Reimaginings of Heterosexual Love in Contemporary Women's Fiction

Durham E-Theses Women Look into Love: Reimaginings of Heterosexual Love in Contemporary Women's Fiction KAREKLA, MELINA How to cite: KAREKLA, MELINA (2013) Women Look into Love: Reimaginings of Heterosexual Love in Contemporary Women's Fiction, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7742/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Women Look into Love: Reimaginings of Heterosexual Love in Contemporary Women’s Fiction Melina Karekla Thesis Abstract This thesis explores how contemporary women writers write about heterosexual love, considering not only the ways it has been implicated in patriarchal models and traditional romance plots, but also its portrayal in light of developments in feminism and fiction in the 1990s and 2000s. The thesis examines Carol Shields’s The Republic of Love (1992), Toni Morrison’s Jazz (1992), Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine (1993), Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup (2001), Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto (2001), Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin (2000) and Doris Lessing’s Love, Again (1995). In this study it emerges that as well as illustrating continuities, the scope of the treatment of love is opened up further in recent fiction as aspects like age or social, economic and historical factors are centralised and considered in interesting ways. The thesis also identifies some positive approaches to heterosexual love, as in, for example, the emphasis on men’s capacity for emotions. However, this is not always the case, as a writer like Lessing further develops a vision of love without providing an affirmative view. Thus, the contemporary women writers’ work can be said to contribute to understandings of heterosexual love on many different levels, even as feminist criticisms of repressive, patriarchal forms of romantic relationship continue to remain relevant. Women Look into Love: Reimaginings of Heterosexual Love in Contemporary Women’s Fiction Melina Karekla Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Studies Durham University 2013 Table of Contents Statement of Copyright ii Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 1. Reclaiming Love in Contemporary Western Culture 92 2. Ethnic American Women Turn to Love 125 3. Approaching Difference: Interracial Love Relationships 197 4. Rejecting Patriarchy: Narratives of Alternative Love 254 5. Age and Love Again: Confronting Prejudice and 289 Unearthing Complexities Conclusion 320 Bibliography 325 ii Statement of Copyright The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author’s prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr Jennifer Terry, for her all of her advice and help throughout this process. Her assistance and guidance has been invaluable to me, and I am grateful for all her support. I would also like to thank Professor Patricia Waugh for taking the time to read a part of my thesis, and for her helpful suggestions. Last but not least, I’m indebted to my family, as it is their love and support that has gotten me through every day. Without them, I could not have done this. 1 Introduction Heterosexual love has been a source of disquiet for feminists in the patriarchal Western world, where men have power over women. The traditional romance plot, to which the heterosexual relationship is arguably integral, has also been perceived as limiting and repressive by feminists. Yet, what will emerge in this thesis is that approaches and attitudes to romantic love and heterosexual relationships in fiction have of late been subject to change; developments within feminism in the 1990s and 2000s, such as the emergence of postfeminism and third-wave feminism, in addition to the increasing appeal of popular genres such as chick lit, have led to a re-evaluation of women’s lives and their relationships with the opposite sex. An earlier generation of feminists, like bell hooks, also began to call for the start of a new discussion of love as early as the 2000s. In light of how reconfigurations of heterosexual love began to be foregrounded in the 1990s and 2000s, a close examination of the ways in which women writers chose to portray romantic relationships between the sexes during this period seems urgent. How women writers are reimagining heterosexual love is illuminated by consideration of feminist writers’ and theorists’ responses to conventional romance narratives and a more general reflection on the kinds of concerns that have been raised with regard to heterosexual relationships within contemporary patriarchal society. While it is clear that feminists’ work on homosexual love is vitally important and has allowed for considerable subversion of traditional expectations of romance, this thesis focuses on heterosexual love as mediated in the writing of selected contemporary women writers. Heterosexual love has received considerable and diverse critical attention, and the focus on how women writers have engaged with such debates and 2 considerations promises to throw important light on significant preoccupations of contemporary women’s fiction. This study therefore examines seven novels published in the 1990s and early 2000s, each chosen as representative in some way of debates around the nature of contemporary romantic love. It asks are these writers critical of heterosexual love, or do they take a different, and perhaps more positive, approach? Are the selected writers reimagining non-patriarchal and non-traditional approaches to heterosexual love? What aspects of the romantic relationship between the sexes are foregrounded? Have there been any developments in literary treatments of romantic love? A wide array of writers has been chosen to help address these questions, so that there are some diversities among them; for example, the writers come from a range of different backgrounds such as the US (including more than one ethnic minority), Canada, Britain and South Africa (here the particular author, Nadine Gordimer, is of European descent). In another form of difference, Toni Morrison and Nadine Gordimer among others have achieved more critical recognition and acclaim than say Ann Patchett, even as they can all be said to be established ‘literary’ authors. Moreover, it was decided to examine writers from the West or with a Western perspective, as the questions raised here arise in response to feminist debates on romantic love within the Western world and out of Western cultural traditions. It must be mentioned that although the chosen terminology is heterosexual love rather than romance, this is not to suggest that romance is divorced from a discussion of love between the sexes. In fact, later in this introduction it will be seen how fundamental the genre of romance has been to the modern novel, so that any discussion of romantic love in fiction arises out of this context. Moreover, the 3 heterosexual relationship is an instrumental aspect of the traditional romance plot, so that an exploration of love between men and women is inevitably connected to this, even where a writer may seek to rework or renounce romance’s conventions. However, although it is clear that romance comes into this examination, the thesis emphasises love as a more helpful and open term; this is because it is able to encompass non-conventional elements that are not usually tackled in the romance genre (for instance, the topic of race or age or communal bonds). So, love provides more scope to cover diverse explorations of men and women’s romantic relationships, while it also allows for more flexible extensions to representations of heterosexual love (for example, the efforts of a number of selected writers to move away from patriarchal models and explore alternative ways of loving). In turning now to an outline of subsequent chapters, the first, “Reclaiming Love in Contemporary Western Culture”, looks at The Republic of Love (1992), a novel by Carol Shields, a US American based in Canada. This section of the thesis examines how The Republic of Love deals with the protagonists’ search for love in the modern-day, Western city of Winnipeg, something that encompasses also looking at the subject of the single life and separation. The chapter seeks to identify how romantic love is still underlined as a particularly significant human experience in spite of the Western world’s tendency to trivialise and diminish it. In the next chapter, “Ethnic American Women Turn to Love”, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), which considers the damaging effects of racism and white standards of beauty upon her protagonists, will be briefly examined before a turn to Jazz (1992), in order to gain a sense of development regarding the author’s attitude to love. This chapter looks at how Morrison’s vision of romantic love is connected to the 4 oppression of African Americans, something that is seen here as pointing to the author’s socially and historically informed perception of love. The chapter examines how racism, as well as patriarchal beliefs, have an effect on love, whilst also considering how the protagonists’ love relationships serve them within such a context. The second part of “Ethnic American Women Turn to Love”, considers how Louise Erdrich, who is partly of Native American descent, views romantic love in the context of a Chippewa community in her novel Love Medicine (1993).

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