• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

UNIVERSITEIT GENT 2006-2007 ASPECTS OF POWER IN THE PROSE OF MARY GAITSKILL FROM A PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE WITH FOCUS ON SADOMASOCHISM PROMOTOR Verhandeling voorgelegd PROF. DR. GERT BUELENS aan de Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte voor het verkrijgen van de graad van licentiaat in de taal- en letterkunde: Germaanse talen door ALISE VAN HECKE - JAMESON ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I could not have completed this thesis on my own and there are many people who, both directly and indirectly, have aided me in my efforts. In particular, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my promoter, Prof. Dr. Gert Buelens, not only for his initial interest in my topic, but also for his guidance, patience, suggestions, and critical commentary, all of which were both motivational and beneficial. I also wish to thank my good friends Elke, Johan, Kathy, Lucie, and Veerle, my brother, Ralph, and my future brother-in-law, Jeff, for their emotional support and encouragement during this trying year. My sister, Annette, deserves recognition for reading my very first, very rough draft and for keeping me sane through our telephone chats. I wish to honor the memory of my Aunt Lynne (November 1937-April 2007) who always believed in me and encouraged me to continue my education. My husband, Omer, receives extra special thanks, as he originally discovered Mary Gaitskill and planted the idea which has since grown into this thesis. Words cannot express my gratitude for his unending support and patience. I thank him for reading many of my previous drafts and offering thoughtful advice. I have also benefited from his computer skills, which saved me much precious time. I am extremely thankful for my father, David, who taught me to love reading and inspired me to both write and study literature. I have benefited immensely from his meaningful suggestions and encouragement. I am also very grateful that he was able to attend the University of North Dakota’s Writers Conference in March of 2007 at which Mary Gaitskill was a featured writer. My dad deserves recognition not only for providing me with detailed notes of the conference, but also for approaching Mary Gaitskill and informing her about my scholarly interest in her work. Finally, I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to Mary Gaitskill for her thought- provoking and inspirational fiction. I would like to dedicate this thesis to the memory of my mother: Constance Rae Jameson March 4, 1952 – August 13, 2006 1 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... 1 CONTENTS…......................................................................................................... 2 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 4 BIOGRAPHY AND WORK ..............................................................................................................4 SADOMASOCHISM........................................................................................................................7 SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................................9 CHAPTER ONE: FANTASY VERSUS REALITY ..................................................... 12 I.1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 12 I.2 FANTASY AND S/M IN “A ROMANTIC WEEKEND” .........................................................12 I.3 FANTASY AND MEMORY IN “AN AFFAIR, EDITED”........................................................22 I.4 PROJECTED FANTASY AND GENDER PERFORMATIVITY IN “SOMETHING NICE” .............25 I.5 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................29 CHAPTER TWO: S/M AND TRAUMA IN TWO GIRLS, FAT AND THIN................... 31 II.1 INTRODUCTION AND PLOT SUMMARY............................................................................31 II.2 TWO GIRLS, TWO TRAUMAS..........................................................................................33 II.2.1 Justine Shade: Sadist and Masochist...................................................................33 II.2.2 Isolation ..............................................................................................................41 II.2.3 Self-injury ...........................................................................................................46 II.2.4 S/M: Healing or Hurting? ...................................................................................49 II.3 MUTUAL RECOGNITION .................................................................................................55 II.4 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................60 CHAPTER THREE: ROLE-PLAY AND ROLE-REVERSAL ...................................... 61 III.1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................61 III.2 PLAYING WITH POWER IN “THE BLANKET”...................................................................61 III.3 “THE WRONG THING”...................................................................................................70 III.4 CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................77 CHAPTER FOUR: POWER IN SOCIETY VERSUS POWER IN S/M ......................... 79 IV.1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................79 IV.2 POWER RELATIONS AND IDEOLOGY ..............................................................................80 IV.2.1 Sexual Harassment or S/M Play? “The Secretary” .............................................81 IV.2.2 Confessions of A Rapist: “The Girl On The Plane”.............................................86 2 IV.3 “THE EROTICISM OF THE MASTER-SLAVE CONFIGURATION” .....................................89 IV.4 WHO’S THE BOSS? AND ROLE-REVERSIBILITY.............................................................93 IV.5 CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................98 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................... 99 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................................. 102 PRIMARY BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................102 SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................102 3 INTRODUCTION 1 BIOGRAPHY AND WORK Mary Gaitskill was born on November 11, 1954 in Lexington, Kentucky. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Arts in 1980. She succeeded in publishing her fiction around the age of 32. Gaitskill received a Guggenheim Fellowship for her fiction in 2002. Currently, she lives in New York, N.Y., and is an associate professor at Syracuse University, where she teaches creative writing. She has also taught at the University of Berkeley, California, the San Francisco Art Institute, the University of Houston, New York University, and Brown. Gaitskill first began to publish her short stories in magazines, such as Elle, Esquire, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. She has also written numerous book reviews and essays. Gaitskill’s first book, which appeared in 1988, was a collection of short stories, entitled Bad Behavior. Her debut novel, Two Girls, Fat and Thin, followed in 1991. Because They Wanted To, Gaitskill’s second short story collection, was published in 1997 and was also nominated for the PEN/Faulkner award in 1998. Her second novel, Veronica, was released in 2005, for which she received a nomination for the National Book Award in the same year. She is currently writing another collection of short stories and a novel. Gaitskill’s fiction includes such topics as homosexuality, sex workers, AIDS, sexual violation, and sadomasochism, which still remain marginalized in dominant American society. Gaitskill’s interest in sexuality could be attributed partially to her past, because she reports that she worked as a stripper at one point in her life. Gaitskill does not view stripping or prostitution in a negative way. She states that working as a stripper was “an interesting experience for me, and often a pleasurable one. I had been inordinately shy and it was a way to act out a lot of fantasies.”2 Gaitskill’s open-mindedness with regard to sexuality was also 1 For the biographical details, I have relied on Morgan Love, “Mary Gaitskill”, in Post-war Literatures in English, 46 (March 2000), pp. 1-18; Syracuse University, 2006?, author unknown, <english.syr.edu/cwp/gaitskill.htm > (13/3/2007); Barnes and Noble.com, 2005?, Biography courtesy of Random House, Interviewer unknown, <www.barnesandnoble.com/writers/writer.asp?z=y&cid=973021 > (13/3/2007). 2 Andrew Calcutt and Richard Shephard, Cult Fiction: A Reader’s Guide, London: Prion Books, 1998, p. 102. Quoted in Love, “Mary Gaitskill”, p. 2. 4 discussed in an interview with Alexander Laurence in which she revealed that she has had sex for money.3 In Gaitskill’s fiction, one is confronted with a broad range of relationships, including the social, the sexual, and the familial. Her characters do not exist in isolation,

Load more

  105

Copy Link