The Laugh of the Medusa: Helene Cixous

     ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ (1976) is a seminal essay by the French writer and feminist Helene Cixous. Her peculiar contribution to literature, Ecriture feminine (feminine writing) is expressed in this work. The work is structured like a poem as a refusal to the conventional rhetoric formats of argumentation. The ‘arguments’ of this text is based on the materiality of language, the texture of words and effects of word combination etc. The work is not circling around any central metaphor, since according to Cixous the very notion of centrality is transitory.

     Cixous charges that “Men have riveted us between two horrifying myths: between the Medusa and the abyss”. The ‘Abyss’ refers to the connotation of Freud’s designation of women as a ‘dark continent’ – difficult to analyze and understand. She denies this myth.

     Medusa was traditionally portrayed as a monster; with snakes in place of her hair. She was once renowned for her loveliness. Her hair was attractive. Poseidon (God of the Sea) robbed her of her virginity and punished her by changing her hair into revolting snakes and made her face so terrible.

     The myth of Medusa represents the repression of female sexuality and beauty. Cixous concentrate on the Medusa prior to the repression of her sexuality, prior to her changing into a monster. For Cixous laughter is a symbolic mode of refusing the male concept of history and truth as defined by masculine traditions of thought. She adds that A feminine text is designed to smash and shatter all the frame work of institutions, to blow up the truth and break up the ‘truth’ with laughter

     Cixous urges for the breaking of myths related to women. to redeem woman from the degraded status in the history of male mythology she has to demolish all such myths and start writing. She urges the women saying, “Write yourself, your body must be heard”