The Wandering Woman: Derrida, Feminist Theory, and Urban Legends

By Allyn Farach

Like the stories of older civilizations, urban legends define our culture. From little girls converting atheists in grocery lines to dead men on subways to child cancer patients seeing Jesus to fried rats in fast food, these stories reflect our society's hopes and fears. Claude Levi Strauss's idea of structuralism argued that society, like stories, held symbols and storylines that our culture viewed as important (Rivkin and Ryan, 258). Simone de Beauvoir, in her book The Second Sex, argued that a woman was not born as a woman, but made into one by society (Smith, 337). Urban legends depict what society view as important for and about women, and set up a model for women to follow. One specific one would be the story of the hotel room service menu, which was a cautionary tale that people would tell women to warn them of the dangers of the world. 

Taking place in the heyday of the 90s and having a concentration on the working world, this story is spread through email to other women. Allegedly, a businesswoman had set up lodging in a hotel for a business trip. Despite her misgivings (described in some versions as intuition), she leaves out a room service menu with her name on it and retires for the evening. She awakes later that night to hear a man rattling at her door, attempting to get in, but barred by the locks that the woman set. When she challenges the hotel staff on the disturbance, they reveal that a man had approached their desk earlier that evening, claiming that he was the businesswoman's husband and that he had needed a key to get into her room. Seasoned with her experience, the woman ends her email thanking God that she is at home with her child and that everything had worked out for the best.

The story seems simple, if pedantic, but it serves as a great display full of symbols of our culture and its view on the working woman. As was mentioned earlier, Strauss said that stories and culture are full of symbols that hold meaning. de Beavouir argued that society makes a woman instead of a woman becoming in society. Both these arguments align in this story, starting with the working woman. Separating herself from her role as a mother and a housekeeper and cementing her status as the victim in the story, she is punished with an almost rape and the neutrality and ignorance of the hotel workers in their role in it. The story ends with the woman returning home and having her child with her, thus returning to her role of caretaker. To further drive home the point, the attacker and the hotel serve as a symbol of the ruthless modern world, or in more Jungian terms, the villain. Snopes dates this story to 1999, so this story would emerge not long after second wave feminism and its concentration on women in the work force. Around this time, stories of women venturing out into the working world and getting hurt by men and by forces of nature were also prevalent. A student of de Beauvoir's work would argue that these types of stories would create women for society by making them fearful and dependent. A student of structuralism would argue that the symbols in the story would display the things that society would find important, such as having the woman stay home and take care of her family, away from influences that would hurt her.

So what would all this mean? Strauss' structuralism and de Beauvoir's feminism are parallel in their ideas. Society clings to themes that they deem important, and they use those to oppress women. These situations have to be recognized to be combatted and conquered. Strauss recognized the relevancy of symbols in society, and de Beauvoir realized the importance of the female experience. These combined make for relevant analyses.


Works Cited:
"Menu Shouldn't Trust." Snopes. n.p, n.d. Web. 28 Jul. 2006.

Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan, eds. Literary Theory: An Anthology, Second Edition. Malden, MA: Wiley/Blackwell, 2004. Excerpt on “Structuralism” (53-55). 

Smith, Craig R. Rhetoric and Human Consciousness: A History, Third Edition. Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2009. Excerpts on “Feminism in the Postmodern World” (337-42).