“Who cares about pretty?”: Examining the construction and performance of femininity in Young Adult literature

Samantha Poulos

Department of English Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The University of Sydney

A thesis submitted to fulfil requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

2020

1 Statement of originality

This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes.

I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged.

Name: Samantha Poulos

2 Contents

Abstract 4

Acknowledgements 6

Introduction: “Can’t I be strong and go to prom?” 8

Chapter One: The Joy of YA Literature 20

Chapter Two: Gender Binaries and Feminist Histories 56

Chapter Three: The Rhetoric of “Choice” 101

Chapter Four: The Masquerade of Femininity 134

Chapter Five: Liminality and Rebellion 160

Chapter Six: Masculine and Queer Women 189

Conclusion: “There are many ways to be brave in this world.” 224

Bibliography 235

3 Abstract

This thesis investigates the feminist project of revaluing the feminine and seeks to understand the seemingly dichotomous relationship between femininity and strength as presented in young adult (YA) literature. By performing a close reading of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger

Games series and Veronica Roth’s Divergent series this thesis will examine, using Judith

Butler’s theory of gender performativity, how femininity is constructed and performed and why, and then further examine how to understand femininity existing outside of a hierarchical gender binary. A framework of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s paranoid and reparative reading is used throughout, to look suspiciously at these texts while also allowing for space to examine how they offer new understandings of femininity. In order to revalue the feminine, first we must understand how it is constructed, performed, sustained, and valued, and then through deconstruction can we seek to revalue, reconstruct, and recreate new potential femininities that exist beyond hierarchical gender binaries.

To start, this thesis argues that YA literature is a unique and potentially transgressive fictional space that can reflect and subvert contemporary theories of gender, feminism, and identity. It then offers a historical overview of feminist and gender theory to interpret the hierarchical gender binary where femininity is positioned as Other. It later challenges postfeminist and neoliberal discourses that promote choice feminism as a way of performing femininity as a personal choice, rather than questioning greater social structures that enforce gender binaries and patriarchal powers.

The Hunger Games and Divergent series, and the narration of their protagonists Katniss

Everdeen and Tris Prior, reveal the mechanisms through which gender is performed and valued. This performance of femininity is also tied up in their sense of self and identity.

4 Irigaray’s theories of masquerade and mimicry are invoked to examine how these characters understand themselves and their relationship to femininity. The thesis then questions the nature of identity and how identity and gender can be created in a dystopic society. In order not to replicate these dystopic worlds and the limited identities they allow, the protagonists intervene to force a new future. It is in this future that we can imagine gender and identity outside of a hierarchical gender binary.

The primary objective of this thesis is to examine how the Hunger Games and Divergent series represent and value femininity, to understand what that says about contemporary feminist theory, and then imagine how femininity can exist beyond hierarchical gender binary and what that imagining might look like or what might be required to achieve it.

5 Acknowledgements

Completing a PhD thesis is not a solitary project. It is one that takes a village of support and I would like to acknowledge and thank all of those who comprise my village.

Firstly I would like to thank Jan Shaw for her role as my supervisor. Without her support, advice, feedback, and encouragement none of this would have been possible. Her endless capacity for caring and thoughtful guidance help shape me and this thesis. Thanks must also go to the Department of English and all of the staff who have helped make countless opportunities possible to me during my candidature. I especially would like to thank Rebecca Johinke for her position as auxiliary supervisor who helped and guided me through a rough middle patch and Mark Byron who without meeting me still went above and beyond to help me get my application through and started me on this thesis journey. The support offered to me by the University of Sydney has been essential and there are many more faculty and department members who I have not named who have been there for me, provided references, offered guidance, and I am truly thankful for all them.

As part of my thesis village I must thank my USYD cohort, and all of the other research students who I shared desk space within the Fisher dungeon and Woolley attic. Our kitchen conversations made each day more enjoyable and the research process less isolating. Notably I would like to thank Ella Collins-White, Oliver Moore, and Jennifer Nicholson for all of the support, fun group chat memes, trivia nights, and above all for the friendships I found with them. Thanks to all of my new friends and colleagues that I met through the university and at conferences. Hearing about everyone’s projects and engaging in the academic community with you continually reinvigorated my love for research and I look forward to all the projects and hot takes yet to come. Thanks must also be extended to the friends who knew me before I started my candidature, and have stood by me as I went through this experience, offered their love and support, and most importantly let me rant about my thesis over many brunches; thanks to Anton, George, Barbara, Lauren, Yun Yin, Eunice, Maddie, my D&D party James, Alysha, Aidan, Jex, and Maddy, and to those I have undoubtedly and regretfully forgotten to name at this time.

The largest thanks and acknowledgement must go to my parents Peter and Alexandra Poulos without whom none of this would have been possible. Their continued support through all of my education has been exemplary in every respect. Without their love and guidance, as well as continually reading to me as a child, I would not be here.

Finally I would like to acknowledge and thank Starbucks for their vanilla sweet cream cold brew which made the research days more bearable, the Courtyard café who fed and caffeinated me nearly three times a day, and the ocean, who has been a comfort and a confidant.

6

7 Introduction

“Can’t I be strong and go to prom?”1

In 2012, the character Alison Argent, a teenage girl and a werewolf hunter from a family of werewolf hunters, argues with her mother on MTV’s popular show Teen Wolf (aired 2011-

2017). In this episode Alison’s mother is commenting that her daughter is unlike other girls, who care about boys and dating and going to the prom, seemingly trivial ‘girly’ things.

Instead, she argues that Alison is a “strong” hunter. Alison’s retort, of “Can’t I be strong and go to prom?” cliché as it may appear, summarises a particular moment in contemporary popular, and third-wave, feminist critique, which is to question this apparent dichotomy between ideas of strength and a ‘girly’ desire for prom. Why can’t a woman be strong, whether that means physically strong or simply empowered and agentic, as well as typically feminine? Teen Wolf is just one of many examples of teen media that prompts questions about how we consider concepts of gender and femininity in popular and contemporary culture. What is this supposed binary between being strong and feminine? The question

Alison poses also points to greater questions as well such as what structures are at play that create a binary hierarchy between masculinity and femininity that positions femininity as weak and unfavourable? How then can feminine/femininity be revalued and how can our conception of gender structures change in order to allow for a new construction of femininity? It is these questions that this thesis will seek to explore particularly through close readings of the popular young adult (YA) books the Hunger Games series (2008 - 2010) by

Suzanne Collins and the Divergent series (2011 - 2013) by Veronica Roth.

1 Teen Wolf, season 2, episode 6, “Fremeny,” directed by Russell Mulcahy, aired July 2, 2012, on MTV.

8 Much feminist theory has been dedicated to the examination of the feminine and femininity, specifically the social requirement that women perform a certain level of femininity in a patriarchal society. As this thesis will explore in detail (by conducting an in-depth chronology of feminist and queer theoretical critiques of gender performativity), there has been a move towards a reclamation of the feminine as an agentic position, and a challenge to the hierarchy of gender binary, in contemporary forms of feminism. While the wave terminology is problematic as will be discussed later, this thesis addresses the third-wave feminist position that femininity and the feminine can be a site of reclamation and of personal bodily expression.2 Performing acts of femininity and engaging in beauty practices can be read as feminist acts of defiance against patriarchal standards that previously constructed femininity as weak, or lesser than, and Other. This language of autonomy and personal choice, however, is also a key feature of postfeminist theory and neoliberal discourse, which positions femininity and the feminine within a re-articulation of patriarchal values. In framing an ideal construction of femininity, on autonomy, authenticity, and personal expression there is less of an impetus to continue to challenge and interrogate greater social structures and constructions of gender. To cite the character Alison Argent again, it is about the personal experience of gender (“Why can’t I…”). The language of choice and autonomy exists in this neoliberal postfeminist space where there has been no significant work to recuperate the feminine from patriarchal control. Rather it has now been positioned as a liberty available to all. Why can’t an individual be strong and go to prom if that is what they want. Suggesting that the performance of traditional femininity has been fully reclaimed and should therefore not be further interrogated continues this masking of patriarchal values under feminist labels.

2 The way this thesis defines and understands third-wave feminism is expanded upon in chapter two, and draws on definitions outlined in Scholz, Feminism, Kinser, “Negotiating Spaces,” Mann and Huffman, “Decentering,” and Orr, “Charting the Currents.”

9 Given the popularity of the Hunger Games series, scholarship and popular media alike have frequently raised questions about whether Katniss Everdeen and the series itself can be read as feminist, and questioned how relevant these texts are to our understanding of terms such as

“girl power”, empowerment, and autonomy. Given the similarities — both being dystopic

YA trilogies featuring a young female protagonist — the feminist nature of the Divergent series, and its protagonist Tris Prior, can also be questioned in these ways. In approaching these questions, this thesis will pose others: if Katniss and Tris are read as a feminist hero(ine)s, then what can we understand about the construction and representation of femininity in these texts? Is there something in their representation of femininities that resonates with popular ideas of feminism? And further, what is the relationship between femininity, autonomy, and feminist theory occurring in these books?

In considering how femininity is constructed and the complex relationship femininity has with power and agency, Sandra Lee Bartkey hits on a key conundrum. Her work looks at how

“disciplinary practices” are undertaken by women to perform idealised femininity; how it is something that is done through a series of practices. In “Foucault, Femininity, and the

Modernization of Patriarchal Power” Bartkey explains:

Painting the face is not like painting a picture; at best, it might be described as

painting the same picture over and over again with minor variations… Furthermore,

since a properly made-up face is, if not a card of entree, at least a badge of

acceptability in most social and professional contexts, the woman who chooses not to

wear cosmetics at all faces sanctions of a sort that will never be applied to someone

who chooses not to paint a watercolour.3

3 Sandra Lee Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” in Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, ed. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby (Northeastern University Press, 1988), 70-71.

10 This analogy points out that while some women may choose to engage with makeup and femininity and some may not, there is no denying that makeup is part of a culturally accepted performance of femininity that is valued in society and seen as socially acceptable. This performance of femininity is also a highly regulated one. The painted face may be phrased as a choice however it is not unique; it replays normative gender roles and identities on a face that endlessly repeats and is coded for repetition. This thesis seeks to continue the third-wave feminist imperative to reclaim femininity, to enjoy and empower the painted face, while also questioning the social structures that dictate the performance of gender, values femininity in a particular way, and constructs the way choices are framed and valued. It asks what is femininity—how is it constructed, performed, and valued—and is there a form of femininity that can truly be free of patriarchal social structures? If so, how can we achieve it?

This thesis’ conception of femininity, and of gender, is based on Judith Butler’s work on gender performativity and, therefore, on understanding how gender is performative and constructed externally and internally. Drawing on Butler, and other feminist theorists such as

Luce Irigaray4 and Joan Riviere5, this thesis examines how femininity is constructed, and then turns to look at how these signs and signifiers of femininity are understood in a binary hierarchy that values masculinity over femininity. It will do so by looking at the way materials such as clothing, hairstyles, makeup, and body modifications have been gendered and valued and what their place is in these narratives. It will also consider how Katniss and

Tris respond to these constructs in their respective narratives. By conducting a historical timeline of feminist and gender theory this thesis seeks to align itself with these key theories and use feminism as a way of questioning this gender hierarchy and binary. Candace West

4 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1985). 5 Joan Riviere, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 10 (1929).

11 and Don Zimmerman’s work on how gender is “done” and performed also offers a way of exploring how gender is differentiated from biological sex. They comment on how gender is a social construct that is used to sustain patriarchal social structures and social arrangements, and therefore requires critique. In their work they further note that:

Social movements such as feminism can provide the ideology and impetus to

question existing arrangements, and the social support for individuals to explore

alternatives to them.6

Feminist theory provides a way to interrogate existing gender relations and hierarchical binary divisions and looks to imagine what other possibilities can exist in terms of gender and empowerment. A feminist framework is necessary to look at these dressings of femininity and thus question these greater social arrangements dictating and sustaining gender hierarchies.

In order to ask these questions and look for alternatives to gender being held in a binary and hierarchy where masculinity is valued above femininity this thesis relies on a framing device proposed by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s theories of paranoid and reparative reading.

Sedgwick notes that paranoia and the hermeneutics of suspicion are a powerful, and all too common, methodology for critical work. It is hard to deny the power and advantages of approaching critical work through a paranoid lens, and this thesis will initially position itself in this mode. It is paranoid in the way that paranoia is “anticipatory”7: it expects to find that the Hunger Games and Divergent series and their approach to constructions and performances of femininity are not revolutionary nor contributing to progressing feminist ideals. It anticipates revealing the mechanisms through which femininity is constructed and performed. It is through a reparative approach, however, that this thesis will seek to

6 Candace West, and Don H Zimmerman, “Doing Gender,” Gender & Society 1, no. 2 (June 1987): 176. 7 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 125.

12 understand how revealing this performance can lead to new and unexpected conclusions about the construction of gender and identity in young adult fiction.

To recognize in paranoia a distinctively rigid relation to temporality, at once

anticipatory and retroactive, averse above all to surprise, is also to glimpse the

lineaments of other possibilities….to read from a reparative position is to surrender

the knowing, anxious paranoid determination that no horror, however apparently

unthinkable, shall ever come to the reader as new; to a reparatively positioned reader,

it can seem realistic and necessary to experience surprise. Because there can be

terrible surprises, however, there can also be good ones... Because the reader has

room to realize that the future may be different from the present, it is also possible for

her to entertain such profoundly painful, profoundly relieving, ethically crucial

possibilities as that the past, in turn, could have happened differently from the way it

actually did.8

This thesis moves through a paranoid mode of reading towards a reparative approach as a way to consider how the concept and performance of femininity can be recuperated from patriarchal powers. Further to that it seeks to conceive of different futures and conceptions of gender and identity that exist outside of a hierarchical binary framework.

This imagining of potentials and allowing space for this type of critique is facilitated in this study by the nature of the genre of the two key texts. As dystopic fiction, and specifically dystopic YA fiction, these texts focus on liminal spaces and require a reimagining of the future and an intervention in order to escape the (dystopic) now. The liminal spaces of these texts are both physical and temporal. They are the spaces between the factions in the world of the Divergent series and the districts of Panem in the Hunger Games, the space between

8 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 146.

13 teenage-hood and adulthood, between constructions of identity and self, the spaces between oppression, revolution and some sort of happy ending, and the space between simply existing and leading an autonomous, agentic life. It is in these liminal spaces that transformation is possible and this potential for transformation is what allows for a new way of reading, valuing, and constructing femininity. These texts were produced within a very specific time and place, and reflect contemporary values regarding gender and identity, as well as being influenced by the authors’ perspectives on these concepts. By performing a paranoid then reparative reading of them this thesis looks at the way the books offer new potentials for identity, for understandings of gender and specifically representations of femininity, and for a way to continue challenging binary hierarchies even beyond the authors intent.

The texts of the Hunger Games trilogy and the Divergent trilogy (and its additional book

Four: A Divergent Collection) have been chosen as the case studies due to many of the thematic and narrative similarities which make them easy to compare. Both series take place in a dystopic society where people are separated or categorised, and where a teenaged female protagonist is put through tests of physical strength, mental capability and character, as well as enduring violence, and eventually playing an important role in a greater rebellion. These female protagonists also engage heavily, and in very different ways, with gender markers and signifiers of femininity, offering contrasting perspectives on how femininity is constructed, valued, and understood. The texts both have complicated relationships with femininity and reveal the construction and performance of femininity, gender, as well as the construction of or illusion of choice regarding personal identity and gender.

In revealing these constructions, the novels also reveal the values of the society of the narratives, the protagonists’ personal values, and reflect the values of the authors, conscious

14 or subconscious. It is looking at how femininity is valued in these various spaces that will reveal if it is positioned as something agentic and autonomous, or as something that remains as lesser to masculinity. These value systems at play can similarly be mapped onto our real- world valuing of masculinity and femininity, and how a binary hierarchy is created and sustained in various ways. While at times convoluted, the depth of the world building in these narratives reveals how femininity is valued and understood in the worlds of the texts, which in many ways reflects or offers up extreme versions of how it operates in our society. This can speak to how readers can in turn not only understand the ways gender and performance operate in our world, but how an individual is capable of understanding and reconstructing their own position within society through gender and identity.

In engaging with practices of close reading and using literary theory this thesis looks at how narration affects the way that these messages of gender and identity are revealed to readers.

The first-person narration of both series gives insight into how characters engage with the material signifiers of femininity and how they value them, often making explicit indications of whether or not femininity is something to be valued or agentic. In engaging briefly with narrative theory, by way of James Phelan9 and Robin Warhol10, the voices of the narrator, the author, and the position of the reader will be drawn into question. A key theory in looking at the performance of femininity and the enforcement of gender binaries is the use of social surveillance. People’s adherence to correct gender roles and performances are socially validated, and as many have argued, produce what Foucault would call “docile bodies.”11

Bartkey, in examining Foucault’s work in relation to feminism, notes that:

9 James Phelan, Somebody Telling Somebody Else: A Rhetorical Poetics of Narrative (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2017). 10 Robin Warhol, “A Feminist Approach to Narrative,” in Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates, by David Herman, Robin Warhol, James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, and Brian Richardson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012.). 11 Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 138.

15 The disciplinary power that inscribes femininity in the female body is everywhere and

it is nowhere; the disciplinarian is everyone and yet no one in particular.12

In examining the many layers of narration, readership, and audience, the disciplinarian is exposed, and it becomes clear how femininity is being inscribed and policed. While the books reflect and subvert real world understandings of gender binaries, they also have in- world value systems that add extra layers of this disciplinary power. Some performances and constructions of gender are more socially valuable than others, and their value also depends on who is performing them, when, and why. All these elements are explored through the use of literary theory and will be the focus of this thesis.

