SOURCE: Masland, Lynn. “In Her Own Voice: An Irigarayan Exploration of Women's Discourse in Caro Michele (Natalia Ginzburg) and Lettere a Marina (Dacia Maraini).” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 21, no. 3 (September 1994): 331-40.

In the following essay, Masland utilizes aspects of Luce Irigaray's theory of women's discourse to compare Ginzburg's Caro Michele and Dacia Maraini's Lettere a Marina.

Can She speak? Does She have a voice? If She could speak, what would She say?

In this paper, I will apply some aspects of Luce Irigaray's theory of women's discourse to two works of fiction by contemporary Italian women writers. Specifically, I will consider these two works in the light of Irigaray's motifs of the tactile, including her “lips” metaphor; her privileging of a non-logical, non-linear syntax; and her use of images of fluidity, based upon an “economy of fluids.” Subtending my discussion of these motifs from Irigaray's parler femme...