The Mass (Re)Production of Female
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UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE BELLS AND WHISTLES: THE MASS (RE)PRODUCTION OF FEMALE BODIES FOR MALE CONSUMPTION A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fnlGllment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By MARIA ORBAN Norman, Oklahoma 2003 UMI Number: 3109070 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI UMI Microform 3109070 Copyright 2004 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ©Copyright by MARIA ORBAN 2003 All rights reserved. BELLS AND WHISTLES: THE MASS (RE)PRODUCTION OF FEMALE BODIES FOR MALE CONSUMPTION A dissertation APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH BY C. Davis-Undiano Vincent B . Leitch Acknowledgements This dissertation was made possible by several inspiring cultural studies courses taught at the University of Oklahoma by renowned specialists in their field like: Dr. Alan Velie, Dr. R.C. Davis, Dr. Vincent B. Leitch, Dr. Ronald Schleifer, Dr. Daniel Gottorn and Dr. Mary Jo Watson. In writing it I had the great good fortune to benefit from the guidance of an impressive group of scholars and pedagogues. I'am. grateful to all of them. I want to express my particular thanks to Dr. Alan Velie who has mentored me throughout my years here for his courses that made me love Native American literature, for his constant support throughout this project and all the vagaries of graduate studies from my first day at this university, and for teaching me the meaning of generosity. For his expertise and encouragement when I needed it most I couldn't be more grateful. My special thanks to his wife, Sue Velie, the most gracious welcoming host one can wish for, and his father Lester Velie an old-school gentleman who is a joy to all those privileged to meet him. I thank Dr. Robert Con Davis- Undiano, whose American literature courses were truly inspiring, who nurtured every creative idea I ever had and helped it grow to its fruition, who gave me opportunities, as well as the confidence I needed to complete my projects and who supported and encouraged me in all my endeavors. To Dr. Vincent B. Leitch I am particularly grateful. His invaluable course on Postmodernism opened up new possibilities for my research. His great knowledge of all things " of theory" and his generous support through all the stages of this lengthy project from selecting the topic to the final rewrites I am most grateful for. Additional support has come from Dr. David Gross who came to my rescue when I needed him most and enabled me to complete my graduate work here. Dr. Mary Jo Watson has been an inspiration since the day I first saw her. She has been an inspiration as a professor, the impressive breadth of her knowledge only surpassed by her warm and graceful presence, as a Native American, and as a woman. I thank you for everything you have taught m e . Special thanks to Dr. Ronald Schleifer for making himself available at all times for the vicissitudes of graduate paperwork, as well as for all his great support in all matters scholarly throughout my years here and to Dr. Daniel Cottom who supported me in the early stages of my graduate work. Finally, my mother deserves more credit than I could ever give her. She was my most enthusiastic supporter and my harshest critic. Without her support I could have never done anything. She recently departed, before she could see me through this time, but I know she will always be with me. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter I. Success is Masculine, Failure is Feminine 8 1.1. Father Damien: Between the Sacred and the Virtual 11 1.2. Fleur^ the mythic woman 36 1.3. June - the trickster Christ figure 50 1.4. Lulu - The Broken Mirror 64 Chapter II. The World in Black and White 81 11.1. Sula: the Victim Turned Predator 98 11.2. Jadine: Political Resistance as Racial Suicide 121 II.3.Sethe-The Body as Site of Political Contestation 139 Chapter III: The Misrepresentation of History 156 III.l. The Persistence of Memory Loss 157 111.2. Writing Women into History 167 111.3. Re-Negotiating History 180 111.4 . Resisting Erasure 186 III.5 . Writing History into Women 208 Conclusion 224 Notes 228 Works Cited 241 Introduction In this work I examine the way female bodies are constructed by contemporaiy ethnic U.S. women writers in the clash of cultures, thus involving a process of negotiation between the dominant culture and ethnicity. Of special interest to my approach is how their construction of female bodies challenges the arbitrary limits, constraints and restrictions imposed by the Western androcentric view, and how social structures are embedded in the female body. I also follow the way bodies and body images are produced and the role hierarchical differences, power relationships, and cultural expectations play in the process. I am interested in the way female bodies reflect the interconnectedness between standards of beauty and dis/empowerment, as well as the way guilt, shame and humiliation are produced by racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes. My broader concern is to investigate these issues within the context of the unstable opposition between the validation and normalization of cultural difference. Taking the Foucauldian view that bodies are fabricated historically by multiple and competing discourses, I relate gender roles, domination, and the ideal of the "feminine" to Bourdieu's critique of patriarchy disciplining bodies into subordinated femininity. Physical and symbolic violence against female bodies permeate to different degrees and are played out in different ways, with rape though inconspicuous, a constant in most of the literary texts under consideration. This should come as no surprise when we live in a culture in which the most violent video game, "Grand Theft Auto : Vice City" made by Rock Star Games, with women as victims, was the best seller of the year in 2002 . My concern was to follow the complexity of female embodiment in relationship to ethnicity, culture, class, politics, and the role self-positioning plays. I selected prominent writers rooted in distinct ethnic traditions to highlight how their heritage is either incorporated into the mainstream culture or contested by it. They are all educated in American universities, Erdrich and Morrison part of the system as very successful academics, their work part of popular culture, thus having a considerable impact on mainstream American culture. And, they all have to reconcile all this with a very different and sometimes conflicting ethnic heritage. My own position as an Eastern European woman vis-à-vis Western Europeans is similar to that of ethnic women in the U.S. because it is rooted in the same type of ambivalence. Just as American ethnics find themselves both inside American culture and outsiders at the same time. Eastern Europeans share European culture and have the status of outsiders. As for American culture, I bring no built-in allegiances. Because bodies are never just material bodies, since we perceive and interpret them according to our own values, biases and prejudices, and impose collective identities such as race, ethnicity, gender, age, and so on upon them, the first step involved was to underscore what goes into these labels for each author. Therefore, each part opens with a theoretical overview of the issues and concerns that historically have played a dominant part in the construction of gender, femininity, and female bodies for the particular culture and the specific author, followed by the way they translate into literary works through female characters that defy cultural stereotypes. Initially, I planned to follow the same issues, even have the same headings for all authors in order to work out a clear comparison of the ways in which the stereotypes are challenged. The project turned out very differently because of the very different concerns highlighted in the construct ion of identity and categories such as gender, femininity, and consequently female bodies by each author. The lenses the authors employed are so different the issues highlighted can't fall under the same headings. Their agendas take precedence over any topic. Part one, "Success is Masculine, Failure is Feminine" explores Louise Erdrich, a Native American writer with strong feminist affiliations. It is this particular precept of patriarchy that she dismantles, attacking it from a number of different angles in her work. Erdrich has an inclusive, fluid view of gender, race, and ethnicity. Categories traditionally constructed as opposites such as male and female or white and Native American become a matter of virtuality rather than unavoidable reality in her view and are seen as reversible. This is reflected by her construction of male/female characters. The first character I discuss is Father Damien/Agnes, interchangeably male and female, a matter of perception, that is, the construct of different values, biases, and stereotypes at work. After carefully examining her rules for gender construction I discuss three female characters that challenge the traditional understanding of femininity from different perspectives that defy stereotypes: Fleur, endowed with mythic powers, June, the Christ/trickster figure, and Lulu, who pulverizes the very concept of the feminine from the inside by being blissfully unaware of any rules that construct it.