The first chapter of this thesis, The Joy of YA Literature, opens with an understanding of what defines the genre of young adult literature and explores the transgressive potential of the genre. It acts in part as a defence of the study of YA literature, which has previously been overlooked in literary studies, and explains why this genre and these selected texts are the chosen vehicles through which to examine gender and feminist theory. It posits that YA literature, especially dystopic YA literature, is a space of subversion, where social structures can be challenged, and inequalities overcome. This chapter will also expand on the use of narrative theory and position of the author and authorial voice in these texts in order to examine how the narrative logic of the series is able to reflect, subvert, or challenge societal expectations of gender.

After establishing a literary theory background and performing a literature review on the field of YA literature, chapter two Gender Binaries and Feminist Histories will provide the feminist and gender theory groundwork for the analysis this thesis performs. Drawing on

12 Bartky, “Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” 74.

16 contemporary gender studies, especially centring on femininity and masculinity studies, girlhood studies, and the revival of femininity in feminist theories, this chapter explores how gender is constructed, performed, valued and read in society. By reflecting on where the understanding of gender as performative originated and how gender is binarised and held in a hierarchy, this chapter will establish how the thesis itself understands gender and will go on to expose the mechanisms of gender in the texts.

The third chapter, The Rhetoric of “Choice”, is focussed on the construction of the feminine and the associated assumptions about performing femininity in a patriarchal system. It specifically looks at the relationship between femininity and passivity in order to understand how femininity is positioned appositionally to strength. Examining how femininity is constructed allows then for an exploration of an individual’s ability to choose femininity as well as to consider how choice and self-determination in relation to femininity can be manipulated through postfeminist rhetoric to allow for the continuation of patriarchal social structures. This chapter asks, what does choosing femininity look like when the choices are or are not freely made? Through examining third-wave and postfeminist approaches to femininity this chapter interrogates the understanding of femininity as a demand and how

“choice feminism”13, in focussing on the act of choice and not the greater inequalities and social structures that create and value these choices, continues to limit how we are able to revalue femininity.

To understand how the performance of femininity is problematised in a patriarchal society, and to attempt to revalue it, chapter four The Masquerade of Femininity will elaborate on how, as well as why, femininity is being performed in the Hunger Games and Divergent

13 Linda R Hirshman, Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World (New York, NY: Viking, 2006), 1-2.

17 series and how these performances relate to the perceived authenticity of the characters.

Whereas the earlier chapters focus more broadly on the value systems at play in the social structures of the novels, this chapter looks at the protagonist’s motivations and personal responses to the feminine. It will also look at theories of spectacle and authenticity in order to understand how and why femininity is performed, and who is the audience or spectator of this intended performance. Delving further into the construction and performance of femininity, this chapter will examine how the protagonists of the series adopt or conform to femininity and how they oppose it. Using Luce Irigaray’s theory of masquerade and mimicry, which helped inform Butler’s theories of gender performativity, the way Katniss and Tris perform femininity and form their sense of self will be explored. The use of the makeover as a means of producing and replicating these feminine performances and normative identities will also be considered, as both series feature a makeover scene where the protagonists directly alter or reaffirm their identity as a result of their change in appearance. This section will look at how makeovers are used in teen fiction as a means of promoting gender norms, as well as understanding how teens recognise identity as being formed through clothing and self-presentation.

In a pivot away from the material signifiers of gender and how they are valued in the texts, chapter five Liminality and Rebellion looks at the coding of behaviour as also part of hierarchical gender binary and how the female protagonists in dystopic young YA must rebel against their societies to achieve autonomy. It looks at the masculine and feminine behaviours exhibited as rebellion in these oppressive social structures and how the dystopic genre forces characters to be transgressive in their actions and gender performance.

Theoretically this chapter then moves to consider the liminal spaces between young adulthood and adulthood in these dystopic novels and relates it to queer theory. In the

18 dystopic genre there is a need to deconstruct and reconstruct concepts of identity, adulthood, and the theory of queer futurity is a useful tool to do this. Rather than considering how identity is constructed in the world this chapter conceives of how the understanding of identity must change in society to allow for new concepts of gender and identity to exist.

The final chapter Masculine and Queer Women attempts to perform a reparative reading of the Hunger Games and Divergent series as a way to examine how masculinity is being performed by the female characters. This reparative reading interprets these characters as not reinforcing gender binaries but rather as transgressing and changing this binary, by performing masculinity, in a constructive way that allows for new conceptions of gender and performance. In examining how these characters perform masculinity as well as femininity it is important to consider how the binary value system is still at play, and what it means for a character to be both masculine and feminine without questioning greater gender hierarchies.

These texts do not exist in a vacuum, they are influenced by real world contexts and approaches to gender and queerness. Performing a reparative reading and attempting to find a utopian goal beyond gender binaries and hierarchy without forcibly critiquing how gender is socially constructed and constructed in these narratives is not enough.

This thesis’ goal to revalue femininity as part of a feminist project and cannot be done without a paranoid reading of how masculinity and queerness are being used in these texts.

The ultimate goal however is to be performing the reparative reading, to be looking for the hope, the utopia, and the future these texts offer. Ultimately, this thesis asks what can Katniss

Everdeen and Tris Prior, and their respective dystopic worlds, tell us about femininity, and how can they help us theorise the recuperation of femininity, or further to that, a society beyond this binary gender hierarchy?

19 Chapter One

The Joy of YA Literature

To begin an examination of how femininities and gender binaries are constructed, performed, and valued in the Hunger Games series and the Divergent series this thesis will first work through the question: why study YA literature? This chapter, which is both an overview and defence of the genre, will tackle three ideas: YA literature is a popular and financially successful genre with a wide readership and cultural impact; it is a genre that has escaped critical analysis in the field of literary studies and this is something this thesis aims to speak to in order to rectify; and YA fiction offers a progressive and transgressive narrative space that has potential for a unique exploration of gender and identity. The combination of these three points is integral to the selection of the genre and these texts for this analysis. It is not a case of studying these texts despite their genre classification, but rather because they are products of their genre, (popular, widely read, and offering this unique fictional space) which in turn enriches the critical study of these texts. The narratives of these texts, their popularity, and their cultural influence (specifically in the case of the Hunger Games series), are all elements made possible by them being categorised as YA literature. Any study of how their narratives impact, respond to, or reflect contemporary feminist or gender theories must also address these unique qualities of YA fiction and thus their potential to provide a transgressive fictional narrative to a wide readership. Developing from this chapter, this thesis will later examine how the narrative space created by YA novels can be used as a medium for exploring contemporary gender and feminist theory, and how the Hunger Games series and the Divergent series work as popular case studies that offer readers a rich exploration of the construction and performativity of binary gender.

20 Defining Young Adult Literature

Historically YA literature has been categorised under the title of children’s literature, which is already an extensive and established field.14 Critical scholarship specific to the field of YA literature has been lacking, a point which is currently being rectified. The commercial success of YA novels and series, such as Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight and Suzanne Collins’ Hunger

Games, have put YA novels into the sphere of cultural discourse resulting in a change of attitude towards YA literature and more social and critical attention.15 Given this history of children’s literature and YA literature being insufficiently distinguished, there is less scholarship that is YA specific, especially when it comes to defining the genre. The lack of a clear definition of the genre undercuts the ability for YA fiction to be subject to serious criticism as there is no consensus of what constitutes a YA novel.16 There has also been debate as to whether young adult literature is a genre or a category of literature. Tracy van

Straaten, at Scholastic, is quoted in The Atlantic as saying “Something people tend to forget is that YA is a category not a genre, and within it is every possible genre…”17 This however is not fully represented in current criticism which uses the two terms, genre and category, interchangeably, which will be reflected in this thesis.

Some critics have begun identifying the key and recurrent themes of these novels in an attempt to set guidelines to understand what constitutes a YA novel and establish generic expectations. Jonathan Stephens makes a start in his work “Young Adult – Defining the

Genre” by highlighting five key identifying points of YA fiction. First, he notes, the novels

14 Part of this commonly noted problem, as will be discussed further in this chapter, is due to the lack of definition of both children’s and young adult literature. This is chronicled and expanded on in Cadden “Genre as Nexus” and Stevens “History of Children’s and Young Adult Literature.” 15 Antero Garcia, Critical Foundations in Young Adult Literature (Rotterdam: SensePublishers, 2013), xi. 16 Caroline Hunt, "Young Adult Literature Evades the Theorists," Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 9. 17 Jen Doll, “What Does ‘Young Adult’ Mean?,” The Atlantic, April 19. 2012. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2012/04/what- does-young-adult-mean/329105/

21 are written about teens; second there is a “distinctly teen voice” in the books; third YA novels are a journey to identity; fourth they tackle adult issues in teen lives; and finally they have the same potential for literary value as, in his words, “Grownup novels.”18 These five broad points act as a basic checklist for the main components of a YA novel and resemble guidelines previously set out by William G. Brozo and Michele L. Simpson, who worked to understand how the teaching of YA novels in the classroom can assist in the education of adolescents. In their work Brozo and Simpson use the term ‘young adult’ literature to refer to books that accord with the following:

(a) written or marketed primarily for teenagers; (b) with main characters similar in

age to the teenage readership (young adults between the ages of approximately 12 and

25) and to which teenagers can personally relate; (c) with relatively uncomplicated

plot lines; (d) that match the interests, needs, and concerns of teenagers, and (e) not

specifically targeted to young adults but that attract a young adult readership.19

While these points are the barest definition of the content and style of YA novels, they offer a starting point when explaining the basics and commonalities of YA novels. These commonalities form a sense of generic expectations that these novels will follow, for example focusing on journeys of identity and featuring a teenage protagonist with a teen voice. Other generic commonalities not outlined in these definitions that are key to this thesis are the use of first-person narration and regular cataloguing of what characters look like and are wearing, and it is these generic expectations that make YA literature a unique and important space to examine contemporary gender and feminist theory.

18 Jonathan Stephens, “Young Adult: A Book by Any Other Name . . .: Defining the Genre," ALAN Review 35, no. 1 (Fall 2007): 41. 19 William G. Brozo, and Michele L. Simpson, Readers, Teachers, Learners: Expanding Literacy in the Secondary Schools, 2nd ed. (New Jersey: Merrill, 1995), 241.

22 Another major point of difference between the category of YA literature and other literary categories is how marketing contributes to the commodification of the genre, its creation and popularity. Young adult literature gained most of its widespread recognition as a genre after the monetary and cultural success of series such as Harry Potter, Twilight and later the

Hunger Games.20 These series, and their subsequent successful film franchises, garnered considerable revenue from both the book buying community and the greater consumer market. This pushed YA literature into the spotlight, raising the fundamental question “when does Youth culture become mainstream culture?”21 Amongst this questioning, the genre itself began to be delineated as a marketable category and one with a clear financial potential. This financial potential contributed to the splitting of the genre from children’s literature as now young adult literature could be clearly marketed and physically given its own space in bookstores, thereby becoming a mainstream and recognised category and a part of mainstream culture. It can be said then that these books are “designed to engage a capitalist market and thrive based on marketing specific forms of youth interest.”22 The role of the capitalist economy and marketing in relation to the commercialisation of YA fiction contributing to the rising popularity of young adult literature are important considerations when analysing these texts. If these YA books are being created in a context that can lead to massive financial and cultural success, and if these books are intentionally being written and published to tap into this market, it is important to consider what messages these books are selling and why.

While there is the potential for these young adult texts to offer a breadth of representation and exploration of identities, the role that publishers and the book selling market play should be

20 Garcia, Critical Foundations, xi. 21 Garcia, Critical Foundations, 17. 22 Garcia, Critical Foundations, 15.

23 considered when looking at the texts that do get published and are successful. Antero Garcia comments: “If bookstores only display the prominent titles being released, it is difficult for young people to truly find the books that speak to them; instead they must bend to meet the garrotting options of a modern capitalist market. This form of push marketing offers consumers little opportunity for exploration, personal inquiry, or choice in the book buying market.”23 There must be something in these titles that seems marketable, or speaks to a contemporary condition, that gets them through the publishing and marketing process and catapulted to success. This relates to a point that will be developed in the next chapter, which looks at the commercialisation, and profiting, of feminism and girl culture. Due to what

Rosalind Gill describes as “the cool-ing of feminism”24, feminism has entered the discourse of popular culture and is now branded as something that is “cool” to engage with. As a result, it is difficult to define what is feminist about these texts, and what is merely surface level rhetoric of empowerment for young girls that disguises patriarchal ideology and is used to ensure the texts relevance to contemporary culture. How can we know something to be authentically feminist, when it too is a cultural object that is produced and sold? Selling feminist message to readers through popular media and culture brings into question any genre that is popular and currently financially successful. Further to that it also calls into question how transgressive YA texts can actually be given they are being produced and published into a market with a demand for YA fiction that relies heavily on this capitalist book selling and buying market.

In more recent years there has been a push from YA scholars to develop the field in literary studies. Cindy Lou Daniels’ article “Literary Theory and Young Adult Literature: The Open

Frontier” is one such attempt and offers an entry point into looking at the place of YA fiction

23 Garcia, Critical Foundations, 15. 24 Rosalind Gill, “Post-postfeminism?: New Feminist Visibilities in Postfeminist Times,” Feminist Media Studies 16, no. 4 (2016): 618.

24 in literature studies. Daniels stresses the value and importance of studying YA literature and comments that many literary critics tend to dismiss YA work as “disconnected to the literary community.”25 She points out a sentiment that this thesis is deeply engaged with which is that

YA literature is “an overlooked and underappreciated literary genre that has only recently begun to attract the critical attention that it deserves.”26 One of the reasons why YA literature has been overlooked is because it lacked clear definition as a genre, which contributes to the perception that it does not ‘belong’ in canonical literary studies. What Daniels’ article points out is that the study of YA literature will offer a chance to “expand our knowledge of literature as a whole and to challenge the restrictions of the traditional canon.”27 There exists an untapped potential in the realm of YA literature, as it is a genre capable of challenging societal norms as well as allowing an opportunity for adolescent and adult readers to confront and challenge their own perception of themselves and the world around them. This thesis will continue to argue that YA literature can offer an entry point into understanding how contemporary popular media forms deal with tensions surrounding gender, feminism and the formation of identity and therefore enrich further studies of literature.

Returning to consider why YA literature has escaped much literary evaluation and criticism given its historical location in the broader and well-established field of children’s literature, it is important to understand how the genres differ and therefore what is unique to YA and who makes up the YA readership. The fusing of the two genres has been an ongoing problem as it supports the notion that YA literature is unable to exist on its own merit and is “not worthy of attention,”28 which is a recurring theme in the dismissal of the genre. Unlike children’s

25 Cindy Lou Daniels, “Literary Theory and Young Adult Literature: The Open Frontier in Critical Studies,” ALAN Review 33, no. 2 (Winter 2006): 78. 26 Daniels, “Open Frontier,” 78. 27 Daniels, “Open Frontier,” 81. 28 Daniels, “Open Frontier,” 78.

25 literature, which is clearly targeted towards children, YA novels typically more closely resemble novels for adults than books for children, especially in terms of themes and subject matter.29 This means that YA novels are frequently read and enjoyed not only by adolescents, but adults as well, with 30% of the YA book-buying audience comprising of 30-44 year olds.30 In talking about censorship of YA novels, Caroline Hunt notes that “[m]any books that speak directly to the adolescent experience use language that some adults do not like, mention experiences (especially sexual experiences) that make some adults uncomfortable, and examine the possibility, at least, of serious challenges to authority.”31 In this way, unlike children’s fiction, YA novels tend to cover “taboo” subjects for young people.32 It is the tackling of these taboo subjects that align these books more closely with books for adults rather than children, and is likely what makes them appealing to teenage and older readers.

While the popularity and commercial appeal, as well as franchising potential, of the genre is what propelled it to the forefront of cultural discussion, it could be argued that the value of the texts is the strength of their narratives and relatable or compelling content. YA novels reflect the concerns of contemporary society in an easily digestible form. The recurring themes of individuality and the ongoing search for identity which appears in most YA stories resonates with a teenage audience as well as the older adult readership. In defining YA literature as a genre it has been noted that young adult novels refer to stories that “tackle the difficult, and oftentimes adult, issues that arise during an adolescent's journey toward identity…”33 This plot of the teenage search for identity and the ‘coming-of-age’ seems like a natural thematic progression as YA fiction has its origins in the bildungsroman genre of

29 Cadden, Mike. "Genre as Nexus: The Novel for Children and Young Adults." In Handbook of Research on Children's and Young Adult Literature, edited by Shelby Wolf, Karen Coats, Patricia A. Enciso, and Christine Jenkins, 302-14. New York: Routledge, 2011. 307 30 Garcia, Critical Foundations, 17. 31 Hunt, “Evades the Theorists,” 6. 32 Hunt, “Evades the Theorists,” 6. 33 Stephens, “Defining the Genre,” 41.

26 novel.34 It is this journey toward identity, one that is always changing and being shaped in relation to society, that entices and resonates with readers of all ages, and later this chapter will comment on the genre of dystopic YA fiction being particularly popular in recent years and what those stories offer readers. While there is a lack of YA scholarship in literary studies, YA literature has a history of being examined in other fields such as education, sociology and more broadly in fields of cultural and gender studies. It is perhaps not surprising that the main focus of other analyses in these fields has been on the social impact of these novels, especially on adolescents and their construction of self-worth and identity.35

While these studies demonstrate the effect of the genre on the individual reader, the literary merit, as well as the challenge to a normative canon that these novels can offer when considered as valuable literary works, remains a broad space for these topics to be discussed and analysed.

