Re-Writing the Feminine Myth in Adrienne Rich's I Dream I'm the Death of Orpheus

Abstract

Feminist writers always work on representing women in literature positively through rewriting her history and her role in the society. They intend to liberate her from the constrains of patriarchal myths and history which confined her image to passivity and weakness. As a feminist poet, Adrienne Rich uses her poetry to empower woman's status by exploring the influence of the patriarchal language and history which contributes to undermine woman's position in the society. She used her feminine discourse to deconstruct the patriarchal myths and to re-write them again in order to inscribe women's names in these myths as an equivalent power to the power of males. Thus, the present study aims to investigate Rich's discourse of re-writing mythology in her poem, I Dream I'm the Death of Orpheus. The study approaches her discourse of female difference in language in light of Helene Cixous's theory of écriture feminine. The study concludes that woman's different use of language in light of Cixous's concept can be a vital strategy of empowering women rather than weakening and inferiorizing them.