Playing in the Dirt: Tomboyism and Its Literary and Film Adaptation in Carson Mccullers
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Palacky University Olomouc Philosophical Faculty Department of English and American Studies English and American Literature Veronika Klusáková Playing in the Dark and Dirt: Tomboyism and its Image in Carson McCullers’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding as Novels and Films Hry v temnotě a špíně: tomboyismus a jeho obraz v románech Carson McCullers Srdce je osamělý lovec a Svatebčanka a jejich filmových verzích Ph.D. Dissertation | Dizertační práce supervisor | vedoucí – prof. Marcel Arbeit 2012 1 Prohlašuji, že jsem dizertační práci napsala samostatně, pouze s použitím citovaných pramenů a literatury. I hereby declare that I have written this dissertation by myself, using only literature and sources cited below. V Olomouci 28. května 2012 | Olomouc, 28 May 2012 2 Abstract My Ph.D. dissertation Playing in the Dark and Dirt: Tomboyism and Its Image in Carson McCullers’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding as Novels and Films deals with the phenomenon of tomboyism and the forms it adopts in two novels by the southern writer Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) and The Member of the Wedding (1946), and films and TV programs made from these two novels across the second half of the 20th century. The first part of my work outlines possible theoretical approaches to tomboyism from the perspective of gender (androgyny, feminist criticism, female masculinity, masquerade and gender performance), discusses the issue of the tomboy’s liminal position between childhood and adulthood as well as between masculinity and femininity and introduces the method of intersectional analysis which, combined with queer theory addressing identity categories as fluid, allows me to analyze questions of race, class and sexuality arising from the specific regional setting of McCullers’s work. Subsequently, I apply this methodology to the reading of the film and TV versions of the novels, constituting new ways their tomboyish protagonists can be viewed – as subversive characters deconstructing fixed ideas of dominance, otherness and subordination. Abstrakt Má dizertační práce Hry v temnotě a špíně: tomboyismus a jeho obraz v románech Carson McCullersové Srdce je osamělý lovec a Svatebčanka a jejich filmových verzích se zabývá fenoménem tomboyismu a způsobu, jímž se projevuje ve dvou románech jižanské autorky Carson McCullersové, Srdce je osamělý lovec (1940) a Svatebčanka (1946), a jejich filmových a televizních verzích vznikajících napříč druhou polovinou 20. století. První část práce nastiňuje možné přístupy k tomboyismu z hlediska genderu (androgynie, feministická kritika, ženská maskulinita, maškaráda a genderová performance) a otevírá otázku tomboyovy liminální pozice mezi dětstvím a dospělostí i mezi femininitou a maskulinitou. Dále zavádí metodu intersekční analýzy, jež umožňuje, ve spojení s pojetím kategorií identity coby něčeho proměnlivého, s nímž přichází queer teorie, analyzovat otázky rasy, třídy a sexuality pramenící ze specifického regionálního ukotvení románů McCullersové. Práce následně aplikuje tuto metodologii na interpretaci filmových a televizních verzí obou románů a nastoluje nové způsoby čtení jejich tomboyských protagonistů jako subverzivních entit rozrušujících fixní ideje dominance, jinakosti a podřízenosti. 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank following institutions, colleagues and friends without whose advice, help and support I would never manage to complete my dissertation: The Fulbright Commission in Prague allowing me to spend a wonderful year researching at UCLA, Kathleen McHugh, my supporting UCLA tutor, the wonderfully helpful staff at Margaret Harrick Library, Warner Bros. Corporate Archive and YRL Library, Robert Rosenstone, a great friend and the best L.A. guide, Boris Dralyuk, my first reader, Zdeněk Hudec, my former supervisor, Marcel Arbeit, my current supervisor, and Petr Bilík, a dear friend and fellow fighter. My deepest thanks go to Tomáš Jirsa for his unflinching love and patience. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction.....................................................................................................9 1.1.Theme and Goal..................................................................................9 1.2 Methodology and Literature.............................................................12 1.3. Structure and Outline of Individual Chapters...................................23 2. From Boy to Woman and Girl: Epistemology of a Concept...............................................................................................................35 2.1. A Rude and Boisterous Creature: Tomboyism as the Mixed Cure for American Womanhood............................................................................36 3. Tomboy as a Gender Bender: Liberation or Misogyny?...........................41 3.1. Childhood Innocence and the Androgynous Tomboy......................43 3.1.1. Androgyny as the Third Option in Feminism and Clinical Psychology...................................................................................43 3.1.2. Androgyny as Cross-dressing and the Rise of the Tomboy Film..............................................................................................48 3.1.3. Androgyny and Tomboyism in To Kill a Mockingbird.................................................. …..........................50 3.2. Against the Nice-Girl Paradigm – Tomboy as a Proto- and Post- Feminist...................................................................................................54 3.2.1. The Quintessential Tomboy Revisited: Katherine Hepburn as the Next Door Garbo...............................................................54 3.2.2. Post-feminism and the Hollywood Dark Girl....................59 3.3. Tomboyism, Lesbian Sexuality and (Female) Masculinity..............65 3.3.1.Tomboyism Between Gender and Sexuality.......................65 3.3.2. Judith Halberstam and Female Butchness – Tomboy Film as Queer Cinema for Pre-Teens?.................................................68 3.4. Beyond the Either-Or Trap: Tomboyism as Liminality....................71 3.5. Tomboyism and Masquerade.......................................................... .73 3.5.1. Womanliness as Masquerade in Psychoanalytic (Film) Theory..........................................................................................73 5 3.5.2. Tomboy Taming and Masquerade – Against the Grain of Tomboy Narratives......................................................................77 3.6. Tomboyism and Gender Performativity...........................................80 3.6.1. Identity Categories as Sites of Gender Trouble – Judith Butler and the Queering of Identity Politics................................80 3.6.2. Gender Performance as a Antidote to Tomboy Taming.....82 4. Playing in the Dark and Dirt: Tomboyism in the American South...........86 4.1. The Shadow of the Lady and Belle: Rebels With a Southern Cause.......................................................................................................87 4.1.1. Beauty and the Belle – Rebellion Postponed?...................90 4.1.2. Tomboy and the Belle: the Jekyll/Hyde of Southern White Girlhood.......................................................................................93 4.2. The Southern Tomboy as the Paradoxical Other..............................96 4.2.1. Playing in the Dark: the Tomboy’s Non-Whiteness..........97 4.2.2. Whitewashing as the End of Tomboyism?.......................100 4.3. Visual Economies of Race – Tomboyism and the Lenticular Postcard.................................................................................................101 4.3.1. Tomboyism and Masquerade Against the Traditional Image of the South …...........................................................................103 4.3.2. To Kill a Mockingbird and White Middle-Class Queerness...................................................................................105 4.3.3.White Trash Talks Back – Tomboyism from Below.........113 4.4. Intersectional Analysis and the Tomboy’s Hybrid Identity.............120 4.5. Growing Up a Girl in the South......................................................125 5. Tomboys in Carson McCullers’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding...................................................................................129 5.1. The Invention of Tomboyism through the Feminist Lens..............129 5.1.1. McCullers’s Incomplete Androgynes..............................134 5.1.2. Frankie Addams as a Closeted Lesbian...........................136 6 5.1.3. Masquerading Femininity: Being Adult Without Being a Woman.......................................................................................138 5.1.4. Gangling Tomboys and Transvestite Little Boys. Freakishness, Nomadic Identities and a Silent Crazy Jungle Under Glass...............................................................................144 5.2. Glass Blue Eyes and Apartment A: Queering Race and Class......................................................................................................152 5.2.1. Kinship with African Americans as a Threat to Segregation?..............................................................................152 5.2.2. Dirt and Cotton Stockings: Poverty, Commonness and the Invisibility of Class...................................................................161 5.3. Neither a Queer Paradise Nor a Triumph of Safe Conformity.......164 6. Heating Up Race,