Here, Martha pushes back against the anxiety of authorship by refusing to be "crippled by the debilitating alternatives her culture offers her," (17). Despite Martha's outward silence, she internally rejects God's notion of what her life should have been, instead of succumbing to it.

The comment of Martha's height seems extremely intentional to me, and calls to mind the racialized misogyny experienced by black women, a topic with which likely Martha, and Butler, have unfortunate experience. In particular, the masculinization of black women is a prevailing issue, one in which characteristics like height are used to demean and disrespect a Black woman's identity and womanhood. While it is unclear how Martha was affected by this racialized violence, it seems intentional on Butler's part to mention this, and as Gilbert and Gubar say, "Learning to become a beautiful object, the girl learns anxiety about— perhaps even loathing of— her own flesh." (15) This is one of the many ways in which the sickness of misogyny in the literary tradition may manifest and contribute to the anxiety of authorship, and may well have contributed to Martha.

Gilbert and Gubar recall Satan when speaking of Bloom, arguing that he sees Milton's "fiercely masculine fallen Satan as the type of the poet in our culture, and he metaphorically defines the poetic process as a sexual encounter between a male poet and his female muse." (10). With such a quote as a framework, Martha's elective comparison makes sense; here, God, as progenitor and ultimate creator is representative of "the" poet, and encounters Martha through a sexual lens (sexual in the sense of pertaining to biological sex, not sexuality); God's gender, or perhaps lack thereof, as well as his position as head of the patriarchal standard and probable omnipotence, creates conflict with Martha.

Yet another expression of Martha's anxiety of authorship; as Gilbert and Gubar say, "This anxiety [of authorship] is, of course, exacerbated by her fear that not only can she not fight a male precursor on “his” terms and win, she cannot “beget” art upon the (female) body of the muse." (11-12). In this moment, Martha embodies this first anxiety; to fight God on "his" terms would be untenable, and thus, her willingness to oppose him outright, by making her own, utterly independent ideas, is diminished. Regardless of whether God would retaliate against her, she fears the inability to withstand an onslaught predicated upon her desire for independent thought and creativity.

I would argue that this is one of the necessary, but unfortunate, growing pains in the process of overcoming the "anxiety of authorship." In a real, literary sense, being a trailblazer of female literary tradition would be a disheartening, isolating experience, and, in its own way, an "infection in the sentence" as Emily Dickinson said (13). Martha faces not only a gender-related anxiety here - and gendered it certainly is, because God, despite later appearing to Martha as a woman, evidently exists beyond such bounds - but a species one, too, as she is - as far as she has been told - the first human to be given this responsibility.

In this moment, Martha works towards the destruction of the anxiety of authorship that plagues her; by choosing to see God as female, she rejects the influence of her forefathers, searching instead to "legitimize her own rebellious endeavors," (12) through the use of a female muse or sounding-board.

One interpretation, within the context of Gilbert and Gubar's theory, is that this is the ultimate submission to the anxiety of authorship, the willing relinquishing of creativity. Yet, I feel that a more charitable read can be made. Like woman artists of history, Martha has struggled - with morality, with expectation - but has, despite it all, created. Though this may be, on the individual level, Martha unable to grapple with the anxiety of authorship, on a wider level, her creation - the dreams - remain in existence. In this way, she is like the foremothers of female literary history who "struggled in isolation that felt like illness, alienation that felt like madness, obscurity that felt like paralysis to overcome the anxiety of authorship that was endemic to their literary subculture." (13) Her work, persevering despite Martha's lack of memory, may provide the chance for other women to overcome the anxiety of authorship, even if she as an individual was unable to.

This is, I believe, fundamental to the "anxiety of authorship" Martha experiences. Men throughout history, in both fiction and life, are allowed violence as heroes, struggle as a sign of moral character or personal depth, but women are rarely afforded the same logic. As Gilbert and Gubar say, "More, the masculine authority with which they construct their literary personae, as well as the fierce power struggles in which they engage in their efforts of self-creating, seem to the woman writer directly to contradict the terms of her own gender definition." (11) Indeed, the expectation placed on women is one of submission, benevolence, and motherhood; the masculinity of complex violence and moral struggle is not extended to them, especially in the act of creation, which, in the case of the task entrusted to Martha, would inevitably involve moral struggle and violence. Her authorship, her act of creation, would - by God's admittance - defy the socialization placed upon her.

This moment is immediately ironic; Martha is, more than ever, not free. Even if this God is well-meaning, willing to view her as an equal to men of all race and status, they have immediately insisted upon intervening themself in her life, violating her right to normalcy, to being equal to others. How can she possibly be free when she is being held to the expectations of God, forced to see the truth beyond human existence, and be made Creator?

As is central to Gilbert and Gubar's argument in "Infection in the Sentence," history, especially literary history, is patriarchal, and thus overwhelmingly male. It is unsurprising, then, that the stories God elects to use as a framework for Martha are all about men, and written by men. Gilbert and Gubar ask, of the female artist, "Does she have a muse, and what is its sex?" (10) and in this moment, God expects that Martha will find a sufficient muse in the parabolic stories of ancient men, completely unlike her.