Rage Against the Form Resisiting Oppressive Gender Identity in the Work of Carson McCullers, toni Morrison and Jeffrey Eugenides

Chelsee Payne

Date of Award

2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Wallace, Miriam

Keywords

Gender, Form, Hybridity

Area of Concentration

English

Abstract

The thesis investigates specific ideas of gendered identity in three separate periods and three separate regions in the United States. It focuses on the way gendered identity is imagined and resisted in Carson McCullers�s The Ballad of Sad Caf�, Toni Morrison�s The Bluest Eye and Jeffrey Eugenides�s Middlesex. I analyze how these concepts are created and enforced in society and through literary forms. Chapter one examines Carson McCullers�s play with the Southern female ideal, circa mid-twentieth century and her rewriting of the �ballad� form. McCullers complicates the binary between �masculine� and �feminine� in the character of Miss Amelia. Chapter two looks at the white ideal of feminine beauty from the perspective of young, black girls and the way in which society projects a racially-specific idea of proper female identity. Chapter three examines the inability of the male/female, masculine/feminine binary of social thinking to fully account for Callie/Cal in Jeffrey Eugenides�s Middlesex. The contemporary text depicts the life of a self-identified �hermaphrodite,� enabling a reconsideration of the bifurcated sex/gender assumptions within Western culture through the epic. In each chapter, a parallel is drawn between the story and the text: the form, too, is a place where the author can find innovation.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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