Cultural reach of the Hunger Games and Divergent series

As a noted earlier, YA fiction has a wide readership in terms of numbers and reader demographics, and both the Hunger Games series and Divergent series have been wildly popular with teens and adults. This is reflected in the sales figures of both. The Hunger

Games trilogy, written by Suzanne Collins, was published by Scholastic between the years of

2008 - 2010. The first book The Hunger Games (2008) was followed closely by Catching

Fire (2009), and the trilogy wrapped up with Mockingjay (2010). All three books reached the number one spot on The New York Times bestseller’s list. Since its publication in 2008, the first book in the series The Hunger Games has spent more than five consecutive years on The

New York Times bestseller list.36 The Hunger Games topped Publisher’s Weekly Facts &

34 Cadden, “Genre as Nexus,” 310. 35 See: Hubler, “Beyond the Image”, Blackford, Out of This World, Bean and Moni, “Exploring Identity Construction”, Kokesh and Sternadori, “A Qualitative Study.” 36 “Scholastic Media Room.” The Hunger Games: Scholastic Media Room. Accessed March 24, 2020. http://mediaroom.scholastic.com/hungergames.

27 Figures roundup in both 2011 and 2012, with 9.2 million copies sold in 2011 and 27.7 million in 2012.37 As for the series as a whole, Scholastic’s press release with their updated figures as of July 19, 2012 cites that there are “50 million copies of the original three books in The

Hunger Games trilogy in print and digital formats in the U.S. (more than 23 million copies of The Hunger Games; more than 14 million copies of Catching Fire; and more than 13 million copies of Mockingjay).”38 The popularity of the books was backed by a blockbuster movie franchise of four films released between the years 2012-2015 that grossed over two billion dollars worldwide. The book sales can only have increased since the release of the films, yet these figures stand as Scholastic’s last official published media release of sales.

Scholastic also announced the publishing of Collins’ prequel to The Hunger Games, “The

Ballard of Songbird and Snakes” which was released in May 2020.39 With this prequel, and its associated marketing, we can presume that the overall sales of the series will increase and its reach expand. The Hunger Games series, having dominated sales charts and popular culture in recent years, is generally a well-known cultural touchstone as a popular YA series.

The Divergent book series also performed well financially, although to a lesser extent than the Hunger Games trilogy, and the overall franchise has not been as successful. In 2013

Veronica Roth’s the Divergent series topped the charts upon release selling “a combined 6.7 million copies.”40 The Divergent series is made up of a main trilogy, Divergent (2011),

Insurgent (2012) and Allegiant (2013) as well as a supplementary collection of short stories

Four: A Divergent Collection (2014) all published a year after each other. After the release of

37 Diane Roback, “Facts & Figures 2013: For Children’s Books, Divergent Led the Pack,” Publishers Weekly, March 14, 2014, https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/61447-for-children-s-books-in-2013-divergent- led-the-pack-facts-figures-2013.html. 38 Scholastic Media Room, “Scholastic Announces Updated U.S. Figures for Suzanne Collins's Bestselling The Hunger Games Trilogy,” press release, July 19, 2012, http://mediaroom.scholastic.com/press-release/scholastic-announces-updated-us-figures-suzanne-collinss- bestselling-hunger-games-tril. 39 The Bookseller, “Scholastic Releases Hunger Games Prequel Extract,” news release, January 23, 2020. https://www.thebookseller.com/news/scholastic-releases-hunger-games-prequel-extract-1173781. 40 Roback, “Facts & Figures 2013.”

28 Allegiant Roth ranked 6th on the Forbes top earning authors list of 2014.41 The Divergent film series was not as critically well received and was not as popular as the Hunger Games films, with the first film released in 2014 to mixed reviews and each subsequent film performing worse than the last. The film series has yet to be finished as of this thesis’ writing in 2020, and the anticipated last instalment which was scheduled to be released as a television movie appears to be cancelled.42 While the Hunger Games film series helped catapult the books into mainstream popular culture, the lack of success of the Divergent films has likely resulted in the series being less widely known and culturally significant.

Partly due to the vast differences in financial performance and popularity (and therefore cultural reach) of the films, as well as the alterations to the narrative made during the adaptation process, this examination will look exclusively at the books of both series. In focussing on the books, this thesis is also locating itself within the field of literary studies and much of the analysis of the series will be done through a methodology of close critical reading of the text and narrative.43 Another reason for isolating the scope of this research to the books has to do with the rise in popularity of YA novels which is reflected in the sales figures of these books, and the expanding breadth of the readership. In 2012 around 55% of buyers of YA books were over 18, with a large segment of their readership being between 30-

44 years old.44 According to Bowker Market Research around “thirty percent of respondents reported they were reading works in The Hunger Games series.”45 Kelly Gallagher, the Vice-

President of Bowker Market Research, acknowledged that this trend in the rising popularity

41 Natalie Robehmed, “The World's Top-Earning Authors: Veronica Roth, John Green and Gillian Flynn Join Ranking,” Forbes Magazine, May 22, 2015, https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2014/09/08/the-worlds-top-earning-authors-veronica-roth-john-green-and- gillian-flynn-join-ranking/#626c43652944. 42 Padraig Cotter, “Divergent Series: Ascendant - Why The Final Movie Was Cancelled,” ScreenRant, December 23, 2019, https://screenrant.com/divergent-series-ascendant-final-movie-canceled/. 43 This methodology of close reading is explained further from page 44 onwards. Using the narrative theory work of Phelan’s Someone Telling, each chapter performs close readings of selected scenes and the language used in these texts to convey meaning. 44 Bowker, “Young Adult Books Attract Growing Numbers of Adult Fans,” news release, September 13, 2012, http://www.bowker.com/news/2012/Young-Adult-Books-Attract-Growing-Numbers-of-Adult-Fans.html. 45 Bowker, “Young Adult Books.”

29 of young adult novels with an older audience can be attributed in part to the popularity of The

Hunger Games, although Gallagher also comments that the “data shows it’s a much larger phenomenon than readership of this single series.”46 Overall these figures and market research demonstrate that these two series and YA fiction as a category of novels are increasing their reach into broader reader demographics, and as a result these texts deserve closer attention.

While it is difficult to quantify the cultural impact of these texts and more broadly that of young adult literature, some observations, particularly with respect to the Hunger Games series, outside of its prevalence in popular culture references, can be made. Even a cursory internet search finds many examples of articles and editorials published linking the series to contemporary political events. People are using this series as a mode of relating to and understanding contemporary politics and in some instances, protesters have directly referenced the series in their activism. In the lead up to and aftermath of the 2016 United

States (U.S.) election the Hunger Games was invoked on numerous occasions, particularly by online news and media publications, again highlighting how the series holds a strong cultural resonance. Numerous articles liken the contemporary U.S. political landscape to the world of the Hunger Games books. The Guardian online published an article following the campaign of Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the democratic party, entitled “'The Fire is Spreading':

Bernie Sanders is the Katniss in Nevada's Hunger Games”47 in 2016. The title comes from a quote in the article from a campaign volunteer who likens Bernie Sanders and his rising popularity to the narrative arc of Katniss Everdeen as the symbol of rebellion in The Hunger

Games. In November 2016, after the election of Donald Trump as the U.S. President, Vox

46 Bowker, “Young Adult Books.” 47 Dave Schilling, “'The Fire is Spreading': Bernie Sanders Is the Katniss in Nevada's Hunger Games,” The Guardian, February 19, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/18/bernie-sanders-supporters-nevada-caucuses-election-2016-hillary-clinton.

30 published a piece titled “How The Hunger Games anticipated Donald Trump’s rise in popularity with American voters.” In this article, author Constance Grady comments that

“The Hunger Games has continued to be a presence in our political sphere because it understands something fundamental to American culture…And that’s the fact that in our culture, a really strong, compelling narrative trumps everything, every time, no matter what side you’re on.”48 The themes and plot of the Hunger Games find resonance in contemporary society and it can be argued that this is why it performed so well in terms of sales and popularity.

All these articles are also testament to the way that the Hunger Games series has remained culturally relevant and important, particularly in the United States, as the series is specifically set in a dystopic imagining of the future of North America. In a similar vein, Mashable published a piece in 2018 entitled “Teens on fire: Of course the ‘Hunger Games’ generation knows how to fight the NRA”49 again invoking the Hunger Games and Katniss Everdeen as an influencing force in contemporary society and on youth behaviour and rebellion. Author

Chris Taylor, drawing on discussions growing on social media platform Twitter, comments:

“For days we've been amazed as the survivors of the Parkland massacre have repeatedly spoken truth to power — specifically, the moneyed power of the National Rifle Association and its bought-and-paid-for politicians. But should we be so surprised? This is exactly the response we should expect from a generation brought up on dystopian YA novels in which downtrodden teens rise up.”50 Given that this response is apparently one that we should expect from “a generation brought up on dystopian YA novels” we can then say that what this article, and the other like it, indicate is that these texts have notable cultural reach and

48 Constance Grady, “How The Hunger Games Anticipated Donald Trump's Rise,” Vox, November 9, 2016, https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/11/9/13571526/hunger-games-anticipated-donald-trump-rise. 49 Chris Taylor, “Teens on Fire: Of Course the 'Hunger Games' Generation Knows How to Fight the NRA,” Mashable, February 24, 2018, https://mashable.com/2018/02/23/parkland-hunger-games-dystopia/. 50 Taylor, “Teens on Fire.”

31 impact. The Hunger Games series remains a cultural touchstone for contemporary discourse about society and politics, and the narrative of this series and many of its key messages are related to real life situations. It is known then that people identify strongly with these books, and specifically with the protagonist Katniss Everdeen.

It is interesting therefore to consider what specifically these audiences are engaging with in these texts. In featuring a journey of understanding the self in relation to society, and the formation of identity, young adult literature can be broadly instructive to its audience in helping them see how they relate to their society and how to form their own identity. Garcia claims that YA novels speak to the “greater human condition”51 not just the teenage individual, which is demonstrated in the number of adult readers. This is reflected in the rising popularity of the dystopian YA novels as these stories specifically recreate the greater concerns of modern society in a fictional narrative and have the ability to transcend the limitations of the social conventions of reality. Literary studies is an “important site for the discussion of complex and sensitive issues”52 and it is the dystopic YA genre that is giving adolescents the space to witness characters who “recognize the truth about their own society.”53 These “truths” can include the mechanisms of societal conventions and hierarchies in social structures. In highlighting these serious issues through a speculative fiction, readers are able to understand how these social mechanisms operate in the real world and similarly see how protagonists navigate the eventual deconstruction of notions that have been normalised in their world and apply that to real life. Dystopic novels offer an example of how a person can navigate and or conquer these difficult situations and give the reader a means to

51 Garcia, Critical Foundations, xi. 52 Thomas W. Bean and Helen J. Harper, “Exploring Notions of Freedom in and through Young Adult Literature,” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 50, no. 2 (October 2006): 96. 53 Justin Scholes and Jon Ostenson, “Understanding the Appeal Of Dystopian Young Adult Fiction,” ALAN Review 40, no. 2 (Winter 2013): 15.

32 tackle both individual problems and greater systemic issues in society. These novels, therefore, offer an avenue for readers to critically navigate the world of societal pressures, as well as offering a fictional space for readers to explore their individual identity.

Another trend that has been noted in the rise of dystopian YA fiction is the number of young female protagonists and the unique perspective they offer to their narratives. In many of these

YA dystopian novels, the young female protagonists speak to specific uncertainties of the adolescent female experience:

Indeed, contemporary dystopian literature with adolescent women protagonists place

young women in unfamiliar, often liminal spaces—caught between destructive pasts

and unclear futures—in order to explore the possibilities of resistance and rebellion in

such unreal settings. As a result, these dystopian novels participate in the redefinition

of adolescent womanhood even as they call attention to the liminal spaces that their

protagonists frequently inhabit.54

This liminality occupied by young women that is mirrored in the dystopic genre will be explored further in chapter five, however what this quote demonstrates in this context is how dystopian literature, for young women specifically, can offer a space to explore possibilities.

The rebellion one can learn through these “unreal” texts and in these liminal spaces can be applied when examining real world social structures. The accessible language, and common use of first-person narration, means that young adult fiction encourages deep critical engagement as the reader can experience this speculative world through a new perspective,

54 Sara K Day, Miranda A Green-Barteet, and Amy L Montz, eds. “Introduction: From ‘New Woman’ to ‘Future Girl’: The Roots and the Rise of the Female Protagonist in Contemporary Young Adult Dystopias,” in Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction (London: Routledge, 2016), 7.

33 learn the “truths” Scholes and Ostenson spoke of, and then apply this new perspective to their own world and experiences.

YA literature not only affects the reader on the individual personal level when considering societal structures and modes of control. The engagement with this genre can also be used to motivate the readership to engage with social activism. Again, it is Garcia’s work in Critical

Foundations in Young Adult Literature that further examines how YA literature creates a space where the authors and fan communities are able to engage with one another and in turn use digital media for social activism. In citing the example of YA novel author and YouTube personality John Green and the Nerdfighter movement, Garcia points out an immediate instance of social change instigated by the reading and discussion of YA novels.55 Through engaging with Green’s novels and his own online presence, fans of his (and of his brother

Hank Green - together they are called the Vlog Brothers), took up the title of Nerdfighter and created a community of socially aware individuals that seeks to combat social problems and inequities (in their words, “world suck”).56 The Nerdfighters and their social activism, as well as the proliferation of fan works produced by fans of YA novels, demonstrate how YA novels engage with the theory of a new participatory culture.57 Readers are no longer passive consumers, they engage with texts online, through activism, and through direct engagement with authors and the community of readers.

In engaging with difficult social issues, YA novels, and particularly dystopian YA novels, bring these issues to the foreground of popular culture and discussion, as was mentioned earlier in the examples in which the Hunger Games series was invoked to comment on

55 Garcia, Critical Foundations, 114. 56 Garcia, Critical Foundations, 115. 57 Garcia, Critical Foundations, 106.

34 contemporary political situations, such as the teenagers opposing the NRA. Notably in 2014 protesters in Thailand used what is described as the “three finger salute” from the series as a sign of “resistance to authoritarian government.”58 In the Hunger Games, the gesture is performed at two notable scenes, once when Katniss volunteers as tribute to the Games, and once performed by Katniss after the death of Rue, a 12 year old tribute who dies in the

Games. When it first appears in the book, Katniss’ narration tells us that “it means thanks, it means admiration, it means goodbye to someone you love.”59 When Katniss performs it later she does so after decorating Rue’s dead body with flowers which will force the televising of

Rue’s body, which is read as a symbol of rebellion against the Capitol. In the film adaptation, when this scene occurs, there is then a cut away from the action in the Games arena, to the residents of District 11 (Rue’s district) returning the gesture to the televised image of Katniss and then turning to riot against the Capitol soldiers. This gesture has been taken up by fans as a symbol of rebellion and has been used in real protests against governments and in the case of the protest in Thailand, “The authorities warned that anyone raising it in public could be subject to arrest.”60 What this incident demonstrates is the power and influence of the series and how it resonates across audiences worldwide. The signs and symbols of the Hunger

Games series have taken on real world significance. They exist outside the fictional world and have become important gestures of rebellion in the real world.

Current scholarship on these texts

The importance of rebellion is something that has been taken from the Hunger Games series and played out in the real world as we can see. Amongst the scholarship on the Hunger

58 Seth Mydans, “Thai Protesters Are Detained After Using 'Hunger Games' Salute,” The New York Times, November 20, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/world/asia/thailand-protesters-hunger-games-salute.html. 59 Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, (London: Scholastic Children’s Books, 2011), 29. 60 Mydans, “Thai Protesters.”

35 Games and Divergent series there has been some work looking at this importance of rebelling, specifically Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopias edited by Amy L Montz,

Miranda A Green-Barteet, and Sara K Day being one such text. This collection of essays examines how in the genre of dystopic YA fiction the young female protagonists must rebel against their society and the oppression they face. Each essay offers a look at the importance of rebellion, the necessity for young female protagonists to rebel and how a dystopic society and the dystopic genre facilitates this necessity of rebellion.

The rebellious natures of many adolescent women protagonists, then, must be viewed

not only in terms of the dystopian mode defined by their situations and surroundings,

but also in terms of the generic conventions that these novels frequently blur,

reimagine, and, to some degree, reinforce.61

These dystopic societies often present an exaggerated form of oppressive society; however, they can also offer a means of examining our own societal inequalities and social structures.

By locating these rebellious protagonists in visibly dystopic social structures and within the genre of YA fiction, readers can see ways in which they can form their own identity in response to the real world social structures around them and offer them a way to understand how they fit into the world.

Given then that dystopic young adult fiction can be instructive for young female readers, it is important to understand how the romantic plots are also understood in relation to these female character’s choices and autonomy. “Real or Not Real – Katniss Everdeen Loves Peeta

Mellark: The Lingering Effects of Discipline in the “Hunger Games” Trilogy” by Julie

Pulliam is particularly useful for this discussion as Pulliam questions the necessity and relevance of featuring a heterosexual romance plot as part of the Hunger Games series and

61 Day, Green-Barteet, and Montz, “Introduction,” 11.

36 seeks to resolve the conflict some readers and critics have with Katniss’ decision to settle down and marry Peeta at the end of the series. This conclusion of the story has been called out by feminist readers as being contrary to the image of a ‘strong feminist hero’ that Katniss seems to represent to readers, having even been called a “cop-out.”62 Pulliam comments that in showing Katniss’ perspective and choice in the matter of the love triangle and eventual marriage plot, Collins is demonstrating to readers how an individual’s choices are made and influenced by their society and experiences they have.63 The final conclusion sums up this point:

Although Katniss is never able to conclusively say what caused her to choose Peeta

over Gale, or to marry at all, Collins’s representation of her protagonist as someone

who is always questioning what has shaped her feelings exposes the forces in our

world that form girls’ desires. As a result, Collins’s readers can better understand how

their own choices are driven by much larger, and often invisible forces.64

Perhaps the marriage plot is a concession to societal pressures and publishing pressures that want stories about love and eventual marriage, about heterosexual conventions being followed and gender roles retained. It also forms part of the generic expectation of children’s and YA literature to have an epilogue that restores a belief in a happy ending for the characters.65 I view it in a different light however, as have other critics of the series, specifically seeing the romance between Katniss and Peeta, both as characters who do not conform to gender stereotypes and perform both masculine and feminine roles, as a coming

62 Katherine R. Broad, “‘The Dandelion in the Spring’ Utopia as Romance in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games Trilogy,” in Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers, ed. Katherine R Broad, Balaka Basu, and Carrie Hintz ((New York: Routledge, 2013), 124. 63 Others have also written on the role of the love triangle in the Hunger Games and its representation of normative gender roles and its queer potential. Mimi Schipper in “Compulsory Monogamy in The Hunger Games” relates this love triangle to discourses around polyamory and compulsory monogamy, arguing that forcing Katniss to choose between Peeta or Gale is limiting queer potential and reinforcing compulsory monogamous relationship dynamics. 64 Julie Pulliman, “Real or Not Real – Katniss Everdeen Loves Peeta Mellark: The Lingering Effects of Discipline in the “Hunger Games” Trilogy,” in Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction, ed. Amy L Montz, Miranda A Green-Barteet, and Sara K Day (London: Routledge, 2016), 184. 65 Mike Cadden, “All Is Well: The Epilogue in Children’s Fantasy Fiction,” Narrative 20, no. 3 (October 2012): 343–56.

