Spivak, the Other, and the Frame

Before getting to the texts, here's a thought that's just occurred to me and that I find encouraging. Picking up on the comment that the essays (or at least Said's) were clearer and easier to access than some of the other theory we've read , I'd like to suggest a different possible for this accessibility. Rather than the accessibility being merely a matter of the author's style, maybe it is a result of all the texts that we've worked (and/or struggled) through up to this point. I think it's very rewarding to look down at the footnotes and back to the endnotes and realize a lot of the references are to essays we've read excerpts of, and that a lot of what we've been working on really has built upon itself. So maybe that's part of why Said is more accessible. It could also just be that he isn't Derrida.

Anyway, reading the Spivak, it seems one point to which she often returns is that "the absolutely Other cannot be selfed" (850), with selfing being an important process in her conception of both feminist individualism and imperialism. In discussing the monster of Frankenstein, I think she finds very interesting structural support for her argument: namely in the role of Margaret Saville, "who is neither tangential, nor encircled, nor yet encircling" (851). Spivak seems to suggest it is because Mrs. Saville does not respond to Walton's letters (and therefore does not encircle the text?) that "the monster can step 'beyond the text' and 'be lost in darkness'" (851). What I'm interested in is the necessity of this open frame in enabling the monster to escape the text. In Spivak's discussion of Christophene from Wide Sargasso Sea, this frame doesn't seem to be a necessity. Spivak notes that "immediately after the exchange between her and the Man, well before the conclusion, she is simply driven out of the story, with neither narrative nor characterological explanation or justice" (846). This expulsion is attributed to the same impossibility as the expulsion of the monster: "No perspective critical of imperialism can turn the Other into a self..." (846, her emphasis), and through this connection Spivak ties the character of Christophene to the character of the monster, in much the same way that it seems Christophene is tied to the character of Bertha in Jane Eyre. So what I'm wondering, is if the frame, or lack of frame, is necessary for Christophen to leave the text in the same way it can be seen to be necessary for the monster. Maybe it's not an important point at all and maybe that's why Spivak doesn't address the notion of the frame in relation to the other characters and novels. Maybe the open frame of Frankenstein is the allowance of "justice" that Spivak claims Christophene was denied, in which case maybe the question is, why does the monster receive that sort of justice when Christophene does not; is it because he is seen as more "absolutely Other" or would it be that Christophene is? I'm probably making too much of Spivak's mention of the frame. I would think that the monster would escape the story, even if Mrs. Saville had responded and so, perhaps, Spivak's claim that this lack or response allows him to escape is simply not true. So, after all that rambling, maybe my question actually is, what do Spivak's comments on Mrs. Saville's role in the monster's stepping beyond the text actually do, and can they be applied to her analysis of the failed selfing of other Others?