'It Takes Two': Sex, Writing, and Creation in The Book of Mrs Noah Anonymous College

No matter what Michele Roberts’ work you read, it is clear “that she is interested in (feminist) literary theory” (Gruss, 4). The Book of Mrs Noah, then, adds to Robert’s reputation as an “unashamedly feminist writer” (Falcus, 13). Not only does Roberts portray the Ark as “a Woolfian ‘room of their own’” (Gruss, 34) but she presents a narrative “over-ornate with haphazard and arbitrary allusions to feminist thinking and feminist theory” (Gruss, 44). Whether or not this was done “unconsciously…[and Roberts] read about the theory afterwards” (Galvan, 367) is inconsequential. What is important is that the novel is laden with allusions to the writings of feminist literary theorists such as Virginia Woolf and Helene Cixous. Far from simply “copying out their theories in [her] novels” (Rodriguez, 96), Roberts “write[s] [her] novel to solve a problem” (Rodriguez, 104) that these theories present. That is, the problem of the gendering of writing.

Roberts plays into the precedent of writing being gendered male by using the Gaffer to embody a “literary history which sees writing as essentially ‘male’, a kind of extension of the male generative act” (Eagleton, 41). The Gaffer portrays himself as God by not only insisting that he is “the...