37 together of more gender-neutral characters to form a new gender utopic relationship, a concept explored in depth in the final chapter of this thesis.

Another argument that will be developed later in this thesis, specifically in chapter five, is that of the importance of rebellion to the subjectivity and autonomy of the female protagonists in dystopic young adult fiction. A key essay to this point is “‘I’m beginning to know who I am’ The Rebellious Subjectives of Katniss Everdeen and Tris Prior” by Miranda

A. Green-Barteet. Green-Barteet examines this thesis’ two selected series, the Hunger Games and Divergent, in relation to one another and tracks the ways the young female protagonists use acts of rebellion against their oppressive dystopic societies to form their sense of autonomy and identity. She looks at how young women’s rebellion against oppression can lead to their independence and developing sense of self, with a specific case study of Katniss

Everdeen and Tris Prior. The prominent idea behind looking at the rebellious acts performed by these characters is that young women in dystopic societies need to rebel against the oppressive social order of their respective dystopic settings in order to develop autonomy and agency as this is the only way to take the next step beyond adolescence into adulthood. This argument is one that will be examined further in the fifth chapter of this thesis.

Tom Henthorne takes a specifically critical literary studies approach to the Hunger Games in his book Approaching the Hunger Games Trilogy: A Literary and Cultural Analysis. Rather than attempting one “definitive reading”66 and focussing on one theoretical perspective,

Henthorne’s book attempts to cover a variety of ways that the Hunger Games trilogy can be read. Henthorne explains that the trilogy is “messy in terms of genre”, being a hybrid of romance, dystopic fiction, sci-fi novels, and a bildungsroman to name a few. However,

66 Tom Henthorne, Approaching the Hunger Games Trilogy: A Literary and Cultural Analysis, (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012), 7.

38 Henthorne further comments that “Collins partakes in all of these genres” but “adheres to the conventions of none”, which is both a source of frustration for readers and part of the strength of the series.67 This is useful to consider when addressing how generic expectations come into play in the text, and how the series defies these expectations. This study is useful for an introductory look at the expansive field of research available when examining the Hunger

Games series, however Henthorne’s section looking at the trilogy and gender theory doesn’t offer anything beyond what the general scholarly consensus seems to be: that Katniss performs both masculinity and femininity and that she learns that they “can be performed in different ways depending upon one’s needs and desires.”68 This is a common topic for discussion in the literature around the Hunger Games series and is something that will be analysed in more depth in upcoming chapters of this thesis.

The popularity and impact of the Hunger Games can be noted in the number of scholarly collected works that focus on the series, and of note to this thesis is the work that has looked specifically at the role of gender in the series and its publication. Broadly some these collected works include The Politics Of Panem edited by Sean Connors, In Space and Place in the Hunger Games: New Readings of the Novels edited by Deidre Anne Evans Garriott,

Whitney Elaine Jones, and Julie Elizabeth Tyler, and The Hunger Games and Philosophy: A

Critique of Pure Treason by George A. Dunn, and Nicolas Michaud. Amongst these collected works that analyse the Hunger Games series from a critical literary perspectives, as well as having notable essays and chapters dedicated to the discussion of gender in the series is Of

Bread, Blood, and The Hunger Games: Critical Essays on the Suzanne Collins trilogy edited by Mary F. Pharr, Leisa A. Clark, and Donald E. Palumbo. This edition features a key essay

“‘Killer’ Katniss And ‘Lover Boy’ Peeta: Suzanne Collins's Defiance Of Gender-Genred

67 Henthorne, Approaching, 6-7. 68 Henthorne, Approaching, 45.

39 Reading” by Ellyn Lem and Holly Hassel, which again will come into this thesis’ analysis in later chapters. Lem and Hassel identify the two major ways the Hunger Games series complicates gender, and it is their second point about “gender stratification”69 in book publishing and gender norms that is unique. They highlight that the series complicates gender binaries in publishing as a result of its use of many gendered genres, specially war and romance, with the war genre being typically masculine and the romance genre being typically feminine. This essay uses the terms of the gender binary “to reflect reading audiences that have been both constructed by the publishing industry and echoed by scholars of reception theory who have addressed the phenomenon of gendering and YA literature.”70 By focussing on how the gender binary is constructed and directly benefits publishers introduces an interesting element to unpacking the representation of gender in YA series as it implies an external force looking to keep these novels compliant and normative. It also suggests that despite how progressive or challenging a book may be to these gender norms, it is unlikely the genre of YA can ever be fully free of these constraints so long as these traditional publishing and marketing tactics are used, which is a point lightly touched on earlier. Here is the crux of analysis into YA literature, as we can argue that while YA offers a transgressive space for the creation and representation of identities to flourish, the focus of marketing and publishing of the genre will always present limitations to its transgressive potential based on what books gain popularity and are available to readers.

In considering the role of gender in the Hunger Games series, other scholars have noted how clothing, costuming, and spectacle play into this construction of gender and how it is represented in the series. “Costuming the Rebellion: The Female Spectacle of Rebellion” by

69 Ellyn Lem, and Holly Hassal, “‘Killer’ Katniss and ‘Lover Boy’ Peeta: Suzanne Collins's Defiance of Gender-Genred Reading,” in Of Bread, Blood, And The Hunger Games: Critical Essays On The Suzanne Collins Trilogy, ed. Mary F. Pharr, Leisa A. Clark, and Donald E. Palumbo (Jefferson: McFarland & Co. Incorporated Publishers, 2012), 118. 70 Lem and Hassal, “’Killer’ Katniss,” 119.

40 Amy Montz, is one such essay and looks specifically at how fashion and spectacle are used in the Hunger Games series. Montz makes the most important point that “The Hunger Games is a novel obsessed with the stylized presentation of girls.”71 It is a series that is fully aware of the power of performance and much of this awareness that exists in the book forms the basis for the investigation that this thesis will undertake. Other articles have been published that similarly support this analysis of clothing in the Hunger Games and the way femininity has been constructed and is understood in the series.72 The series is obsessed with elements of costuming and presentation which is a common trope of young adult literature but also is specific to the series in the way that it is fixated on the concept of spectacle and surveillance.

Catherine Driscoll and Alexandra Heatwole’s book The Hunger Games: Spectacle, Risk and the Girl Action Hero is a more recent examination of the books and films that looks at how spectacle is used in the series. Their book offers an interesting entry point into reading the series through the feminist perspective and through the emerging critical field of girlhood studies, of which Driscoll is a noted theorist. This idea that these books understand the power of performance and spectacle, and the influence of costuming on identity is a key argument of this thesis that will be unpacked in the coming chapters.

In a more focussed example of how fans are responding to the Hunger Games, it is useful to look at Catherine Driscoll and Alexandra Heatwole’s work as their book is a comprehensive study of how Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games franchise, particularly the film series, is being consumed by the audience in narrative and real life. They engage with a number of theoretical perspectives to understand the “spectacle”73 of Katniss and her

71 Amy L. Montz, “Costuming the Resistance: The Female Spectacle of Rebellion,” in Of Bread, Blood, And The Hunger Games: Critical Essays On The Suzanne Collins Trilogy, ed. Mary F. Pharr, Leisa A. Clark, and Donald E. Palumbo (Jefferson: McFarland & Co. Incorporated Publishers, 2012), 139. 72 Deirdre Byrne’s “Dressed for the Part: An Analysis of Clothing in Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games Trilogy” is one such essay, as is Kathryn Strong Hansen’s "The Metamorphosis Of Katniss Everdeen: The Hunger Games, Myth, And Femininity" and both will feature heavily in later analysis. 73 Catherine Driscoll and Alexandra Heatwole, The Hunger Games: Spectacle, Risk and the Girl Action Hero, (London: Routledge, 2018), 2.

41 influence on audiences in the narrative of the series, and audiences in real life. Notably in their final chapter Driscoll and Heatwole comment on fan engagement with the Hunger

Games franchise. In looking at the fan engagement they examine the role of marketing in encouraging fan participation, which speaks to a point made earlier about the role of marketing in creating and propelling the young adult genre. Here is where participatory culture and convergence culture is invoked in their work.74 In promoting the film franchise,

Lionsgate film studio created a promotional website Captiol.pn where fans could sign up, and receive an “official ID that allocated that user a home ‘district’.”75 On the website, fans could

“learn more about their district (and others) and also read the polished design magazine

Capitol Couture…”76 This immersive marketing experience both seems to critique the

Capitol’s hyper consumerist culture and propaganda as the series does, while still profiting from fans desire to consume and engage with the franchise. It created a space where creator, marketer, and fan, operate in this nexus of participation culture in a very visible way.

While Driscoll and Heatwole note how fans responded both positively and negatively to the official marketing of the franchise, the key point of interest is that the fans were engaging. It indicates how the fans were invested in the series and were interested and willing to participate with the series in several ways and on various levels of engagement. The way

Driscoll and Heatwole conclude their study of Katniss is to comment on how she influences the consumers. The term consumers is used in this context as they have gone beyond readers or viewers, they are consuming Katniss and the Hunger Games franchise and have become potential creators in response.

74 Driscoll and Heatwole, Girl Action Hero, 91. 75 Driscoll and Heatwole, Girl Action Hero, 91. 76 Driscoll and Heatwole, Girl Action Hero, 91.

42 Katniss does not offer any solution to the structural inequalities of Panem…Katniss

creates instead a series of situations that expose the intolerable stratification and

authoritarianism of Panem…and she facilitates others.77

Katniss, and more broadly, young adult literature as a genre, facilitates others. They put a spotlight on situations, on systematic issues, and it is up to the consumer, the reader/audience, to engage. Driscoll and Heatwole later comment that “The Hunger Games, like speculation in general, is not instructive but aspirational.”78 This franchise, and the genre of YA fiction, allows those consuming and engaging with the narrative the tools to consider their own world and eventually make changes. We know audiences are engaging, participating, experiencing these texts and it is these aspirational, and inspirational, qualities that require further investigation.

This investigation into reader engagement, which is a point noted earlier, is expanded in fields such as media and cultural studies and in the niche field of fan studies. This thesis is engaging with these concepts broadly through the work of Henry Jenkins and the terms of

“participatory culture.”79 In his book Convergence Culture, Jenkins explores the way contemporary consumers engage with media and “the work – and play – spectators perform in the new media system.”80 Notably he explains how participatory culture is one where the consumers engage with these novels and the media around them, and then produce their own works in response. In explaining the term he notes that:

The term, participatory culture, contrasts with older notions of passive media

spectatorship. Rather than talking about media producers and consumers as occupying

77 Driscoll and Heatwole, Girl Action Hero, 97. 78 Driscoll and Heatwole, Girl Action Hero, 98. 79 Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2016), 3. 80 Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 3.

43 separate roles, we might now see them as participants who interact with each other

according to a new set of rules that none of us fully understands.81

Popular culture, fantasy and science fiction genres, and young adult novels, combined with the internet, are the sites where this changing form of consumption is being performed.

Authors, readers, and the media object itself operate in a new nexus that must be acknowledged when considering a study of contemporary young adult fiction. I will not, however, be expanding on these concepts beyond this acknowledgement of this nexus and making a nod to how contemporary media is created in this space, where creators are aware of fan cultures and participation. They may not anticipate the potential impact their work will have and how it will transmutate in the hands of the audience and fans who participate in the culture being created. The importance here is to demonstrate that this participatory culture gives evidence to the cultural reach and impact these YA texts have on readers and how readers in turn actively respond to them, rather than acting as passive consumers, and thus indicates how important it remains to examine these texts critically.

Methodology of close reading and narrative theory

To examine this audience engagement, we must also consider which key parts of the story these consumers are engaging with. Particularly with young adult novels, when investigating them as literary scholars, attention must be paid to the narration and narrative being constructed. Drawing on James Phelan’s work in the field of narrative theory, this thesis lightly touches on his description of the “key principles of the rhetorical paradigm,”82

Namely point (4) in which he states that:

81 Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 3. 82 Phelan, Somebody Telling, 4.

44 (4) In interpreting a narrative, rhetorical narrative theory identifies a feedback

loop among authorial agency, textual phenomena (including intertextual

relations), and reader response. In other words, the approach assumes that (a) texts

are designed by authors to affect readers in particular ways; (b) those authorial

designs are conveyed through the words, images, techniques, elements, structures,

forms, and dialogic relations of texts as well as the genres and conventions readers

use to understand them; and (c) those authorial designs are also deeply influenced by

the nature of their audiences and their activity in responding to the unfolding

communication.83

This approach to rhetorical narrative theory relates to the theory of participatory culture and the complex nexus of author, text, and reader, as well as the earlier discussion around the authenticity of publishing books in the young adult genre. In this approach, as Phelan outlines, there is the assumption of authorial intent, that the authors have intentionally created these works to elicit a certain effect on the reader, and this influence changes depending on the audience. In part this is what is occurring in the young adult texts this thesis is closely analysing. There is an element of authorial intent that can be examined through understanding what culture produced these books and through examining what culture these books are being produced into. There remains a consideration then of who the audience is or is intended to be, and what their intended response is meant to be.

Speaking specifically to the YA genre and what culture produced these texts, there must be an understanding of the role of the commercialism of the genre in the “feedback loop”. In assuming that these texts are not published purely for their literary merit or intellectual pursuits, it can be said that these authors intended to create texts that affect readers in a way

83 Phelan, Somebody Telling, 6. (emphasis in original)

45 that would make their books sell. When examining how the Hunger Games series and

Divergent series interact with and engage with feminist and gender theory it should be acknowledged that these “authorial designs”84 being closely read would be influenced by the contemporary and contextual conversations surrounding gender and feminism. These books are perhaps responding to the cultural climate of an audience that is familiar with the now

‘cool’ feminist theory and demands empowered female protagonists in texts for young adults.

This introduces another problem however, as assuming that the authorial intent can change depending on the audience and how they respond to the text (as per Phelan’s point “authorial designs are also deeply influenced by the nature of their audiences”85), it places the authorial intent as the most important element of the books. It is difficult to explore gender and identity through explicit authorial intention and reader response, and this is not what this thesis is attempting to do. Instead, it is through examining the layers of narration and subconscious elements of narration, the value systems created in the narrative, and the responding audiences (in narrative or in real life), that can reveal the more transgressive nature of the genre, and the ability of the narrative to explore gender and identity, regardless of who the actual audience is.

These texts are ‘authored’, in that they are written by an author, and subsequently grounded in and produced by specific cultural contexts. However, we must also decouple them from their authors as we examine the narrator’s voice as it exists in the world of the text. Rather than just critiquing the authorial voice, it is the narrator’s voice that is being critiqued, and the unseen audience, rather than the supposed and intended real-person audience, that is responding. Doing this emphasises the importance of the first-person narration which is a key and foundational element of YA literature and contribute to the distinctly teen voice Stephens

84 Phelan, Somebody Telling, 6. 85 Phelan, Somebody Telling, 6.

46 describes as essential in defining the genre.86 Using first-person narration creates an element of world building that is immersive and blurs these lines of author, narrator, audience, and reader. This blurring is what allows for the creation of new liminal and fictional spaces.

Reading through this blurring is expansive and can allow for the kind of critical work that looks not only at how gender and identity operate but the potentiality beyond, as it is likely the restrictions of these narrative worlds are directly caused by the limitations and expectations of gender in our own world. As Robin Warhol says when considering a feminist approach to narrative and narrative theory:

‘Real’ gender does not exist—gender is always and only a virtual construction (or, as

Judith Butler calls it, a performance) built along a continuum between material

practices and reading practices. The more we can understand about narrative’s role in

the constitution of gender, the better positioned we are to change the oppressive ways

that gender norms work in the world.87

It is the way the narrative constructs and understands gender, and the sign and symbols that indicate gender, that requires the most analysis. Through questioning the “material practices” in the text and then what “reading practices” are being done by the narrator, and separately, being done by the reader, the texts representation of gender and identity can be revealed, and through this understanding a change can occur.

In the close reading that this thesis will do, there will be a critiquing of the authorial voice, and the narrator’s voice, in order to understand the different perspectives creating the different levels of messages being displayed to audiences. In critiquing the author’s voice and the work it is doing, with the narrative voice and the work the narration is doing, the implicit

86 Stephens, “Defining the Genre,” 41. 87 Robin Warhol, “A Feminist Approach to Narrative,” in Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates, by David Herman, Robin Warhol, James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, and Brian Richardson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012.), 13.

47 social narrative being constructed can be seen. It is what is or is not being said and how that forms the world and social coding that readers are responding to. This separation of the author from the text and a turn to the effect of the narrator and role of the reader is derived from Barthes’ foundational essay “The Death of the Author”. In his essay Barthes expands on this new criticism which removes the Author from the text and forces criticism of the text separate to the author, instead in relation to the reader. When the author is removed, the reader becomes the most important figure: “The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.”88 The type of criticism this thesis engages with reflect this claim and is focussed on the importance on the reader and the text, and secondary to that is the author and their intention. This is not to dismiss the author entirely. As noted earlier these books should be understood as authored by a person and also produced by a context and a culture. Foucault’s work in “What is an Author?” outlines the many functions of an author, namely that “the function of an author is to characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certain discourses within a society.”89 The author can be a conduit for the culture and their given contexts, and it is through their lens that the texts they produce can reveal to us an understanding of both how the world works and the potential there is for the future.

