Tiffany Clark

Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Wallace, Miriam

Area of Concentration

English

Abstract

This thesis argues for humor in literature as a device to engage people, in particular women and gender minorities, with communal and intersectional feminist critique. This engagement serves to empower women and others marginalized or oppressed under heteropatriarchy through a sense of shared community espousing feminist ideals. I posit that feminist praxis not only benefits from, but needs humor for survival. To this end, I examine humor used to mock or subvert patriarchal, misogynistic, and gender-stereotyped thinking. The works I analyze comically break out of restrictive gender stereotypes in ways that affirm a rebellious feminist consciousness. I center women’s humor as the most fertile ground for fostering this rebellion, and aim to show the success (as well as some missteps) of works written by women and largely focused on female characters. I investigate intersections of gender (identity and expression), race, sexuality, and class. While gender remains the driving force throughout, I include these other social categories as necessary frameworks for the multidimensionality of feminist thought which recognizes the impact these intersections have on gendered experience. All of the books included in this thesis center stories of women who in someway utilize humor to challenge harmful hegemonic narratives of gender and offer a means of feminist community and rebellion.

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