In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1982

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapters 3-4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 3 Summary: “Concepts of Self and Morality”

Chapter 3 begins with a survey focused on the question of what morality is. Most women’s initial responses think about morality in terms of equality, but when specific examples of morality are requested, the responses generally involve self-sacrifice and obligation, which are not equality-based. Gilligan synthesizes these responses and examples and presents morality as generally defined as the “wish not to hurt others and the hope that in morality lies a way of solving conflicts so that no one will be hurt” (65).

In interviewing a group of women about morality, however, there is a pattern of women not making moral judgments, which comes from a reluctance to make moral statements, not a calling into question of the concept or system of morality itself. Gilligan asserts that the “essence” of the moral decision is “the exercise of choice” (67) and “willingness to accept responsibility for that choice” (67). If women perceive themselves as having no choice, then they “excuse” themselves from the responsibility that comes with making moral decisions. Gilligan traces this to a reluctance on the part of women to publicly give voice to their thinking, as it has been devalued.

Gilligan turns to a group of women who are currently considering getting an abortion. She examines a range of responses provided by these women regarding the process of their moral decision-making in the face of an unwanted pregnancy. Gilligan traces the responses and finds that once “obligation extends to include the self as well as others, the disparity between selfishness and responsibility dissolves” (94). Responsibility for care comes to include both self and other. Gilligan finds women using frameworks that approach the abortion decision not in terms of rights but, instead, through a consideration of their lived relations and a movement out of abstract moral principles.

While some women do not judge morality because they do not feel that they have a right to—and are themselves too vulnerable to issue such a judgment—other women withhold judgment out of a “recognition of the limitation of judgment itself” (102). In this sense, the typical “deference of the feminine perspective” (102) moves out of a preconventional morality and into a postconventional one. Moral judgment is renounced while moral concern is “reaffirmed.”

The crux of moral decision-making is that “moral dilemmas are terrible in that they entail hurt” (103). Gilligan, then, presents the care ethic as one that, at its most developed, does not always aim to prevent hurt but engages morally with the inevitability of emotional hurt.

Gilligan concludes the chapter by considering Erik Erikson’s confrontation with the nonviolence that Gandhi practiced and the real violence that Gandhi imposed on his own family, with no acknowledgment of the “relativity of truth” (104). Gilligan argues that the “willingness to sacrifice people to truth […] has always been the danger of an ethics abstracted from life” (104). Gilligan cites this as the error of Abraham, who was willing to kill his son in a demonstration of the integrity of his faith. Erikson, along these lines, criticizes Gandhi for a principled ethics that comes at the expense of care in his book Gandhi’s Truth.

Chapter 4 Summary: “Crisis and Transition”

Chapter 4 begins with a discussion of Ingmar Bergman’s film Wild Strawberries, in which Marianne, the pregnant daughter-in-law of a physician, travels with her father-in-law on a trip to receive the highest award of his profession. Her husband has told her that she must choose between him and her pregnancy, and she has turned to her father-in-law for help. Instead, she finds him as stalwart as his son. Erik Erikson reads Marianne as the person who is able to shake her father-in-law out of the pattern of “cold loneliness” due to his fidelity to abstract principles rather than devotion to care.

Gilligan, with Marianne in mind, turns to the follow-up interviews in her abortion decision study. One year after their decisions were made, the women are interviewed again. Gilligan determines that eight of the women’s lives have improved, nine have stayed the same, and four have gotten worse.

Gilligan uses the “magnification of crisis” (104) that comes in having to make a decision about abortion to “reveal the process of developmental transition” (107-08). She draws on the work of Piaget, who theorizes conflict as the site of growth, and Erikson, who similarly argues that heightened vulnerability presents a unique situation, creating opportunity that is nonetheless “dangerous,” as the turning point may be a catalyst for improving or worsening a situation.

Gilligan also cites Freud, who compares a person’s psyche under stress to a crystal thrown on the floor, which breaks into a pattern that was already there but which was invisible and “predetermined” by the structure of the crystal (108).

Chapters 3-4 Analysis

Gilligan’s central research in Chapters 3 and 4 revolves around women’s process of deciding whether or not to have an abortion, once more reflecting her commitment to Listening to Different Voices in Psychological Research. While men of course struggle with this question, too, the decision is intimate for women, marking a difference in the experiences that potentially affect Separation and Attachment in Human and Moral Development. Unlike Kohlberg’s Heinz dilemma (and the other moral dilemmas he relied on in his research), this dilemma is not abstract. It is a lived dilemma that, moreover, requires that a decision be made. Gilligan thus grounds her central research on moral decision-making in a lived reality that attends to context.

Gilligan’s approach to abortion as a moral dilemma does not present abortion as a less moral choice than a continued pregnancy. Gilligan grounds her analysis of morality in women’s decision making along lines that are similar to the structure of moral development that Kohlberg theorizes (preconventional, conventional, and postconventional stages), but these stages are determined by the development of an initial orientation toward responsibility and care rather than an initial orientation toward rights and individuation. She is interested in the ways that women come to include themselves in their moral decision-making. Thus, she plots out moral development by way of women’s explanation of their decision in relation to others and themselves. A postconventional morality is one that takes into consideration the self. For Gilligan, an orientation toward self-sacrifice is one that does not adequately recognize the self as a moral subject.

Gilligan’s approach to abortion, then, is “pro-choice” because she is interested in women’s moral engagement with difficult choices and their taking responsibility in making a decision. She privileges choices that consider harm in relation to everyone, including the self. This is a pivotal moment in the book, as Gilligan begins to insist on the need for a care ethic that includes the self and that does not refuse individualization.

Gilligan’s analysis of moral decision-making and, specifically, her use of the term “hurt” is sometimes illuminating and at other times unclear. While abortion indisputably does terminate a pregnancy, many disagree on when “life” can be said to begin and, thus, whether an abortion causes “hurt” or even harm to another being. Gilligan is more concerned with the emotional hurt done to self and other existing relations, and it is unclear what her views are regarding the moral status of the fetus. The relation of self to fetus, for her, is determined by the women making the choice whether to have an abortion or not. Since “hurt” is inevitable in living, Gilligan assesses the definition of morality as grounded in not hurting inadequate. The tension between the desire not to hurt and the inevitability of hurt is what creates the conditions for a moral dilemma.

Just as important as Gilligan’s theory of women’s moral development is the method by which she arrives at and supports this theory. Kohlberg’s leading question regarding whether Heinz should or should not steal the drug assumes a rights-based framework in which the right to property is pitted against the right to life. His assumptions about moral development, then, are baked into the moral dilemma and the framework through which thinking is possible: Research subjects are led down a path of rights-based principles through which they are required to think.

Gilligan’s research method contrasts with Kohlberg’s. She seeks out subjects who are living real-life-in-the-moment moral dilemmas and then poses questions to these subjects, following their responses rather than leading their responses through a pre-determined framework. This again demonstrates, too, Gilligan’s interest in narrative. She often turns to literature, and in this section turns to film, initially thinking about the abortion decision as it is presented in Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries. It is thus as crucial to consider the divergent methods of Kohlberg and Gilligan as it is to consider their theories.