As well as considering the different levels of narrators, it is important to note the different levels of audiences as this too contributes to how the texts build their implicit social narrative and structures. Phelan identifies “four audiences in fictional narrative”90 and this concept plays as a background theory to the work this thesis is trying to do in analysing the text. The

88 Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image, Music, Text, trans. and ed. by Stephen Heath (London: Flamingo, 1984), 148. 89 Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 124. 90 Phelan, Somebody Telling, 7.

48 first is the actual audience, the “flesh-and-blood readers in all their differences and commonalities”91, and the second is the authorial audience “the hypothetical group for whom the author writes—the group that shares the knowledge, values, prejudices, fears, and experiences that the author expected in his or her readers, and that ground his or her rhetorical choices.”92 The third reader Phelan identifies is the narratee, “the audience addressed by the narrator”93 and the final fourth audience is the narrative audience, “an observer position within the storyworld”94 who accepts the story world to be true. Each level of audience introduces a layer of meaning to the narrative. In examining how the texts represent gender and identity, the audiences receiving these messages help build the societal contexts through which to view these messages.

The actual audience are the real people reading these texts and are living in contemporary society, thus experiencing real world social conceptions of gender and identity. They also bring, however, their own personal experience and perspectives to reading these texts.

The authorial audience on the other hand encompasses the author’s beliefs of the world and what the author thinks their audience considers true regarding representations of gender — this audience best represents what the author thinks is accurate of social expectations.

Phelan’s third audience is the one being spoken to directly through the text’s narrator and their understanding of gender and identity as represented in these books is filtered directly through the main protagonists own understanding of these concepts. Finally, when considering the fourth audience, the narrative audience, it is here that we see how gender and identity are constructed in the social worlds of the texts, where the narrative is ‘true’. The space between the narrative audience and the actual audience is where conflict is created in

91 Phelan, Somebody Telling, 7. 92 Phelan, Somebody Telling, 7. 93 Phelan, Somebody Telling, 7. 94 Phelan, Somebody Telling, 7.

49 my analysis of the Hunger Games and Divergent series as it is the societal expectations of gender being built in these texts that I am analysing. As Warhol commented, it is the narrative’s role in constructing gender that should be analysed, and in turn it is the narrative audience and their assumed knowledge and adherence to the gender code of the world of the narrative that helps us understand this construction.

In a critique of Phelan and other approaches to narrative theory, Warhol comments on the assumption of who this reader and narrative audience is, and how gender is being positioned in narratives and narrative theory. She notes that: “To assume that gender is an element with more or less prominence in any given text is not to understand that gender is a part of everything people in this culture do, speak, write, or read. Gender actually has equal

‘prominence’ in every cultural artefact under patriarchy.”95 It is this reasoning that I have turned to in these two series to examine how and why gender is being constructed. It is not that they position gender as being a prominent theme, or that they are speaking to or from a position tied to gender, but that gender is an inherent part of every text and through critically examining these cultural artefacts can we understand how gender and feminism are being understood and used. Warhol further comments that “If you say that only certain texts give prominence to ‘issues’ like gender, that means your default is male, masculine, and straight.”96 This is a valid critique of how other theorists have understood the author, the narrator and the audience. Real life audience response differs depending on their individual experiences of gender, feminism, and identity formation — there cannot be an assumed default. Even the narrative audience has their concept of gender and identity formed by the narrative society and the text cannot be assumed to be white, male, and straight. In the close

95 Robin Warhol, “Response,” in Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates, by David Herman, Robin Warhol, James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, and Brian Richardson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012), 202. 96 Warhol, “Response,” 202.

50 readings of these texts in this thesis, there will be an oscillation between critiquing the way the narrative creates social understandings of gender and feminism and how the author constructs these messages in relation to real life feminist theory and social understanding of gender norms.

Initially, in citing of the number of book sales of the series, commenting on fan engagement through fan media, and noting how teen audiences are influenced by young adult fiction, this chapter was noting the ways that reading these books has real affective effects on the readers.

People have their own personal reasons for reading these books, but we can see that fans are reading them to participate and to experience. To understand this participation and experience of reading these texts, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s paranoid and reparative reading, which is a framework for this whole thesis, must be more directly invoked. Sedgwick notes that “the methodological centrality of suspicion to current critical practice has involved a concomitant privileging of the concept of paranoia.”97 My methodology, and thus that of this thesis, in engaging with critical analysis, is paranoid by nature. In exploring the transgressive potential of the young adult genre, the space it creates to challenge literary canon, and its potential to allow a space that invited new constructions of identity and gender, I am engaging with a paranoid methodology. Sedgwick’s first note on paranoid reading states that “paranoia is anticipatory”98 and this study of young adult literature is anticipatory. It is anticipating that while young adult fiction can offer a transgressive space to explore gender, identity, concepts of self, there is a possibility that these texts, the Hunger Games series and the Divergent series specifically, are not doing that.

97 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 125. 98 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 123.

51 In order to conduct this reading of the Hunger Games and Divergent series, and the potential of the YA genre, the analysis must be paranoid. Similarly, to conduct the overarching project of examining femininity and understanding how it is valued, constructed, and hopefully revalued in society one must be paranoid. Ultimately however, paranoid strategies represent

“a way, among other ways, of seeking, finding, and organizing knowledge. Paranoia knows some things well and others poorly.”99 It is not enough simply to conduct a paranoid examination of young adult fiction. To fully understand its affect and its potential to create these new spaces for readers to consider their identity and relationship to society the investigation process must also be hopeful, it must be reparative. Sedgwick’s essay notes how the complement of paranoia is the reparative reading: “The desire of a reparative impulse, on the other hand, is additive and accretive.”100 Reparative reading not only allows space for hope of a future transformative or transgressive space, it enables this space. When later considering how gender is constructed and performed in these texts this thesis will be engaging with this reparative hope as ultimately this thesis is a reparative project.

When approaching the critical work of analysing the Hunger Games series and the Divergent series I do so as a critic, engaging in the paranoid mode, with the hermeneutics of suspicion.

Rita Felski, expanding on Sedgwick’s point about paranoid readings, in her introduction to

Uses of Literature notes that:

As a quintessentially paranoid style of critical engagement, it calls for constant

vigilance, reading against the grain, assuming the worst-case scenario and then

rediscovering its own gloomy prognosis in every text.101

99 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 130. 100 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 149. 101 Rita Felski, Uses of Literature (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 3.

52 As a critical reader, and one operating within the field of literary studies, I am approaching the way gender and femininity are explored, created, and performed in this “gloomy” way.

This suspicion is not without basis however, as there is a history of children’s fiction reinforcing traditional gender roles and gender stereotyping especially in their representation of female characters.102 However as YA fiction began to grow as a genre there was a general acknowledgement of this gender-stereotyping and work has been done to operate against this.

Linda Forrest notes as early as 1993 that the ultimate goal should be to create “gender fair”103 genres and stories. In order to combat these long standing sexist representations of female characters that children and young readers are being exposed to, “gender-fair” YA fiction should present female characters “engaged in non-traditional and non-stereotypical activities.”104 Forrest uses the example of fantasy YA literature as genre that has a lot of

“gender-fair” fiction, saying that in these texts “readers are often offered a the chance to experience what females could be instead of what they are.”105 These texts have the potential to offer readers this experience, and as the critical/paranoid reader it is the role of this thesis to see if this is what is occurring or if the genre is somehow failing. Young adult literature can offer a subversive perspective to the culture that “idealizes and exploits [girls’] sexuality and expects [girls] to assume adult roles that hold less power than the roles of men,” and it can transmit these messages directly to a younger generation of readers that are still struggling to understand their place in society and how they must express themselves.106

In creating works that operate against gender stereotypes and in attempting to create these potentials of representation, it is not enough for these characters to exist. The texts must do

102 See: Diekman and Murnen, “Inequitable Gender Equality,” Kortenhaus and Demarest, “Gender Role Stereotyping,” Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz, “Feminine Beauty Ideal.” 103 Linda A Forrest, “Young Adult Fantasy and the Search for Gender-Fair Genres,” Journal of Youth Services In Libraries 7, no. 1 (Fall 1993): 38. 104 Forrest, “Gender-fair Genres,” 38. 105 Forrest, “Gender-fair Genres,” 38. 106 Forrest, “Gender-fair Genres,” 37.

53 more. It is not enough for these stories to offer up a limited field of “positive role-models”107 to young female readers. Angela Hubler notes, drawing on Frederic Jamerson’s terminology, that feminist literature could “enable girls to ‘cognitively map’ their social world.” 108 It perhaps does not matter if Katniss or Tris are feminists or embody feminist beliefs. What matters more is that the texts themselves create a world that explore these feminist ideals.

This would in turn help girls understand the “distance between gender as a seemingly personal experience and its structural determinations” and would eventually be able to instigate change either at the personal level or at a broader social level.109 Media allows for the audience to “experience social reality from other perspectives” and it is the identification with specific characters that contributes to the development of an adolescent readers’ own identity.110 If it is known that teenagers are engaging with these texts, no matter how paranoid a reading of them is, it must also be reparative. A reparative approach would perhaps be open to the idea that these texts have no obligation to instruct readers, and that they can exist without instruction and not be damaging. Perhaps it is enough to demonstrate speculative potential and allow the readers to enact this potential in their own way. Again, it is Driscoll and Heatwole’s comment looking at the Hunger Games series and the fan engagement to invoke here: “The Hunger Games, like speculation in general, is not instructive but aspirational.”111 Perhaps aspiration is the goal then. Young adult literature should provide a breadth of representation to push beyond perceived limitations of self and gender expression, however it should also be enough to be constantly aspiring towards this goal.

107 Angela E Hubler, “Beyond the Image: Adolescent Girls, Reading, and Social Reality,” NWSA Journal 12, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 85. 108 Hubler, “Beyond the Image,” 92. 109 Hubler, “Beyond the Image,” 93. 110 Jonathan Cohen, “Defining Identification: A Theoretical Look at the Identification of Audiences with Media Characters,” Mass Communication and Society 4, no. 3 (2001): 246. 111 Driscoll and Heatwole, Girl Action Hero, 98.

54 Young adult literature is an emerging space. It is a liminal space (as will be explored later), an instructive space, an aspirational space, and primarily it is a popular space. After this exploration, and in some part paranoid anticipatory justification of this thesis’ focus on two

YA series, the primary conclusions can be summarised in this way: I have chosen to critically examine Suzanne Collins’ the Hunger Games series and Veronica Roth’s Divergent series because the genre of young adult literature offers a space to understand how gender and identity is created and formed in relation to society, and because these books are popular.

Beyond any case of literary merit these books are worthy of investigation if for nothing else than that they are cultural touchstones. Rather than questioning if they are good, or somehow better than other books in the genre, it is enough to understand them simply as popular books.

They are popular because people buy and read them. At a base level people enjoy them, in part because they relate to them. To quote Felski again “Reading is far from being a one-way street; while we cannot help but impose ourselves on literary texts, we are also, inevitably, exposed to them.”112 In exposing ourselves to these texts we must the question what messages we are being exposed to and how are we exposing ourselves in return. For this thesis the focus is on the messages of how gender binaries and femininities being constructed, performed and valued, and in order to understand how they are operating in the texts, the next chapter will be an explanation of what these terms mean.

112 Felski, Uses of Literature, 3.

55 Chapter Two

Gender Binaries and Feminist Histories

In order to explore the transgressive potential of YA literature, particularly how these texts can challenge notions of normative gender roles and explore the performance of femininity, first the establishment of masculine and feminine as an unevenly valued binary dichotomy must be understood. This chapter considers how feminist and queer theory can be used to understand how binaries that exist in a hierarchical relationship, with one positioned as less, as the Other, can be destabilised to relocate and revalue the Other — the Other in this case being femininity/the feminine. In Gender Trouble Judith Butler expands on the theory of gender as something that people perform according to a social script and as part of an agreed social ritual. Butler theorised gender as something that is performative and constructed both knowingly and unknowingly. Theorising gender as something that is performed by bodies allows an exploration of what femininity is and how it is performed and constructed on bodies and through culture both knowingly and unknowingly influenced though binary biases. While the acts of gender are performed, gender itself is performative and this distinction is important to theorising about how gender is read and understood, and will be explored further in this chapter.113 There has been much debate over several waves of feminist theory about how to valorise and recuperate femininity and the feminine from the position of Other and this thesis offers a historical examination of this theory and attempts to reinvigorate the discussion. This chapter focusses on the ideas of third-wave feminism and how they are useful in approaching the relationship between feminism and femininity in

113 This distinction between the language of performativity as opposed to the language of performance is expanded on from page 64. For further reading on Butler’s work on performativity and material bodies, her books Bodies That Matter, and Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly should be considered.

56 contemporary society and media.114 While the subjugation of women is based in both socially constructed and understood notions of gender and biological sex, it is through the theoretical and ideological re-conception of gender that progress towards a future beyond a social organisation based on gender binary can occur.

Hierarchical binaries

The terms “masculine” and “feminine” operate in a binary hierarchy which valorises and priorities masculine/masculinity over feminine/femininity. Hélène Cixous’ work in “Sorties” is foundational to understanding how binaries operate in a hierarchy: “Thought has always worked through opposition…Through dual, hierarchical oppositions. Superior/Inferior.”115 In her work Cixous maps how the binary of “Man/Woman” positions man as superior and woman as inferior and how other binaries are similarly organised around this hierarchical relationship. She writes that “[o]rganization by hierarchy makes all conceptual organization subject to man. Male privilege, shown in the opposition between activity and passivity, which he uses to sustain himself.”116 Man therefore is associated with activity and “woman is always associated with passivity in philosophy.”117 In this binary, male is valued above the female and positioned as active subject. It is this positioning of woman as passive and valued as less than man that is challenged by feminist thought and is a key focus of this thesis. This binary of man/woman positions man as the primary figure of “hierarchically organised” relationships: “there has to be some ‘other’.”118 Woman, in this case, is the other. Simone de

Beauvoir famously wrote on this concept of woman as other in The Second Sex, saying: “He

114 It should be noted that this discussion about contemporary society and media is focussed on a Western centric society, and Western constructions of gender binaries. 115 Hélène Cixous, “Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays,” in The Newly Born Woman, by Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 63-64. 116 Cixous, “Sorties,” 64. 117 Cixous, “Sorties,” 64. 118 Cixous, “Sorties,” 71.

57 is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other.”119 It is not that man/woman, or masculine/feminine, are opposites but that they are held in this hierarchical binary where one is valued as more highly than the ‘other’. The Other is further defined as what the One is not, and always exists in relation to the One: “it is not the Other who, defining itself as Other, defines the One; the Other is posited as Other by the One positing itself as the One.”120 The feminine is what is not masculine. Similarly, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick on the relationship between binary oppositions in Epistemology of the Closet says: “categories presented in a culture as symmetrical binary oppositions … actually subsist in a more unsettled and dynamic tacit relation according to which, first, term B is not symmetrical with but subordinated to term A…”121 In a hierarchical binary, Term B, the Other, is posed as subordinate to Term A. Woman/feminine/femininity is always positioned as other to and less than man/masculine/masculinity. There are no equal opposites, but rather they exist in this hierarchised binary oppositions.

Further, on the valorisation of the position of masculine in the binary of masculine/feminine, it is important to understand the power held by the position of subject and how the feminine therefore can be theorised as powerless in this formulation. Concepts of power, autonomy, and individualism122 are associated with the masculine, so any attempt to valorise femininity must address its supposed passivity and the way gender is used socially and culturally to re- inscribe and articulate this power imbalance. Cixous again notes:

The (political) economy of the masculine and the feminine is organized by different

demands and constraints, which, as they become socialized and metaphorized,

119 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany (London: Vintage Books, 2011), 6. 120 De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 7. 121 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 10. 122 Joan W. Scott, “Universalism and the History of Feminism,” Differences 7, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 1–14, http://search.proquest.com/docview/61417088/.

58 produce signs, relations of power, relationships of production and reproduction, a

whole huge system of cultural inscription that is legible as masculine or feminine.123

These demands and constraints used in the economy of gender rely on a clear distinction between masculine and feminine. It forces a social organisation by which all manner of things are associated with either masculine or feminine. It becomes difficult then to separate these signs and cultural ideas — such as clothing, behaviour, and notions of identity — from this gendered binary and hierarchy. As Joan W. Scott notes “Gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power…gender is a primary field within which or by means of which power is articulated.”124 Gender is powerful in society because it allows for this articulation of power. By operating in a hierarchical binary, gender is used to create, produce, and reproduce power dynamics that valorise the masculine and keep the feminine relegated as the Other. It is important, then, to understand the ways that gender is created, performed, and socially sustained in order to facilitate a destabilisation this hierarchical binary and attempt to relocate power to the feminine and femininity.

The terminology of a sex/gender divide or system can be useful when conceptualising the social construction and performance of gender, as well as how binaries of sex and gender are used. The term “sex/gender system” was coined by Gayle Rubin in her essay “The Traffic in

Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex” as a way to describe this divide between biological sex and gender as performed or socially constructed. Rubin specifically uses the term as a way to understand how gender and sex operate in a complex system and are used for the oppression of women. In justifying and defining the use of the term ‘sex/gender system’ Rubin poses:

123 Cixous, “Sorties,” 80-81. 124 Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (December, 1986): 1069.

59 [W]e cannot limit the sex system to “reproduction” in either the social or biological

sense of the term. A sex/gender system is not simply the reproductive moment of a

“mode of production.” The formation of gender identity is an example of production

in the realm of the sexual system. And a sex/gender system involves more than the

“relations of procreation,” reproduction in the biological sense.125

Sex and gender operate in a complex system that is based both on biological definition of reproduction and in the reproduction of gender identity that is created socially. Rubin further notes that “whatever term we use, what is important is to develop concepts to adequately describe the social organization of sexuality and the reproduction of the conventions of sex and gender.”126 What the term “sex/gender system” offers us is a way of articulating how both biological sex and gender are used in society as a means of organisation to reinforce normative gender ideas and subjugate women.

