Tom /boys: The racialization of white tomboys in American women's fiction, 1840--1950.
Item
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Title
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Tom /boys: The racialization of white tomboys in American women's fiction, 1840--1950.
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Identifier
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AAI3127841
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identifier
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3127841
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Creator
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Abate, Michelle Ann.
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Contributor
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Adviser: David S. Reynolds
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Date
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2004
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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 | Literature, Modern | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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Beginning with the observation that both syllables of the term "tomboy" evoke common racial pejoratives, the project investigates tomboy characters in general and the way in which they are often racialized in the fiction by late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century American women's in particular. After providing an overview of both racialization and tomboyism in American literature and culture, the study spotlights the convergence of these elements in the work of six women writers: E. D. E. N. Southworth, Louisa May Alcott, Sarah Orne Jewett, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Willa Cather, and Carson McCullers. Probing the possible reasons why ostensibly Caucasian tomboys acquire a dark hue in these novels, each chapter draws on an abundance of social and cultural phenomena as possible sites of intersection. Discussing such varied elements as blackface minstrelsy and girls' doll culture, the study explores the ways in which tomboyishness and blackness mutually construct or at least reinforce each other.;After tracing a trajectory of racialized white tomboys in fiction by late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century American women, the epilogue explores the continued life of this phenomenon in lesbian pulp fiction and, later, popular film. The final segment argues that as changing social circumstances in the 1950s and 1960s made it unacceptable for mainstream literature to racialize white characters in overt ways, these images went underground to more subversive forms. Through the work of classic lesbian pulp novelists such as Ann Bannon and popular tomboy stars such as Tatum O'Neal, white tomboys continued to "fade to black.";In the opening pages of Speech Acts and Other Late Essays, Mikhail Bakhtin observes, "the most interesting and productive life of culture takes place on the boundaries." Tomboy characters in general and racialized white tomboys in particular participate in this phenomenon. Existing on the boundaries of male/female, black/white, adult/child, heterosexual/homosexual, savage/civilized, different/same, and drag/passing, these figures dismantle cultural binaries while they participate in them. Accordingly, "Tom/Boys" places itself at the interstices between high and low culture, printed and visual texts as well as narratives written for children and adults to investigate this vital but previously unexplored facet of American literature and culture.
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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.
