Sexualized Bodies in Canadian Women's Short Fiction
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Saskatchewan's Research Archive Sexualized Bodies in Canadian Women’s Short Fiction A Dissertation Submitted to the College of Graduate Studies and Research in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Department of English University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada By AMELIA HORSBURGH 2016 © Copyright Amelia Horsburgh, 2016. All Rights Reserved. PERMISSION TO USE In presenting this dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Postgraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of this University may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this dissertation in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my dissertation work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this dissertation or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Saskatchewan in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my dissertation. Requests for permission to copy or to make other uses of materials in this dissertation in whole or part should be addressed to: Head of the Department of English University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A5 Canada OR Dean College of Graduate Studies and Research University of Saskatchewan 107 Administration Place Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A2 Canada i Abstract In this dissertation, I examine short stories by Canadian women writers from the 1970s to the 2000s to answer three overarching questions. First, I analyze, using various theories of corporeality, how bodies of female characters in these short stories perform a wide range of acquiescence and resistance to dominant Western ideals of female beauty. Second, I investigate the relationships between women characters’ gender, sexuality, social class, culture, and age, and their ability to engage in a variety of acts of compliance and defiance through such methods as food restriction, binge and purge, and surgical procedures. Third, I query the linguistic techniques and narrative devices of the short story genre that facilitate Canadian women writers in their exploration of the postmodern body’s fluctuating pleasure, distress, satisfaction, shame, and ultimate instability. The bodies of the female characters in these stories sometimes demonstrate the painfully strict and cumbersome social construction of the feminine body as mandated by Western hegemonic ideals. However, many of the characters devise and utilise specific stratagems to bypass or circumvent the restriction of their bodies, bodies that are perceived to be outside societal norms by the male characters or by society at large. The female characters’ bodily experiences, such as body modification, nudity, and abjection, demonstrate both the innate power of the corporeal, and the difficulty of controlling the message of their performances as understood by masculine watchers. The women resist dominant Western ideals of femaleness and sexuality through varied means, such as embracing an embodied and lived sexuality, making alterations to the appearance of their bodies, or accepting their bodies as unstable and ever changing. These same modes of resistance can and sometimes do hinder the characters’ capacities to inhabit their bodies. The fluidity of the body is both painful and exhilarating to the ii female characters as they seek bodies and gender performances that align with their life experiences of being both in and of the world. iii Acknowledgements My love and thanks to my husband Justin Ymana and son Saul who have supported me through my doctoral studies with unwavering enthusiasm. I thank my parents Dr Martha (Beth) Horsburgh and Greg Horsburgh, my parents-in-law Cris Ymana and Valerie Ymana, my sister Jessica Horsburgh and brother-in-law Ben Woods, brother Thomas (Chad) Horsburgh, and brother-in-law Glenn Ymana, for their love and encouragement. A very special thank you to my supervisor extraordinaire, Dr. Wendy Roy, for her encouragement and supportive feedback throughout my doctoral studies. I also wish to thank my committee members for their thoughtful comments and questions: Dr. Steffler (External Examiner, Trent University), Dr. Muri (Graduate Chair), Dr. Lynes (Specialist Examiner), Dr. James-Cavan (Departmental Examiner), Dr. Biggs (Cognate Examiner), and Dr. Misra (Dean’s Designate). My thanks to the faculty and staff from both the Department of English as well as the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness for their encouragement as I completed each step of my PhD. I would not have been able to complete this dissertation without the loving care provided for my son by countless family, friends, and early childcare professionals. My sincere gratitude and thanks to the childcare workers at the CSMFRC (Central Saskatchewan Military Family Resource Centre) Child Care Centre, Tykes & Tots Early Learning Centre, and the Centre Educatif Félix le Chat. Also a big thank you to the world’s greatest neighbour, Joan Linklater, for watching Saul on numerous occasions when I had to attend afternoon meetings on campus and for supplying us with a constant supply of homemade buns and jam. iv Dedication I dedicate Sexualized Bodies in Canadian Women’s Short Fiction to my maternal grandparents and biggest cheerleaders Douglas James Chadwell (1920-2012) and Doris Chadwell (1923-2013). The world’s best grandparents! v Table of Contents PERMISSION TO USE .................................................................................................................. i ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................... iv DEDICATION ................................................................................................................................v TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................................. vi LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... vii Introduction: Sexualized Bodies in Canadian Short Fiction ............................................................1 1. “I Tie It Up with a Bright Red Ribbon”: The Gift of Transgressive Corporeality in Margaret Atwood’s “Hairball” and Eden Robinson’s “Queen of the North” ...................35 2. “Nipples are no-nos”: The Mastectomized Body in Bonnie Burnard’s “Nipple Man,” Carol Shields’s “Eros,” and Linda Svendsen’s “White Shoulders” ..................................60 3. “I Only Throw Up Dinners”: The Anorectic and Bulimic Stance as Parody in Margaret Atwood’s “Spring Song of the Frogs” and Madeleine Thien’s “Alchemy” .....................91 4. Performing Female Heterosexuality: The Teenage Body in Elisabeth Harvor’s “One Whole Hour (Or Even More) with Proust and Novocaine,” Bonnie Burnard’s “Crush,” and Alice Munro’s “Wenlock Edge” ..............................................................................122 5. “My Body is My Canvas”: Transforming and Performing the Female Body in Marian Engel’s “The Tattooed Woman” and Barbara Gowdy’s “Ninety-three Million Miles Away” .............................................................................................................................163 Conclusion: .................................................................................................................................193 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................206 vi List of Figures Figure 1 Dante Rossetti, The Annunciation ................................................................................105 Figure 2 William Hogarth, The Shrimp Girl................................................................................132 vii Introduction: Sexualized Bodies in Canadian Women’s Short Fiction A woman’s performed femininity is a tool of power. She uses it both unconsciously and consciously to influence, control, and command. Judith Butler understands gender, including both femininity and masculinity, as a “corporeal style, an ‘act,’ as it were, which is both intentional and performative, where ‘performative’ suggests a dramatic and contingent construction of meaning” (190). The meaning of the performance is conditional on the audience and time period of the act, what Butler calls “social temporality” (191). In the twenty-first century, a woman’s performance of femininity is continually both formed and assaulted by Western societal tropes about the body and sexuality. Problems associated with women’s bodies and body image are compounded, corrected, and complicated again as women and others in their social world attempt to understand their complex bodily relationships. If, as Butler believes, gender is performative, how are women’s bodies and performances of femininity defined and controlled in ways that disempower them? Take for instance the news