This separation of sex and gender is a concept that Sedgwick also deals with in her work when considering how binaries are constructed and held in relation to sexuality. Sedgwick uses Rubin’s terminology to further explore the way gender and biological sex have been used as a way to organise society in a variety of binary hierarchies. She proposes that the purpose of identifying these terms and understanding “the system by which chromosomal sex is turned into, and processed as, cultural gender”127 has been to:

gain analytic and critical leverage on the female-disadvantaging social arrangements

that prevail at a given time in a given society, by throwing into question their

legitimative ideological grounding in biological based narratives of the “natural.”128

125 Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,” in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, ed. Linda Nicholson (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), 33. 126 Rubin, “Traffic in Women,” 33. 127 Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 28. 128 Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 28.

60 The social hierarchy based on gender which oppresses women is formed culturally and socially. Understanding the differentiation between a biological understanding of sex and the social concept of gender allows for this thesis’ focus on the performance and construction of gender separate to the sexed body. To focus on gender is, as Sedgwick argues, to question these ‘biologically natural’ narratives associated with gender roles and structures in society.

Through destabilising these ideas, different narratives of gender and alternate potential social structures can emerge.

While this thesis is focussed on gender and not sex, the sexed body should not be ignored.

Part of why the terminology of “sex/gender system” is crucial is that it points to the complex relationship between biological sex and gender. While this thesis is focussed on socially and culturally ‘created’ gender and the performance of gender roles and signifiers, some theorists have proposed that to separate gender and sex is not productive for the feminist agenda.

Moira Gatens’ essay “A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction” is useful to scope this field.

In this essay Gatens set out to “challenge the notion that the mind, of either sex, is initially a neutral, passive entity, a blank slate on which are inscribed various social ‘lessons’.”129 In describing gender as socially and culturally produced, Gatens comments that there is an assumption of an “indifferent body,”130 where instead she notes that the sexed body is not indifferent and should be considered. The part of her argument that has emerged in other texts citing this work is that masculine or feminine behaviours are inherently different when performed by male or female subjects:

If one accepts the notion of the sexually specific subject, that is, the male or female

subject, then one must dismiss the notion that patriarchy can be characterized as a

129 Moira Gatens, “A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction,” in Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality (London: Routledge, 1996), 4. 130 Gatens, “Sex/Gender Distinction,” 7.

61 system of social organization that valorizes the masculine gender over the feminine

gender. Gender is not the issue; sexual difference is. The very same behaviours

(whether they be masculine or feminine) have quite different personal and social

significances when acted out by the male subject on the one hand and the female

subject on the other.131

Gatens’ point of a not-indifferent body is important as it contextualises the way gender is understood in society. One cannot fully separate gender from the sexed body; they exist in a system always informing each other. This thesis, however, focuses on the regulation of and demand of femininity, the eventual reclaiming of femininity in a postfeminist culture, as will be explored, and the way femininity is valued generally outside of sexed bodies. Much work has been done on sexed bodies performing gender, and this thesis focuses more on the theoretical and performative elements of gender and the way these concepts are valorised, rather than on the “sex/gender distinction”.

This understanding of gender as constructed socially and on bodies allows for the critical analysis of the binary that defines and constrains sex and gender and the way binaries operate. It is the binary of the culturally constructed gender that gives light to this. Again, it is

Sedgewick’s work that builds this idea:

Gender, then, is the far more elaborated, more fully and rigidly dichotomized social

production and reproduction of male and female identities and behaviors —of male

and female persons—in a cultural system for which “male/female” functions as a

primary and perhaps model binarism affecting the structure and meaning of many,

131 Gatens, “Sex/Gender Distinction,” 9.

62 many other binarisms whose apparent connection to chromosomal sex will often be

exiguous or nonexistent.132

What Sedgwick describes (echoing Cixous) is how gender is a rigid social binary that is used as a model for other binaries in society. Specifically, the value placed on the binary of gender rather than biological sex becomes the point of critique for feminists when looking at the treatment of women in society. Zimmerman and West note that specifically cultural feminists use the binary separation of masculine and feminine as a means to question women and femininity’s “subordinate status” and the creation of a system that assumes it is natural to have women placed socially below men.133 In questioning the stratification of gendered power through the lens of feminist thought, the perceived difference of women and femininity being inferior to men and masculinity is destabilised and open to change.

Gender, then, not referring to biological sex differences, but rather the social performance of gendered binary, can be examined in a separate way. While Gatens does not separate the

“sex/gender distinction” into parts, if we do there can be an examination of the social value of gender outside of the body. According to Judith Lorber, gender can be understood as a social institution that “establishes patterns of expectations for individuals” 134 and it something that

“orders the social process of everyday life.”135 Rather than gender being located in “biology or procreation,” Lorber posits that gender is socially constructed, meaning that it is established through a social understanding of the clear distinction and difference between what is female, or rather, what is male and not male.136 Lorber in Paradoxes of Gender, further explains that:

132 Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 27-8. 133 West and Zimmerman, “Doing Gender,” 2. 134 Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 1. 135 Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender, 1. 136 Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender, 1.

63 In the great social construction of gender, it does not matter what men and women

actually do; it does not even matter if they do exactly the same things. The social

institution of gender insists only that what they do is perceived as different.137

In this understanding of gender, the actual difference between men and women biologically or socially does not matter, socially men and women must be constructed and viewed as different. Gender categories are constantly constructed and reconstructed in order to maintain a “structure of domination and subordination”138 and it is this subordination of women and femininity that is naturalised by gender binary distinctions. In this logic it is always of the utmost importance that women and men remain distinguishable.139 Much of the way society is organised is based on the difference between gender categories, including the distribution of labour and domestic work. Lorber also points out that the social construction of gender is restrictive yet also “contains the potential for radical change.”140 As she notes “we can ‘do’ gender in ways that maintain existing gender relations or we can challenge them.”141 In firstly understanding how and why people ‘do’ gender, and the role this ‘doing’ plays in society, our current understanding of the nature of both gender and society can be questioned and ultimately challenged.

Performativity of gender

The term of ‘doing’ gender specially relates to Candace West and Don Zimmerman’s work

“Doing Gender” which is key for understanding of how gender is created and how the term gender is used as separate to biological sex. West and Zimmerman offer a starting point for developing the theory of gender as performative and how people ‘do’ gender in their

137 Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender, 26. 138 Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender, 26. 139 Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender, 26. 140 Judith Lorber, “Preface,” in The Social Construction of Gender, ed. Judith Lorber, and Susan A. Farrell (Newbury Park, Calif: Sage Publications, 1991), 11. 141 Lorber, “Preface,” 11.

64 everyday lives. They theorise about gender “as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction.”142 It is something all people do every day and it is not only something that is done individually but is done socially and through the interaction between people.

They go on to say that:

We contend that the “doing” of gender is undertaken by women and men whose

competence as members of society is hostage to its production. Doing gender involves a

complex of socially guided perceptual, interactional, and micropolitical activities that

cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine “natures.”143

Society requires the doing of gender, as gender plays a key role in the way our society is organised. As a result, people are being held “hostage” to the production of gender that requires “expressions” being divided into either masculine or feminine. West and

Zimmerman further explain that gender is not just done by individuals but based in a social understanding of what gender is and how it should be done. This concept of being held

“hostage” to social expectations of gender is one that is recurring and will be investigated further in this thesis through questioning the way these gender expectations are reinforced or subverted in young adult literature.

Gender categories and roles, as a result, are held to a narrow understanding of a binary division where one must be either male or female, either masculine or feminine. This difference of sex category is then read clearly by the gender being “done” by a person. This allows for the assumption of a naturalised relationship between biological sex and gender:

“Gender activities emerge from and bolster claims to membership in a sex category.”144 We

142 West and Zimmerman, “Doing Gender,” 125. 143 West and Zimmerman, “Doing Gender,” 126. 144 West and Zimmerman, “Doing Gender,” 127.

65 recognise people as belonging to and ‘doing’ a gender that correlates with their sex category.

This assumption and social agreement to these binaries as a way of organising society reinforces sex categories and thus the binarizing of gender actions as belonging to one sex category.

Gender is a powerful ideological device, which produces, reproduces, and legitimates

the choices and limits that are predicated on sex category. An understanding of how

gender is produced in social situations will afford clarification of the interactional

scaffolding of social structure and the social control processes that sustain it.145

By understanding how gender is created and socially agreed upon, these normative binaries and gendered expectations can be questioned and ideally changed. In this stratification system men and masculinity are valorised and put in the position of power and subsequently women and femininity are then relegated to the lesser status of the Other.

The understanding of how and why people ‘do’ gender and the concept of gender performativity is further elaborated on by theorist Judith Butler. Butler’s significant contribution to gender and feminist theory in Gender Trouble has furthered our understanding of gender as performative and separate to the biological identification of sex and the sexed body. In Gender Trouble Butler theorised an understanding of gender as something that “can never be fully internalised”146 as it is something that is created externally and publicly through “sustained social performances.”147 While gender can and does occur internally, it is made concrete through this externalisation. In a broader definition of what constitutes gender Butler states:

145 West and Zimmerman, “Doing Gender,” 147. 146 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1999), 178. 147 Butler, Gender Trouble, 178.

66 Gender is, thus, a construction that regularly conceals its genesis; the tacit collective

agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural

fictions is obscured by the credibility of those productions— and the punishments that

attend not agreeing to believe in them; the construction “compels” our belief in its

necessity and naturalness.148

The construction of gender, understood in this way, requires a collective agreement. It relies on the adherence of social structures that create and sustain gender and punish those who do not comply. Further, the collective belief in gender and its “necessity” perpetuates the confines of the binary and stagnates progress beyond the idea of a hierarchical gender binary.

By exposing how gender is formed and sustained, how it “conceals its genesis,” perhaps an alternative collective understanding and agreement of gender can be undertaken.

This concept of gender as something that is external, public, and requiring collective social agreement is one that Butler attributes to the performativity of gender. Similar to an understanding of gender being ‘done’, Butler theorised that gender is performative and made of a series of acts:

[G]ender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space

through a stylized repetition of acts. The effect of gender is produced through the

stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which

bodily gestures, movement, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an

abiding gendered self.149

148 Butler, Gender Trouble, 178. 149 Butler, Gender Trouble, 179.

67 Gender, therefore, can be understood as the acts and stylisation performed in public and social spaces by bodies, and it is these acts that are held in the binary categories of masculine and feminine. A condition of the social agreement to this gender binary and the binarizing of these actions and stylisations is also that people practice and perform them privately and believe in them personally, and by extension then perform them publicly.

Gender itself is not a performance, it is performative, while the acts and gestures of gender are performed. Using the language of performance and performativity invites a specific way of thinking about gender and positions it in the space of performance studies. One key consideration is that theatre and performance are temporal and liminal; the second is that the terminology of performance implies an audience. In theorising about the ontology of performance Peggy Phelan states that “Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance.”150 Performance by this definition exists only in the here and now. It is something that exists in time and space that cannot be repeated. Gender cannot be a performance, as it is, in Phelan’s words, participating in the “circulation of representations of representations” and therefore something other than performance. It is in this distinction that it can be said that gender is performative and not a performance.

Performing gender in the ‘every-day’ requires repetition and re-inscription. It is never one stable location. If gender is performative, and acts of gender are performances, it forces us to ask what is this performance based on and how does the performance of gendered acts

150 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 1993), 146.

68 develop in correspondence to biological sex. Butler explores the terminology of performance and performativity thus:

This implicit and popular theory of acts and gestures as expressive of gender suggests

that gender itself is something prior to the various acts, postures, and gestures by

which it is dramatized and known… If gender attributes, however, are not expressive

but performative, then these attributes effectively constitute the identity they are said

to express or reveal. The distinction between expression and performativeness is quite

crucial, for if gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows or

produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is no preexisting

identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there would be no true or

false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the postulation of a true gender identity

would be revealed as a regulatory fiction. That gender reality is created through

sustained social performances means that the very notions of an essential sex, a true

or abiding masculinity or femininity, are also constituted as part of the strategy by

which the performative aspect of gender is concealed.151

Theorising gender as a series of performances, rather than gestures expressive of some original gender, destabilises any naturalisation of the terms masculinity and femininity. It instead locates these terms as part of the construction and performance of gender while also concealing these processes. If performance cannot be reproduced, yet performance of gender requires reproduction, it both highlights and obscures that there is no true or real gender.

Similarly, it means that there is no false or distorted gender. There is no original definitive performance. Perhaps then it can be understood that all performance of gender is both localised, individual, and present, and it is only through attempting to “circulate the

151 Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (December 1988): 528.

69 representations of representations”152 that it becomes believed to be something other than performance and moved to the space of the social and public.

While performance can exist and occur without audience and spectator, it should be recognised that in using the terminology of performance and performativity, there is some nod towards an audience/spectator and the public nature of performance. In conceiving of gender as something performed publicly and externally, as per Butler’s theory, there can be an assumption that all people act not only as performers but also as spectators and in turn as critics. Placing gender in the performative realm enables a reading of gender that is done and understood in the performative space by audience and spectator: “Given the premise that theatre operates as a sign-system, as a system which sends out signs or messages, the receiver of the signs also merits consideration in the theatrical frame.”153 We can assume the spectator understands and responds to the coding and performance of gender; they know the signs and symbols. It is important to draw the audience in to question what these signs and significations of gender are, as it is not only how they are performed and constructed that is important, but also how they are received and interpreted. Phelan again speaking on performance art and spectatorship comments: “Performance implicates the real through the presence of living bodies. In performance art spectatorship there is an element of consumption: there are no left-overs, the gazing spectator must try to take everything in.”154

Gender, as understood as enacted by and on living bodies makes the performance real, and only through viewing and “consuming” these bodies can it be understood and interpreted.

This is why the descriptions of characters as a trope of YA fiction proves useful. It

152 Phelan, Unmarked, 146. 153 Elaine Aston, and George Savona, Theatre as Sign-System: A Semiotics of Text and Performance (London: Routledge, 2013), 120, Taylor & Francis eBooks. 154 Phelan, Unmarked, 148.

70 transcribes these performances into words that the “gazing spectator”, in this case the reader, can absorb and consume.

Understanding gender as performative and constructed in a way that is read by an audience or spectator then allows for a reading of how a specific gender binary of masculine and feminine is constructed and sustained. What performative acts are attributed to which gender binary role and how they are interpreted, socially valued, and critiqued can be questioned. Again, turning to Butler:

In terms of an explicitly feminist account of gender as performative, it seems clear to

me that an account of gender as ritualized, public performance must be combined

with an analysis of the political sanctions and taboos under which that performance

may and may not occur within the public sphere free of punitive consequence.155

It is not enough to understand gender as performative. In a feminist approach, as Butler points out, there must be an analysis of how this performance exists in a public space and how it is policed. The point of interest then for this thesis is the examination of how the binaries of gender are performed, why society dictates that they are performed in a binary system and the power this binary has, and what does the spectator/audience understand of this performance. Through understanding the performative nature of gender and as something that relies on being observed, the stratification of masculine and feminine is denaturalised, and the privilege value lent to correctly performed masculinity can be challenged and femininity can be understood, appreciated and revalued in a new way separate from a position of submissiveness and Otherness.

155 Butler, “Performative Acts,” 526.

71 An investigation of the signs and signifiers of gender would in turn illuminate the ways the dichotomy between masculine and feminine is constructed and sustained. Judith Lorber talking about the imposition of gender roles on children notes that “a sex category becomes a gender status through naming, dress and the use of other gender makers.”156 Evelyn Nakano

Glenn similarly states, when looking at gender as separate to biological sex, that it is

“constituted simultaneously through deployment of gendered rhetoric, symbols, and images and through allocation of resources and power along gender lines.”157 In order to understand this concept of gender as performative and how it is being ‘done’, it is these material markers that are named as part of the gendered binary that must be examined. This kind of examination should not only consider how these material signifiers of gender are constructed and performed, but also how they are read and perceived by spectators, as it is these spectators who act as policing forces that dictate social gendered norms. Further, as will be explored later, these material signs of gender are also used to form the basis of self-identity and how that identity is represented and performed in society. In the later chapters this thesis will engage with feminist theorists Luce Irigaray and Joan Riviere to approach how femininity is constructed and what social expectations dictate this identity. Much of this thesis’ engagement with looking at how femininity is constructed is hinged on the idea that

Glenn summarised: “if one accepts gender as variable, then one must acknowledge that it is never fixed, but rather is continually constituted and reconstituted.”158 If we are looking at gender as performed and separate from sexed bodies and biological identification, what goes into constituting and reconstituting these gendered performances and how are these acts valued?

156 Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender, 14. 157 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, “The Social Construction and Institutionalization of Gender and Race: An Integrative Framework,” in Revisioning Gender, ed. Myra Marx Ferree, Judith Lorber, Beth B. Hess (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 5. 158 Glenn, “Integrative Framework,” 5.

72 These material signifiers and codes of gender are not just inscribed or performed by bodies; the body itself can be read as a medium that assists and reinforces the construction of gender.

Much of Susan Bordo’s work on the body is useful when thinking about the materials used to gender a body, and how the body itself is constructed and read through gender norms.

The body – what we eat, how we dress, the daily rituals through which we attend to

the body – is a medium of culture.159

Culture is read on and through the body. A body is produced through culture and also in response to dominant social controls. Bodies, and how they are dressed, the rituals we “do”, can and must be read in relation to their contexts. Whether they are normative or not also speaks volumes. Bodies, clothing, and all other physical mediums do not exist in a vacuum; they exist within the context of our society and that is how they become categorised into masculine or feminine. Bordo, in her work looking at bodies as texts of femininity, seeks to understand “the subtle and often unwitting role played by our bodies in the symbolization and reproduction of gender.”160 This kind of project and thinking informs the way that this thesis will approach reading the bodies of the characters in these young adult texts as symbolising and reproducing gender, and specifically femininity.

