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AS in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Zok the Degree “WHAT IS IT?”: EXAMINING NARRATIVE SHIFTS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY GENDERQUEER NOVELS A Thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University AS In partial fulfillment of the requirements for ZoK the Degree * Yoty Master of Arts In English: Literature by Tobi Lynn Harper San Francisco, California May 2015 Copyright by Tobi Lynn Harper 2015 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read “What is it?”: Examining Narrative Shifts in Twentieth-Century Genderqueer Novels by Tobi Lynn Harper, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in English: Literature at San Francisco State University. “What is it?”: Examining Narrative Shifts in Twentieth-Century Genderqueer Novels Tobi Lynn Harper San Francisco, California 2015 From Radclyffe Hall’s A Well o f Loneliness (1928) to Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues (1993), the lives of genderqueer people have been increasingly expressed through novels. This is a genre well suited for showing personal development, often through the form of a bildungsroman and first-person narration. Analyzing twentieth-century genderqueer narratives allows for a tracing of how these queer experiences form a specifically genderqueer narrative through the deconstruction of normative structures of both narrative techniques and content. Using two emblematic genderqueer narratives, The Well o f Loneliness and Stone Butch Blues, this thesis traces how genderqueer characters are represented across the twentieth-century, toward a more hopeful future. I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis. Chair, Thesis Committee Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express gratitude and special appreciation to my thesis advisor, Dr. Loretta Stec, for her guiding hand, in-depth comments, and patient persistence. I am thankful to my second advisor, Dr. William Christmas, for his positivity, generous support, and close attention to detail. I am grateful to the numerous professors of the English Graduate Department at San Francisco State University from whom I have had the pleasure of learning. They have encouraged me to write about my interests, and inspired me to dig deeper into the well of knowledge. Dear thanks to the English Department staff who have held my hand through all paperwork and deadlines. I could not have come this far without their assistance. Thank you, also, to my dear classmates, with whom I have spent many days and nights writing and editing before quickly approaching due dates, and who were kind enough to lend their superb editing skills to multiple late night drafts. The spirit of hope with which I write comes from their support, and the knowledge that we are all students of the world, learning together. Finally, I thank my parents, siblings, housemates, and my loving partner for their unwavering support and love throughout this extended project. Many a night have I spent writing and editing away, while loved ones cleaned, cooked, and kept our lives in order. I dedicate this thesis to Leslie Feinberg, who passed on November 15, 2014, just six months before its completion. Feinberg inspired myself and many others to understand and accept ourselves as we are, without apology or regret. A true transgender warrior—a beacon of hope. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction................................................................................................................................ 1 Introductory Details......................................................................................................4 Why “Genderqueer”?....................................................................................................6 Chapter 1: Escaping The Well o f Loneliness..........................................................................11 Temporal Titles........................................................................................................... 13 Bildungsroman: From Birth to Heartbreak...............................................................14 Escape to Nature: Riding Horses.............................................................................. 21 True Love: Mary or Valerie?.....................................................................................25 Shame and Feelings of Self-Worth: Without Community or Violence................. 33 Violence: Emotional...................................................................................................37 Community Bonds: Few and Far Between...............................................................39 Narrative Voice and The Implied Reader.................................................................41 Chapter 2: Transcending these Stone Butch Blues................................................................49 Bildungsroman: From Birth to Hope........................................................................ 50 Escape to Nature: Riding Motorcycles.....................................................................59 True Love: Theresa or Ruth?.....................................................................................62 Shame and Feelings of Self Worth: With Community and Violence...................66 Violence: Emotional, Physical, and Sexual..............................................................76 Community Bonds: According to Time and Place..................................................88 Narrative Voice and The Implied Reader.................................................................97 Conclusion............................................................................................................................... 99 Glossary..................................................................................................................................104 Works Cited........................................................................................................................... 108 Works Consulted....................................................................................................... 111 1 Introduction Starting from 1928 with Radclyffe Hall’s The Well o f Loneliness and leading up to Leslie Feinberg’s 1993 Stone Butch Blues, it is possible to trace a trajectory of self­ acceptance in the representations of genderqueers in the twentieth century. Analyzing these novels as genderqueer1 continues this trajectory—revealing a new perspective within literature and representing largely overlooked experiences. What I will be calling the “genderqueer genre” lends legitimacy to the lived experience of these individuals, but also opens up a discourse for a marginalized group to claim the right to its own existence. The length of the novel form allows for underrepresented individuals and communities to form a literary community and history that stretches across time and distance. These texts, featuring genderqueer female-assigned individuals, provide an otherwise hidden literary community within the words on the page, accessible to those who are alone— labeled freaks and inverts, and who often are too few and far between to enjoy a physically present community. From 1928 to 1993, the lives of genderqueer females have been increasingly represented in novel form. I analyze the parallel characteristics of these emblematic butch/dyke/trans novels to explore how these texts’ genderqueer protagonists are represented as very specifically genderqueer, rather than as lesbian or transgender. Stephen’s self-loathing genderqueer representation in The Well o f Loneliness has affected 1 Refer to glossary on page 104. 2 genderqueer narratives across the century within the U.S. and Britain, shifting to a more liberatory representation of genderqueer bodies with Jess in Stone Butch Blues. This specifically genderqueer narrative form can be tracked in its cross-century parallel representations of: violence, self-worth, community bonds, romantic relationships, narrative voice, and the implied reader or audience (as implied by the tone of the narrator) in relation to genderqueer bodies. I focus on genderqueer narratives about characters who are female-assigned at birth, for the sake of narrowing my scope, and in order to speak as a member of my own community rather than presume to speak for another’s. Frustratingly, novels surrounding genderqueer female-assigned characters are difficult to locate beyond these two2, and my research has revealed a dearth of novels that address the lives of genderqueer people of color. The Well o f Loneliness and Stone Butch Blues can be analyzed as genderqueer through parallel characteristics found within what I am claiming as the genderqueer genre. Presenting genderqueer characters’ lives in the form of the bildungsroman makes them the heroes of their own stories. Rather than being represented as dismissible and without agency, these characters are the rulers of their own destinies, though subject to perceptions of their times. They escape these perceptions by escaping to nature, or to the 2 Sacred Country by Rose Tremain is the only other book I have found with a specifically genderqueer female-assigned at birth character. I will focus on the two landmark texts of The Well of Loneliness and Stone Butch Blues, and will not analyze Sacred Country nor the numerous texts with genderqueer aspects published especially in the 1950s and beyond. 3 freedom found in nature by donning motorcycle gear and cruising down the open road. These roads often lead to the experience
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