In Helene Cixous' essay "The Laugh of the Medusa- she examines how women have been oppressed through the subversive actions and mentalities of men and their patriarchal institutions. Cixous employs the myth of the Medusa as a means for examining how men have falsified and mystified the role of women in order to maintain a patriarchal order. It is this misrepresentation of women that Cixous questions and attempts to uncover in her essay. She explores how men and their discourse have oppressed women throughout history, and how women can ameliorate their situation by unveiling the body as a vehicle to speak, to communicate, to write, and to assert femininity into the patriarchal arenas of society and literature. .
The original version of the myth of Medusa portrays the creature as a gorgeous woman who is maimed, raped, and murdered by an assortment of male Gods. Despite this ignominious treatment this Medusa was depicted as a substantial figure, and upon her death a Pegasus soared from her body as a symbol of the parturition of beauty. Today the Medusa has been altered pejoratively as a hideous creature with hair made of snakes and a gaze that transforms anyone who meets its horrors into stone. This contemporary notion of the Medusa as a monstrous creature is the distorted creation of men that society persists on accepting and internalizing, void of any dissent. .
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Cixous declares that women "must no longer be determined by the past- (309) and that they must "break up.[and] destroy- (309) the boundaries of woman constituted by the masculine modes of discourse. Women must no longer be "riveted.between two horrifying myths: between the Medusa and the abyss."" (315) They must reclaim their bodies, through their own voices, from a mysterious and "dark continent- (310) that men have instilled in the psyche of woman. Cixous equates womanhood with a "dark continent- to illuminate the fact that the female identity has been created as something fearful that that is "too dark to be explored- (314), an abyss that is empty and not worthy exploration.