Signs of gender can be constructed on the body through clothing, and this clothing and other apparel that are gendered have been categorised and can be interpreted according to binary understandings of gender. The value placed on the material and the resulting coding of gendered clothing plays an important role in how we read and understand young adult fiction.

Caroline Hunt notes that one of the distinctions between YA literature and children’s literature is a tendency to emphasise the clothing of characters: “clothes usually figure in

159 Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 165. 160 Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 168.

73 young adult fiction to a greater extent than in children's books.”161 Hunt elaborates that this is because “clothing matters to teens as an outward symbol of their search for identity.”162

Often in descriptions of characters, what they’re wearing and how they are presenting themselves are used to help the reader understand the characters’ personalities and identities, as clothing is the outward representation of themselves. A sociology study by Dawn Currie,

Deirdre Kelly and Shauna Pomerantz that examined agency and empowerment in adolescent girls provides a real-world example that explores the importance of clothes and as the performance of gendered acts in the real lives of girls. In their findings, they noted that

“clothing is one of the most visible, hence culturally encoded, representations of gender. It is also one of the most ‘policed’ aspects of a girls’ self-representation.”163 Clothing plays a specific role in how young girls construct their gender identity and it is something that is not subconscious. There is an overt ‘policing’, described also in their words as ‘double’ monitoring, from both boys and girls and themselves, in which the other teenagers make sure that the way their peers are expressing themselves and their gender conforms to long standing and restrictive ideas about gender and gender roles. This is where we see the external performativity of gender, and by extension the expression of identity, as they are existing in space and being consumed by spectators who are interpreting and regulating what they see.

The material symbols that construct gender are generally understood to belong to the normative binary gender roles, either marked as masculine or feminine. They are part of what

Scott describes as “normative concepts that set forth interpretations of the meanings of the symbols, that attempt to limit and contain their metaphoric possibilities. These concepts … typically take the form of a fixed binary opposition, categorically and unequivocally asserting

161 Hunt, “Evades the Theorists,” 6. 162 Hunt, “Evades the Theorists,” 6. 163 Dawn H. Currie, Deirdre M. Kelly, and Shauna Pomerantz, “‘The geeks shall inherit the earth’: Girls’ Agency, Subjectivity and Empowerment.” Journal of Youth Studies 9, no. 4 (September 2006): 427.

74 the meaning of' male and female, masculine and feminine”164 and through policing and monitoring individuals are able to maintain patriarchal structures of society and gender.

Clothing also allows teens to make quick assumptions about the characters being presented to them. Given that these assumptions are based on socially agreed upon scripts of clothing and personality relations, the assumptions made are accurate and contribute to an immediate understanding of the world and characters being presented. Authors, knowing these signs and signifiers, or even unknowingly, use them to their advantage as narrative shorthand. They codify and put to into words this external performance of identity, and this combined with the often first person narration style of YA fiction novels, demonstrates what Robin Warhol described as the “continuum between material practices and reading practices” through which gender is constituted.165 Through reading practices that consider both the authorial intent and the layered audience James Phelan theorised and expanded on in chapter one, these signs and symbols, and how they are binarized and valued, can be explored in the narratives.

As the teen identity is inherently constructed through clothing, style and attitude, teens are constantly acting in a world where an inability to conform to the codes of cliques and pre- established identities can result in exclusion and isolation. Marcel Danesi, in Cool: The Signs and Meaning of Adolescents, identifies how certain signs and behaviours are used to perform certain identities and to conform to different ideas of cool. He says: “The post-modern teenager will tend to belong to a clique with its own models of behaviour and its own value systems. This entails specific codes of dress, hairstyle, bodily demeanour, language, and general comportment.”166 There is an imperative that teens both conform to stereotypes but also are able to perform some level of uniqueness which is also crucial to the teen identity.

164 Scott, “Gender,” 1067. 165 Robin Warhol, “A Feminist Approach to Narrative,” in Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates, by David Herman, Robin Warhol, James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, and Brian Richardson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012), 13. 166 Marcel Danesi, Cool: The Signs and Meanings of Adolescence (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 34.

75 These cliques can offer a teen protection,167 and thus to fit into these cliques teens will repeat these “models of behaviour.” Coolness has cultural capital: “Coolness is a perceived state to which many (if not most) teens now aspire, even if its specific behavioural forms can vary substantially; and if teens do not aspire to coolness, they can certainly recognize its manifestation in their peers.”168 This therefore gives reason to be critical of the way the characters in the Hunger Games and Divergent series interact and respond to clothing, makeup and other gendered materials as what is being presented can be seen as either performing conformity or individuality. While coolness can be measure by both conformity or individuality, this indicates a manifestation of a persona through the use of clothes and behaviours that can be read by teens and their peers. The characters’ approaches to clothing, gendered clothing in particular, reveal a great deal about how gender is being constructed, read, and performed in these books and how these normative attitudes towards of gender and identity can be subverted.

Understanding masculinity and femininity

To understand further the implications of hierarchical binary gender roles, it is useful to examine how masculinity has been developed and sustained as the dominant gender. This informs an understanding of how femininity is performed and devalued in society, and it reveals how masculinity has been placed in the position of power and femininity is constructed and read in response. As Bean and Harper say in their examination of masculinity in YA fiction: “as research, if not the local news, reminds us, masculinity and femininity have been so strongly named and normalized as polarized and hierarchical opposites, and so deeply conflated with sexual identity, that there are serious repercussions for those who

167 Dansei, Cool, 56. 168 Dansei, Cool, 40.

76 might resist or transgress gendered and/or sexual norms.”169 Gender is powerful and it is difficult for people “resist or transgress” these gendered norms. YA literature is no different, as it exists in a world where these binaries exist. In order, then, to examine how to understand how femininity is used in YA literature, this thesis will examine how post and de- constructionist approaches to gender binaries and deconstruction of these binaries can give way to utopic non-hierarchical conceptions of gender. There must be an understanding first of how masculinity is understood in order to explore how these gendered norms are created and sustained and then the position of femininity can be interrogated.

Masculinity studies is a growing field that offers unique insights to the construction of masculine behaviour in men and in women. R.W. Connell, a leader in this field, popularised the term of hegemonic masculinity to describe the “very public”170 and dominant form of masculinity. As Connell defines:

Hegemonic masculinity can be defined as the configuration of a gender practice

which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of

patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men

and the subordination of women.171

If gender is used as a means of social ordering, hegemonic masculinity is a means of maintaining and validating patriarchy. Identifying what Connell stresses, that “hegemonic masculinity embodies a ‘currently accepted’ strategy”172 that produces patriarchal society, can help to locate what these valued masculinities are and open discussion on how we can destabilise these notions. Establishing a hegemonic and dominant way that masculinity can

169 Thomas W Bean and Helen Harper, “Reading Men Differently: Alternative Portrayals of Masculinity in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction,” Reading Psychology 28, no. 1 (January, 2007): 12. 170 R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 78. 171 Connell, Masculinities, 77. 172 Connell, Masculinities, 7.

77 be embodied and enacted has dangerous consequences. Judith Gardiner summarising

Connell’s point on hegemonic masculinities says that “Hegemonic masculinity gives men a sense of superiority and of entitlement to advantages over women, and it valorizes in men characteristics such as aggression that harm women as well as other men.”173 Men’s violence and aggression is validated as it contributes to sustaining this concept of hegemonic masculinity. The problem is not with the concept of masculinity but rather how hegemonic masculinity, and violence as a validator of this masculinity, is used to sustain patriarchal control over society and oppress women and others who do not conform to this dominant mode.

In order to examine gender binaries, and focus on femininity, one should examine masculinity. The questioning of masculinity, however, especially hegemonic masculinity, is only one step into interrogating gender constructs. Sally Robinson in “Pedagogy of the

Opaque” looks at the complex way feminist theory interacts with masculinity studies and highlights the ways in which it is useful and also the ways it focusses on masculinity can hinder other feminist stances. Observing why it is important to study masculinity, she notes of the field, “scholars interested in deconstructing dominant masculinity – straight, white, middle class masculinity – have recently begun to argue that by making hegemonic masculinity visible we begin to erode its power…freedom from scrutiny has enabled the white, middle-class, masculine norm to remain invisible, natural, and thus un-challenged.”174

It is this idea that by identifying and challenging hegemonic masculine norms we are able to

“erode” the power this masculinity possesses that is relevant to this thesis. Before a project of revalorising the feminine can occur there needs to be an understanding of current gender

173 Judith Kegan Gardiner, “Theorising Age with Gender: Bly’s Boys, Femininity, and Maturity Masculinity,” in Masculinity Studies & Feminist Theory: New Directions, ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 90. 174 Sally Robinson, “Pedagogy of the Opaque: Teaching Masculinity Studies,” in Masculinity Studies & Feminist Theory: New Directions, ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 147.

78 constructs and norms that create societal order. To deconstruct dominant social structures based on gender, first these gender structures must be exposed, and only then can any form of change occur.

In the identification and social enforcement of hegemonic masculinity, Connell also notes the position of marginalised masculinities. Though Connell does not think the term

“marginalized” as ideal, she says: “I cannot improve on ‘marginalization’ to refer to the relations between the masculinities in dominant and subordinate classes or ethnic groups.

Marginalization is always relative to the authorization of the hegemonic masculinity of the dominant group.”175 These are also not “fixed character types” but instead are “configurations of practice generated in particular situations in a changing structure of relationships.”176

These terms are useful to understand how masculinity and gender more broadly can and does intersect or “better, interacts – with race and class” as well as “nationality and position in the world order.”177 There is no one form of masculinity, like the multivalent forms of femininity that occur in response to masculinity, there are also marginalised masculinities. Other scholars in masculinity studies have worked on identifying and expanding the knowledge of different forms of masculinity. Andrea Waling in “Rethinking Masculinity Studies:

Feminism, Masculinity, and Poststructural Accounts of Agency and Emotional Reflexivity” notes that “The emergence of theories post-hegemonic masculinity highlights a peculiar trend where theorists continue to effectively “name” masculinity.”178 In her work analysing these

“named” masculinities, Waling calls to a key issue in the field, commenting that in these new models of masculinity, it is “still positioned as something that is done to men, or something

175 Connell, Masculinities, 81. 176 Connell, Masculinities, 81. 177 Connell, Masculinities, 75. 178 Andrea Waling, “Rethinking Masculinity Studies: Feminism, Masculinity, and Poststructural Accounts of Agency and Emotional Reflexivity,” The Journal of Men’s Studies 27, no. 1 (March 2019): 94.

79 to which men are victims.”179 While this work is important to understanding where current discourses of masculinity studies are focussed, this thesis will be largely dealing with the language of hegemonic masculinity as the valorised performance of gender for men. The term hegemonic masculinity highlights the concept of hegemony in relation to gender and is more focussed on the organisation of power in society while being performed by people who intersect with different categories. It is hegemonic masculinity, and hegemonic forms of gendered power, that is restricting to men and women and directly related to devaluing the feminine.

It has been noted by some scholars of YA literature that there is much need and space in the field to critique hegemonic masculinity and examine other forms of masculinities in young adult literature in order to destabilise these rigid gender norms. Thomas W. Bean and Helen

Harper have been integral to this movement to examine gender in YA literature, both in their collaborative work and individual publications. They argue that “contemporary young adult literature offers a potentially rich and critical site to engage adolescents in thinking through the ways in which masculinity (and indeed femininity) is, and might yet be, ‘storied’ and

‘performed’ in and out of school.”180 Specifically, their work is “interested in the potential contribution young adult literature might make in engaging adolescents in examining and challenging rigid and singular essentialised views of masculinity produced and performed in our society.”181 In highlighting these carefully constructed and continually enforced gender hierarchies it is clear to see how a diversity of gender expressions can be explored through

YA literature. As argued earlier, there is space in the genre to offer adolescents a way of considering how they perform and understand gender and thereby challenge preconceived

179 Waling, “Rethinking Masculinity Studies,” 98. 180 Bean and Harper, “Reading Men Differently,” 11. 181 Bean and Harper, “Reading Men Differently,” 11.

80 and socially upheld concepts of gender and gender norms. Harper in her work on feminine masculinities in YA literature also comments that “Recognizing and acknowledging a diversity of masculinities, including female masculinities, in text and in life challenges norms and expectations associated with traditional masculinity, destabilizing gender hierarchies that limit human potential.”182 YA fiction as a genre is able to challenge and examine this hegemonic masculinity and examine other variants of masculinity and present it to an adolescent audience. When the dominant form of masculinity can be disassembled, and the rigid hierarchical binary of gender roles destabilised, then these adolescent readers are able to explore a range of gender expressions, not feel trapped by the rigidity of social expectation, and the potential for new gender and personal expression expands.

When hegemonic masculinity is set as the norm of what is expected of men, women cannot access masculine traits without being rejected and isolated. Placing hegemonic masculinity at the top of a gender hierarchy restricts gender expression and roles available to everyone as the men too are being held to a standard that is restrictive. What occurs in response to hegemonic masculinity is a “pattern of femininity” that Connell calls “emphasized femininity.”183 Emphasized femininity is “very public”184 and is a “kind of femininity performed, and performed especially to men.”185 It is a dominant form of femininity that is performed by overacting on the difference between masculinity and femininity and within the narrow constraints of their perceived difference. This hegemonic form of femininity however is not equal in any way to hegemonic masculinity and is only created in this social structure that positions women as subordinate to men. Joan Riviere’s work in “Womanliness as

182 Helen Harper, “Studying Masculinity(ies) in Books about Girls,” Canadian Journal of Education / Revue Canadienne de L'éducation 30, no. 2 (2007): 511. 183 R. W. Connell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 187. 184 Connell, Gender And Power, 187. 185 Connell, Gender And Power, 188.

81 Masquerade” reflects this occurrence of women using the shield of overly feminine behaviour and playing on perceptions of femininity as weak in order to allow deference to the masculine man and pass safely through society, hiding her actual abilities and knowledge.186

This performance of an exaggerated femininity is noted in much feminist theory and is a concept this thesis will approach when considering how femininity is constructed and performed and valued.

While masculinity studies have granted a more thorough understanding of the construction of a dominant masculine norm, in order to further the deconstruction of the binary nature of gender, the position of the feminine being secondary and subservient should then be addressed and reconstructed. The proliferation of masculinity studies-based literature has led to an increased interest in the study of femininity and the new forms of femininities that are emerging.187 Work has been made to rectify this gap by critical femininities scholars, who have sought to examine different forms of femininity and lived experiences of femininity that have previously gone undiscussed. Notably the 2018 special edition of the European Journal of Women’s Studies, “Femininity Revisited: Refiguring Critical Femininity Studies”188, is one such attempt to “revisit femininity”189 and examine specifically “the queerly feminine dimensions of feminist theory.”190 It is in this space of the emerging critical femininities studies field that these discussions around new femininities can occur. As Ulrika Dahl notes elsewhere in her work “critical femininity studies investigates femininity and relations between femininities as being more complex than feminist theory has sometimes allowed for

186 Riviere, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” 10. 187 Shelley Budgeon, “The Dynamics of Gender Hegemony: Femininities, Masculinities and Social Change,” Sociology 48, no. 2 (April 2014): 321. 188 Ulrika Dahl and Jenny Sundén, eds. “Femininity Revisited: Refiguring Critical Femininity Studies.” Special issue, European Journal of Women’s Studies 25, no. 3 (August 2018) 189 Ulrika Dahl, and Jenny Sundén, “Guest Editors’ Introduction,” in “Femininity Revisited: Refiguring Critical Femininity Studies,” ed. Ulrika Dahl and Jenny Sundén, special issue, European Journal of Women’s Studies 25, no. 3 (August 2018): 270. 190 Dahl and Sundén, “Guest Editors’ Introduction,” 271.

82 and more hopeful than feminist activism has dared to imagine.”191 In considering different forms of femininities, and these “new femininities”,192 there should be an acknowledgement and then rejection of what constitutes emphasised femininity and the kinds of feminine practices that sustain it. Thinking specifically back to Connell’s work, Shelley Budgeon’s

“The Dynamics Of Gender Hegemony: Femininities, Masculinities And Social Change” looks at these different models and articulations of new femininities and their relationship to

Connell’s concept of hegemony in gender relations. Budgeon maps the field of femininity studies and looks at the “key features associated with a reconstructed form of ‘successful’ femininity” in order to understand whether these new forms of femininity “challenge common sense understandings of gender as hierarchical difference.”193 This reconstructed or

“successful” femininity is one that this thesis is seeking to examine and locate in feminist theory. Budgeon’s analysis looks through the feminist waves and contemporary approaches to femininity to also consider how these feminine ideals repeat “hegemonic logic” and thus do not offer any new concepts of gender identity or gender relations.194

Similarly, Hannah McCann’s recent work in Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism and the Politics of Presentation performs an in-depth historical mapping of the relationship between feminist politics and femininity. Her work uses a specifically queer approach to femininity and understanding of a feminine identity, namely the lived experience of queer femmes.195 This look at the actual lived experience of gender identity and femininity provides

191 Ulrika Dahl, “Turning Like a Femme: Figuring Critical Femininity Studies,” NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 20, no. 1 (March 1, 2012): 63. 192 Budgeon, “Gender Hegemony,” 321. 193 Budgeon, “Gender Hegemony,” 318. 194 Budgeon, “Gender Hegemony,” 331. 195 The figure of the femme and their lived experience of femininity is the site of much discussion in critical femininities studies, see also Blair and Hoskin, “Contemporary Understandings of Femme Identities.”

