Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Bean Trees presents a number of fictional examples of ecriture feminism, particularly as that feminist theory is described by French writer Helene Cixious. This study will examine ways in which Kingsolver's novel reflects the ideas of Cixious. Specifically, Cixious argues, as in her essay "The Laugh of the Medusa," that it is up to women to define themselves in their lives and in their writing, without the restrictions placed on them by men in this patriarchal society or even by history:
Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies---for the same reason, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text---as into the world and into history---by her own movement. The future must no longer be determined by the past (Cixious 245).
Kingsolver's novel reflects these ideas first and foremost in her choice of narrator---Taylor Greer, a strong girl and woman who thinks and acts for herself. Taylor creates her own life and her own identity through thought and action, but Kingsolver follows Cixious's theory by refusing to express hateful views toward most men. To Cixious, this would be simply falling into another patriarchal trap, seeing men as victimizers and women as victims. Cixious is not anti-man, but believes instead that men are capable of breaking free from their own cultural, sexual and historical traps and biases, and are, in any case, responsible for whatever changes are needed themselves. Cixious's fundamental message is that women must free themselves from not only men and history, but from the earlier feminist ideas which were necessary at one point in their evolution, but are now only anchors holding them down. These notions are expressed in the evolution of Taylor Greer in Kingsolver's novel.
From the beginning of the book, as a girl, Taylor is shown to ...