scholarly journals Very Queer Friends

altrelettere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selby Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Romantic Friendship

ABSTRACT: Elena Ferrante has long acknowledged the influence of Alba de Céspedes’ 1949 novel Dalla parte di lei on her writing, particularly in terms of conceiving female characters. In Ferrante’s newest novel, La vita bugiarda degli adulti, the prominent theme of queer friendship between young women echoes and reconfigures elements from Dalla parte di lei. This article delves into the capacious queer relationality depicted in both novels, tracing the presence of transmasculinity and feminist re-writing as key elements in both. Situating the two novels’ representations of women’s intimacy in their socio-literary contexts, I analyze the ways in which they utilize models like the «fiamma», romantic friendship, sisterhood, and female husbands. Neither author identifies as lesbian or queer; thus my close reading of the frankly sexual and deeply romantic scenes between female characters seeks not to assign the writers or their books to a category, but rather to elaborate the queer dimensions of relationality that they explore. Ultimately, I propose that a significant part of what makes these queer, lesbian, and transmasculine representations possible is a shared feminist project of reading, writing, and rewriting from one’s own perspective: dalla parte di lei. In this sense, what Ferrante’s narrator-protagonist Giovanna owes to de Céspedes’ narrator-protagonist Alessandra is not only the possibility of a queer life and a feminist voice, but the potential for narrating queer feminist experience as relational.

scholarly journals IDENTITAS DIASPORIS TIGA GENERASI PEREMPUAN CINA DALAM ONLY A GIRL KARYA LIAN GOUW (Diasporic Identity of Three Generations of Chinese Females in Only A Girl Written by Lian Gouw)

ATAVISME ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-31
Author(s):  
Ratna Asmarani
Keyword(s):  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Great Role ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
Library Research ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family House

Identity is crucial in a person’s life. Diasporic identity is much more complicated because it involves at least two cultures. The focus of this paper is to analyze the diasporic identity of three generations of diasporic Chinese females as represented in Lian Gouw’s novel entitled Only a Girl. The data and supporting concepts are compiled using library research and close reading. The qualitative analysis is used to support the contextual literary analysis combining the intrinsic aspect focusing on the female characters and the extrinsic aspects concerning diaspora and identity. The results shows that each Chinese female character has tried to construct her own diasporic identity. However, the social, cultural, political, educational, and economic contexts play a great role in the struggles to construct the diasporic identity. It can be concluded that the younger the generation, the braver their effort to construct their diasporic identity and the braver their decision to take a distance with the big family house eventhough they have to face stronger and more complicated conflicts to realize and actualize their personal construction of diasporic identity.

Womb with a View

2020 ◽  
pp. 187-206
Author(s):  
Ally Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Duty Of Care ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Brave New World

This chapter conducts a close reading of Lois McMaster Bujold’s ‘problem’ novel Ethan of Athos, in which an all-male world, Athos, is posited, reliant for reproduction on the ‘uterine replicator’ or artificial womb. Close reading demonstrates how the novel proves more complex than initial readings might suggest in its careful working-through of the ramifications of the uterine replicator for parenting, motherhood, and the duty of care towards the young. The chapter argues how the existence of Athos with the wider Vorkosigan series is significant, part of an ongoing and series-wide project by Bujold to demonstrate the range of possible futures that the uterine replicator might permit. At various points, Ethan of Athos is brought into conversation with Huxley’s Brave New World to contrast Bujold and Huxley’s visions of reproductive futurities. The chapter shows how Bujold’s saga-length project of creating a diverse science-fictional heterotopia involves a thorough working-through of the ramifications of the uterine replicator, of detaching reproduction from a gestational body, in which Ethan of Athos plays a necessary part.

scholarly journals Re-establishing Class Privilege: The Ideological Uses of Middle and Working-Class Female Characters in Downton Abbey

2017 ◽  
pp. 221-234
Author(s):  
Laetitia Kevers
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Historical Accuracy ◽  
Class Privilege

This paper argues that the British period drama Downton Abbey, which aired between 2010 and 2015 and encountered worldwide success, uses working class and middle-class female characters to promote the aristocracy and conservative ideas, while hiding behind historical accuracy and seemingly progressive patterns of behaviour. Through a close reading of four female characters, I will demonstrate how the series’ author, Julian Fellowes, uses the show to endorse his own political agenda, as a Conservative member of the House of Lords in the British Parliament.

scholarly journals REFLECTION THEORY: PUNISHING FEMALE NARCISSISM IN THE WORKS BY LEV NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Natalija Iva Stepanović ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Anna Karenina ◽  
The Social ◽  
Reflection Theory

Even though Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy is mostly known as an opponent of (female) sexuality, this essay argues that female narcissism is an equally controversial category. As plots of three texts –the novellas “TheKreutzer Sonata” and “Family Happiness”,and the novel Anna Karenina –show, female characters have to convert ego-libido into object-libido in order to, while overcoming disappointment, reach Tolstoy’s idea of living for others. The first part of the essay is based on a close reading of Tolstoy’s novellas, and the second part examines the female characters of Anna Karenina. Instead of pointing out the differences between Kitty, Dolly and Ana, I am trying to foreground the ways in which they reflect each other, while linking Anna’s intertextual representations, two portraits, to Tolstoy’s remarks on the social functionof art. .

scholarly journals The Absurd Representations of Pinter’s Women: A study into the representation of female characters in the plays of Harold Pinter

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Andrew Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Harold Pinter ◽  
Theatrical Play

