Repainting our half of the world

As a reference back to an earlier blog I wrote about Virginia Woolf's and Alice Walker's question of whether thwarted creativity results in madness or self-destruction in women, Cixous has something to offer to the question. She writes about her desire for a certain woman to create a world of words out of her unique past so that all the other "unacknowledged sovereigns" of women would realize that they, too, have powerful words and songs within them. However, she describes the current state of reality as something more along the lines of women questioning themselves. Although she has felt full to the the point of bursting to "repaint my half of the world," she pushed her explosive creativity to the side in a way that she believes many women do: "And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn't open my mouth, I didn't repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are mad!" (2040). She considers herself mad for resisting the urge to write, and she feels that women need to embrace both their bodies and their power for using language in writing. She writes, "And why don't you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours; take it" (2040). For her, the act of thwarting creativity is a mad act in itself because it involves suppressing what is inherent to the individual, and it removes an act that is essential for developing the feminine identity.