Deformed bodies: Figures of deviance in fiction by American women, 1860-1910.
Item
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Title
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Deformed bodies: Figures of deviance in fiction by American women, 1860-1910.
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Identifier
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AAI9510655
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identifier
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9510655
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Creator
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Dunne, Linda Ellen.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Rachel Brownstein
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Date
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1994
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, American | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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This study examines the figure of the deformed body in the narrative fiction of five American women writers during the fifty-year period from 1860 to 1910. Combining close textual readings with biographical and historical criticism, I focus on Harriet Prescott Spofford's "The Amber Gods" (1860), "The Strathsays" (1863), and "Her Story" (1872); Rebecca Harding Davis's "Life in the Iron Mills" (1860) and Margret Howth (1861); Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's "The Tenth of January" (1868) and The Silent Partner (1871); Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's "Two Friends" (1887), "Sister Liddy" (1891), "Christmas Jenny" (1891), Pembroke (1894), "The Long Arm" (1895), and By the Light of the Soul (1907); and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892). Although these writers utilized different narrative styles, they all wrote works in which characters with deformed bodies, usually female and often marked as racially different, play important, though often hidden, roles. The readings reveal that figures of deformity provided these writers with a powerful way to physically represent and emotionally explore the meaning of the abstract and socially-constructed concept of deviance during a time of radical social and cultural change. Biographical material examined in historical context suggests that in various ways each of these writers experienced deep-seated feelings of personal difference caused by her deviance from prescribed gender roles, not only as a literary figure but also, in some cases, by her deviant sexuality. In addition to inscribing deviance, the deformed female figure represented for some writers a defiance of restrictive standards of normality and an alternative to the "compulsory heterosexuality" of the marriage plot.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
