when the women involved in the friendship are more aware of the obstacles and limitations derived both from the surrounding circumstances as well as those germinated inside the duo/group. Women must, then, find a way of overcoming these obstacles, by discussing them with each other and, for instance, inventing new forms of non-violent communication in order to settle eventual conflicts that inevitably will arise. The empowerment derived from those female friendships starts at the level of the individual, by creating an atmosphere (a momentum or a space) where women are freer to exercise their autonomy and, therefore, transform their own identities. This transformation can occur by one changing its point of view about certain aspects, by promoting the self-identification with others and thus increasing one's selfconfidence, by sharing traumatic memories and facilitating the process of emotional healing, and so many others. Every time a woman leaves one of those moments of shared female intimacy feeling more empowered - which means, feeling more capable or less voiceless then, she becomes empowered. Nowadays, when a woman still has to struggle, even with herself, in order to find a position in society that brings her fulfilment, it is imperative to rescue the idea of female friendship as an activity that should be encouraged. Patriarchal discourses still perpetuate certain institutions that benefit men and maintain women excluded or in the margin of several processes. I've seen women not being chosen to a certain job position because they were not part of a corporative network developed by men; I've also seen girls ashamed of taking their clothes in front of their female friends out of fear of being discriminated. This kind of practice so prejudicial to women is reinforced by the false myth that "women cannot be friends", because they are destined to envy and compete with each other. The experiences I analysed show exactly the opposite. Women share a larger and deeper common background, which sometimes is impossible to have in communities where men are also present. They

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also cultivate strong values of honesty, care and cooperation with each other - despite of the widespread patriarchal myth. To talk with another woman who is watching; to honestly share our feelings; to listen without prejudice what other women have to say: this creation of intimacy among women, as Djebar said, is our only way out. Works Cited Beauvoir, Simone. "Introduction." Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Vol. I. New York: Vintage Books, 2011. II vols. 43-75. Djebar, Assia. Women of Algiers in Their Apartment. University of Virginia Press, 1992. Helt, Brenda S. "Passionate Debates on Odious Subjects: Bisexuality and Woolf s Opposition to Theories of Androgyny and Sexual Identity." Twentieth-Century Literature 56.2 (2010): 131-167. Lorde, Audre. Zami, a new spelling of my name. New York: Crossing Press, 1982. Weiss, Penny A. "Feminist Reflections on Community." Weiss, Penny A. and Marilyn Friedman. Feminism and Community. Philadelphia: Temple University, 1995. Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway. Feedbooks, 1925. Zimra, Clarisse. "Afterword." Djebar, Assia. Women of Algiers in Their Apartment. University of Virginia, 1992. 159-211.