<p>This thesis is concerned with analysing the representation of the female characters found in a sample of Harold Pinter’s plays. The plays examined are The Homecoming (1964), Betrayal (1978) and Celebration (1999). Through a close reading of the texts and reference to past interpreters this work attempts to locate Harold Pinter within the theatrical topography, concentrating on his convergence with the Absurdist genre. This research then assesses the extent to which Pinter’s characters exhibit the conventions pertinent to the genre and Pinter’s unique playwriting style, with particular reference to the dissonance in representation present between male and female characters. To conclude, the project reacts to the inequality present in Pinter’s depiction of female characters, which informs the construction of a theatrical play script, titled Cleanskin.</p>

scholarly journals The Absurd Representations of Pinter’s Women: A study into the representation of female characters in the plays of Harold Pinter

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Andrew Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Harold Pinter ◽  
Theatrical Play

<p>This thesis is concerned with analysing the representation of the female characters found in a sample of Harold Pinter’s plays. The plays examined are The Homecoming (1964), Betrayal (1978) and Celebration (1999). Through a close reading of the texts and reference to past interpreters this work attempts to locate Harold Pinter within the theatrical topography, concentrating on his convergence with the Absurdist genre. This research then assesses the extent to which Pinter’s characters exhibit the conventions pertinent to the genre and Pinter’s unique playwriting style, with particular reference to the dissonance in representation present between male and female characters. To conclude, the project reacts to the inequality present in Pinter’s depiction of female characters, which informs the construction of a theatrical play script, titled Cleanskin.</p>

Biblical Seductresses

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Shira Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Explicit Evaluation ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Biblical Figures

Within the texts of the Bible, there are seductresses who are portrayed as resisting the patriarchal values of biblical society by employing their feminine wiles to manipulate powerful males. These women sacrifice their own virtue by taking initiative in sexually daring acts and subordinating their victim of seduction to further their pursuits. Numerous female biblical figures are praised after utilizing their feminine weapons to achieve their ends; however, these seducers, some of whom are married, engage in questionable means. Since the Bible does not render an explicit evaluation, I aim to investigate such seductive behavior in an effort to assess the conduct of biblical seductresses and illuminate the role of women depicted in the Bible. A close reading of the texts and an examination of rabbinic interpretations of episodes in which Lot’s daughters, Tamar, Jael, Ruth and Esther each perform seductive acts can be used as a resource to further support contemporary feminist readings which justify biblical female characters’ use of morally dubious means to accomplish noble aims.

scholarly journals The gendered embodiment of shame: Intersections of acquaintance rape, trauma and self-blame in Pompidou posse by Sarah Lotz

Literator ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Murray
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Acquaintance Rape ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Sexual Assaults ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Self Blame ◽  
Sexually Assaulted ◽  
Social Messages

This article offers a feminist literary analysis of the gendered embodiment of shame in Pompidou posse by Sarah Lotz. In this novel, Lotz depicts female characters who are sexually assaulted by acquaintances and the resultant shame and trauma reside in their bodies. I will demonstrate that the embodied shame of these characters is distinctly gendered and that this shapes their attempts to cope with the aftermath of the sexual assaults. A close reading of the text reveals that the characters are exposed to overwhelming social messages of female culpability in a larger context that is rife with misogyny. As a result, they anticipate blame to such an extent that they blame themselves and internalise this blame as shame. By focusing on the bodies of the survivors, Lotz demonstrates the embodiment of shame, but she also suggests a corporeal challenge to silencing. The bodies of these characters speak loudly, albeit sometimes in the halting language of trauma, and they function to alert them to danger, to help them excavate memories that are made inaccessible and to testify to traumatic sexual assault.

scholarly journals Fan fiction as feminist citation: Lesbian (para)textuality in chainofclovers's "Done with the Compass, Done with the Chart" (2017)

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Margaret Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Female Desire ◽  
Compulsory Heterosexuality

A close reading of an exemplar femslash fan fic, chainofclover's "Done with the Compass, Done with the Chart" (2017), demonstrates that the language of desire it narrates for canonically heterosexual female characters is anchored by a lesbian (para)textuality. Chainofclovers takes a line from Emily Dickinson’s poem "Wild nights—Wild nights!" for the title of her fan fic for the Grace and Frankie (2015–) TV series. The author enters literary critical discourse and demonstrates feminist models of citation. The use of Dickinson, paired with similar references to the Mojave lesbian poet Natalie Diaz in the chapter epigraphs, provides a new map for the characters to follow, allowing them to travel beyond the canonical confines of compulsory heterosexuality. Just as the canonical characters Grace and Frankie refuse the requirement to cite the men in their lives, instead choosing to cite each other, chainofclovers cites lesbian poetry to imagine a narrative of female desire that is not defined by men. The story thus reflects the feminist citational model that both fan fiction and fan studies can enact, challenging traditional networks of property and ownership by producing a work founded on sustenance and gratitude.

scholarly journals The "sell-out girl" in contemporary Hollywood cinema : training future generations of capitalist consumers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Elizabeth Dollack
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Theoretical Foundation ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Gender Expectations ◽  
Perfect Score ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Teen Films ◽  
Class Status

Contemporary Hollywood teen films are laden with ideological themes that advertise socially appropriate behaviours for young women. The following study, using a theoretical foundation in Marxism, presents a critical examination of the naturalized codes of consumerism, femininity, and adolescent subcultures found within the medium of film. The study of "alternative" female characters in Clueless (1995), 10 things I hate about you (1999), She's all that (1999), Ghost world (2001), Thirteen (2003), Mean girls(2004) and The perfect score (2004), reveals some of the hegemonic processes of capitalism that commodify potential forms of social opposition while reinforcing dominant norms about gender expectations, class status, and conspicuous consumption.

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