83 a very contemporary way to understand different forms of femininity and the way the feminine identity manifests beyond the theoretical:

However simply recognising that femininity operates as a set of normative

expectations does not do justice to the lived experience of femininity... Thus while

femininity is bound up with expectations it cannot be reduced simply to an ideal, or a

fantasy, because femininity is used as a descriptor and identifier even as the “ought”

of femininity is never fully achieved.196

This descriptor and identity of femininity is one that is of interest to this thesis as it seeks to understand the way that femininity is continually constructed but also used as an identity by individuals. It is also perhaps not coincidence that her book opens with a quote and reference to the Hunger Games series as it is in these contemporary texts that we see these questions of understanding and complicating femininity arise. The most relevant part of McCann’s book to this thesis is her long historical look at feminisms’ relationship with femininity as it also ponders the question of “how we might understand femininity in a way that undoes and unbinds the connection between femininity and oppression.”197 Both McCann and Budgeon approach their analysis of femininity through tracking how feminist politics has explored femininity and how the two continue to intersect. This is also in part what this thesis works to do, in approaching femininity through the lens of feminism, as any examination of the concept femininity must also review past feminist theory and approaches to gender.

Waves of feminism

Before looking at a historical review of feminist theory, the issue of the division of feminism into separate eras or movements must be noted. Such divisions imply a clear separation of the

196 Hannah McCann, Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism and the Politics of Presentation (London: Routledge, 2017), 4. 197 McCann, Queering Femininity, 37.

84 political and social goals of each movement, when in reality they exist as continuations and extrapolations of one another. Sally Scholz in Feminism: A Beginner’s Guide comments that the wave terminology is helpful as it “indicates a project not yet complete.”198 Feminism, like the ocean, comes in waves and it exists as the same body of water. Drawing a line of continuity between feminist arguments through the ‘waves’ is useful both to understand what progress has been made, and also to discuss further these arguments and points of interest that are not yet complete. It is less useful, however, when delineating the waves of feminism detracts from actual feminist arguments and results in ‘in-fighting’. Amber Kinser, in

“Negotiating Spaces For/Through Third-Wave Feminism,” comments that feminists are spending “more time than is still necessary arguing whether or not such a thing as third-wave exists or has a right to, or carefully outlining the difference between waves.”199 Rather than dedicate more time to arguing the validity of third-wave feminism and subsequently other future waves, this thesis is aligned with the third-wave feminist theory and will use this theoretical framework for its analysis as it is most relevant when considering contemporary culture.

A key element of third-wave feminism that has been identified is the engagement with popular media and online communities. Third-wave feminists have been described as part of a “media-savvy generation,”200 and having grown up in “in an electronic age.”201 As such,

Ellen Riordan notes that “third-wave feminists can be thought of as experts on cultural production and consumption.”202 This is partly why this wave of feminism remains relevant to this thesis, as it is closely tied to how we consume, produce, and interpret popular media

198 Sally J Scholz, Feminism: A Beginner's Guide, (New York: Oneworld Publications, 2012), 23. 199 Kinser, Amber E Kinser, “Negotiating Spaces For/Through Third-Wave Feminism,” NWSA Journal 16, no. 3 (September 22, 2004): 136. 200 Mann and Huffman, “Decentering,” 71. 201 Ellen Riordan, “Commodified Agents and Empowered Girls: Consuming and Producing Feminism,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 25, no. 3 (July 2001): 284. 202 Riordan, “Commodified Agents,” 284.

85 such as these commercially successful YA texts. As a result of this “media-savvy”-ness and engagement with cultural production, Kinser explains that “third wavers are able to infiltrate and command public domain spaces heretofore unavailable on a large scale to the breadth of feminist activity.”203 Catherine Orr sees this expansion of feminist thought into more mainstream culture outside of the rigidity of academia as a “cause for optimism”204 as it implies promise for a future of feminist studies and ongoing engagement with feminist theory as it is now more accessible than ever. Similarly, Anthea Taylor in her work on celebrity feminists notes that: “Increased internet activism, and social media-based campaigns commonly, following Twitter, labelled ‘hashtag feminism’, are often seen to mark a resurgence of feminism that has, not unproblematically, been dubbed the ‘fourth wave’.”205

With this massive online and popular culture engagement with feminism and feminist ideals as third-wave they also apply to the less defined “fourth wave”. Given the lack of definition and blurring of lines between third-wave and fourth wave feminism (and what some predict as fifth wave feminism), as well as the problematic nature of defining waves of feminism, this thesis is engaging primarily with the terminology and ideology of third-wave feminism.

Several academics and feminist theorists have attempted to set out a more specific definition of third-wave feminism and the key theories and ideals associated with this particular wave.

Riordan describes third-wave feminism as working towards “understanding difference and respecting its importance to feminist thought,”206 meaning that third-wave is specifically seeking to be more inclusive of the concerns of “women of colour, women from developing nations, and women who are lesbian, bisexual and transgendered.”207 While this focus on inclusion and intersectionality was present in later second-wave feminism, it sits at the

203 Kinser, “Negotiating Spaces,” 137. 204 Catherine M Orr, “Charting the Currents of the Third Wave,” Hypatia 12, no. 3 (June 1997): 40. 205 Anthea Taylor, Celebrity and the Feminist Blockbuster (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 283. 206 Riordan, “Commodified Agents,” 280. 207 Riordan, “Commodified Agents,” 280.

86 foundation of third-wave’s approach to understanding the individual. Tracking the way third- wave feminism has developed from earlier theories and feminist thought gives an insight into how the specific focus of third-wave came to be. Mann and Huffman identify what they see as the four key perspectives that have developed into third-wave feminist thinking:

intersectionality theory as developed by women of color and ethnicity; postmodernist

and poststructuralist feminist approaches; feminist postcolonial theory, often referred

to as global feminism; and the agenda of the new generation of younger feminists.208

Identifying the key discourses that have developed and differentiate third-wave feminist thinking is useful to understanding how feminist theory has developed. Doing this work seeks not only to draw on the past but also work out how to adapt feminism and feminist thought for a new generation, to face a different set of social issues and existence in a world where feminism has become a mainstream concept.

To use the term ‘third-wave feminism’ there must be additional definition given, since part of the reason this “wave” of feminism is relevant to this research project is that it is more readily defined than any other proposed contemporary wave of feminism. Third-wave feminist theory encourages people to understand the intersectionality of feminism and of personal experience. Kinser identifies this as one of the shared characteristics that help group together what we understand as third-wave feminism. She also notes that third-wave feminists

“practice a multiplicity of feminist ideologies.”209 This is in part due to what Kinser notes as a defining feature which is that “they embrace pluralistic thinking within feminism and work to undermine narrow visions of feminism and their consequent confinements, through in large part the significantly more prominent voice of women of color and global feminism.”210

208 Mann and Huffman, “Decentering,” 57. 209 Kinser, “Negotiating Spaces,” 133 210 Kinser, “Negotiating Spaces,” 133.

87 The encouragement of these multiplicities is a way of increasing inclusivity and seeking to rectify narrow definitions of women’s experience as articulated in the past. Scholz similarly identifies the importance of pluralism and multiplicity of identity in third-wave thinking, noting that third-wave feminism “embraces radical multiplicities even within an individual.”211 This thesis will later examine how identity is created through gender and gendered materials, and the possibilities for multiplicity in this identity, namely how identity can be formed without a concept of the hierarchical gender binary. These definitions and explanations of key third-wave trends highlight the importance of the individual and how a person can reject societal norms on a personal level as a means of aligning with feminist ideology. These ideas become problematized when thinking about the similarities between third-wave feminism and postfeminism as will be explored later.

It is these third-wave feminist approaches to gender and performativity of gender that is useful to this thesis as it reflects a specific pluralistic approach to gender expression and individual autonomy. Lorber posits that “[t]he long-term goal of feminism must be no less than the eradication of gender as an organising principle of post-industrial society.”212 Gender should not form the basis of organisation and segregation of society and on the personal level it is essential that there is a breaking down of the normative gender structures that constrict individuals. As Scholz states on third-wave feminist approaches challenging gender normativity: “Third wave feminism challenges sex and gender constructs, like second-wave feminism. But many third-wave feminists actually challenge these constructs by embracing them. This is also a rejection of normative notions of gender insofar as any individual my embrace any number of seemingly contradictory gender constructs. So, a woman may be

211 Scholz, Feminism, 145. 212 Judith Lorber, “Dismantling Noah’s Ark,” in The Social Construction of Gender, ed. Judith Lorber, and Susan A. Farrell (Newbury Park, Calif: Sage Publications, 1991), 355.

88 girlish and powerful, or feminine and self-confidently strong.”213 The performance of gender is only part of the problem; it is the unbalanced valorisation of gendered expression that contemporary feminism should and does resist. As long as there is autonomy in the performance of gender, all expressions of gender, masculine or feminine, should be equally valued. Feminist theory and deconstructionist methods will allow for the analysis of gender binaries, gender performativity, and identity formation which will inform how this thesis reads these young adult texts and their relationship to gender and agency.

Where second-wave feminism sought to detach the enforced gendered stereotype of the

‘weak feminine’ from women, third-wave feminism seeks to reinterpret and valorise femininity as something that can be agentic and personally powerful. What this contemporary interpretation of femininity seeks to do is demonstrate how traditional femininity can be altered and recreated with “confidence and agentic potential”214 rather than being dismissed altogether as a means of keeping women subservient. Dismantling the construction of gender is a step towards a denaturalisation of gendered social orders, however, in many instances, it has resulted in a rejection of femininity and the feminine while masculinity has retained social power. Femininity, in the third-wave movement, has become something to reclaim.

The revalorisation of femininity hinges on the idea that an individual is able to express autonomous choice in engaging with traditionally feminine beauty standards. Instead of rejecting femininity, what is being rejected is the “overinvestment of male judgement” in the construction of the feminine which results in a “forfeit of autonomy.”215 While third-wave feminists are critical of the restrictive nature of these beauty standards forced on women, they view “the body as a means to their personal expression”216 and therefore embrace all modes

213 Scholz, Feminism, 76. 214 Budgeon, “Gender Hegemony,” 320. 215 Budgeon, “Gender Hegemony,” 327. 216 Scholz, Feminism, 210.

89 of bodily expression. At the same time, second-wave feminist criticisms of beauty ideals, namely that “plastic surgery and extreme make up regimes [are] oppressive”217 and contribute to a capitalist system that manipulates consumers, are not entirely done away with.

This relationship with capitalist investment in feminine beauty is something that remains in debate with the commodification of femininity and feminism remaining an ongoing cultural problem and will be explored in more depth further in this thesis.218

While third-wave feminism is the most useful frame of thinking to consider how feminism is operating to re-examine femininity in contemporary society, it is not without its problems.

Third-wave has had its authenticity questioned with regards to its seemingly “apolitical” agenda.219 Additionally, there are some concerns regarding the entanglement of consumerism and commodification when it comes to feminine beauty practices and feminist messaging.

This set of concerns is linked to the separation of third-wave feminist ideals and what can be considered as part of postfeminist culture. A point Kinser makes is that third-wave feminists

“live feminism in constant tension with postfeminism, though such tension often goes unnoticed as such”220 and it is the separation of what is ‘actual’ feminist ideology and what is postfeminist culture that requires investigation. In the late 20th century and early 21st century, while third-wave feminism was emerging in popular consciousness, the attempt to empower young girls and women through what is labelled as “girl power” turned into “tangible commodities bought and sold most notably by entertainment corporations.”221 This “girl power” movement is deeply tied to postfeminist and neoliberal, consumerist culture. The fact that the postfeminism is thus confused and conflated with third-wave feminism creates a

217 Scholz, Feminism, 209. 218 for more on this debate surrounding ‘neoliberal feminism’ and the relationship between capitalism and femininity see: Banet-Weiser, Authentic TM, Fraser, “Feminism” and Rottenberg, “Neoliberal Feminism”. 219 Riordan, “Commodified Agents,” 281. 220 Kinser, “Negotiating Spaces,” 133. 221 Riordan, “Commodified Agents,” 289.

90 situation where attempting to revalue femininity, a goal of third-wave feminism, is co-opted by postfeminist culture and turned into part of this neoliberal individualist position.

This thesis derives its understanding of postfeminism and postfeminist culture from Angela

McRobbie’s work as a leading theorist in this field. Broadly, postfeminism can be understood as an “undoing” of feminism. It is an ongoing process “by which the feminist gains of the

1970s and 80s are actively and relentlessly undermined.”222 The majority of young women in western cultures were brought up with the gains of earlier feminist movements and are now living with feminist discourse in their lives (as opposed to in universities as Orr described).

As McRobbie puts it: “elements of feminism have been taken into account, and have been absolutely incorporated into political and institutional life.”223 Given that feminism has been

“taken into account,”224 it can be then suggested that “equality is achieved”225 and that feminism itself is therefore “no longer needed.”226 This postfeminist perception that feminism is outdated is one that is sustained through popular culture, with McRobbie citing the Bridget

Jones’ Diary books and movies as well as the television series Sex and the City (aired between 1998-2004), as examples of female led narratives that under the guise of progression and personal choice, reaffirm gendered stereotypes.227 This assumption, that in a postfeminist culture, society and its media are all now feminist enough, is hindering the promotion of ongoing feminist debate as the culture is perceived as personally empowering. It appears then that a main goal of third-wave feminism is to be distinguished from postfeminism and to promote an ongoing need for political and active feminist thinking. It is within this tension between third-wave and postfeminism that this thesis seeks to set its argument when

222 Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2009), 11. 223 McRobbie, Aftermath of Feminism, 1. 224 Angela McRobbie, “Post-Feminism and Popular Culture,” Feminist Media Studies 4, no. 3 (November, 2004): 255. 225 McRobbie, “Post-Feminism,” 255. 226 McRobbie, “Post-Feminism,” 255. 227 McRobbie, “Post‐Feminism,” 255.

91 examining the extent and nature of the feminist messages being spread through popular young adult literature.

Postfeminism is proliferated through the consumption of popular culture and media such as movies, television, social media and celebrity culture as well as benefiting from the ongoing commodification of feminism. In giving a nod of deference to feminism while simultaneously drawing away from progressive feminist ideologies, postfeminism is then able to perpetuate patriarchal agendas almost unchecked. To explain this Ellen Riordan refers to Chantel

Mouffe’s idea of hegemonic expansion in which a dominant culture is allowed to absorb and adopt the ideas of marginal cultures.228 When this occurs the dominant culture “does change but is not decentred” meaning that “dominant values are rearticulated in a way that satisfies both cultures while not requiring structural change.”229 This rearticulation of dominant patriarchal and sexist values with a ‘feminist’ slant only reaffirms men’s systematic dominance over women while seemingly satisfying feminist concerns. Diane Negra and

Yvonne Tasker note that: “Postfeminist discourses rarely express the explicit view that feminist politics should be rejected; rather it is by virtue of feminism’s success that it is seen to have been superseded.”230 By not explicitly rejecting feminist ideals and instead framing it as though feminist success has been achieved, postfeminism is able to operate freely and often unchecked.

One way in which postfeminism achieved this balance between what we can identify as

‘actual feminism’ and the illusion of feminist progression is through the co-opting of feminist

228 Riordan, “Commodified Agents,” 282. 229 Riordan, “Commodified Agents,” 294. 230 Yvonne Tasker, and Diane Negra, “Introduction: Feminist Politics And Postfeminist Culture,” in Interrogating Postfeminism edited by Yvonne Tasker, and Diane Negra (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), 5.

92 discourse but without any feminist political ideology. Kinser describes this as a “synthetic vocabulary” of self-empowerment and choice.231 It is synthetic in the way that such self- empowerment and choice are devoid of feminist interest in tackling larger centralised blocks of power and instead locates feminist interest entirely with the individual.232 In this way we can understand choice as being what McRobbie’s calls “a modality of constraint” especially in a “lifestyle culture.”233 Rather than choice being freeing, it becomes another mode of social control as the “individual is compelled to be the kind of subject who can make the right choices.”234 This is problematic as in the postfeminist culture the choice to engage with feminism is coloured with the notion that feminism is “aged” and “redundant” and is therefore the less favourable choice.235 Interestingly however, since the publication of

McRobbie’s work, feminism is experiencing a heightened visibility in contemporary culture which Rosalind Gill tackles in her article “Post-Postfeminism?: New Feminist Visibilities in

Postfeminist Times.” In this article, Gill questions the usefulness of the language of postfeminism to understand contemporary culture now that there is a “cool-ing of feminism”236 that “is widespread across the media and celebrity culture more generally.”237

People now are choosing to align themselves with the term feminist with no actual feminist politics (“claiming a feminist identity—without specifying what that means in terms of some kind of politics—is problematic”238) as it is a beneficial choice in a culture where feminism is now cool. The language of choice itself becomes highly problematized in this system as it is loaded with meaning in feminist discourse. These choices, I and other feminists argue, operate in a complex neoliberal and postfeminist structure which supports patriarchal social

231 Kinser, “Negotiating Spaces,” 142. 232 McRobbie, “Post‐Feminism,” 256. 233 McRobbie, Aftermath of Feminism, 19. 234 McRobbie, Aftermath of Feminism, 19. 235 McRobbie, “Post‐Feminism,” 255. 236 Rosalind Gill, “Post-postfeminism?: New Feminist Visibilities in Postfeminist Times,” Feminist Media Studies 16, no. 4 (2016): 618. 237 Gill, “New Feminist Visibilities,” 618. 238 Gill, “New Feminist Visibilities,” 619.

93 control, and the focus on individual choice and the individual’s performing feminism through their choices has resulted in a stagnation of productive feminist progression.

The postfeminist discourse of empowerment and choice exemplifies how feminism has been turned into a commodity that is packaged and sold as a means of maintaining the illusion of progression and change. An ongoing argument against third-wave feminism is the commercial and individual nature of it, however I would separate the feminine empowering feminism promoted through third-wave from the terms of “girl power” and “choice feminism”. The “girl power” terminology that gained momentum in the 1990s has given us a means of explaining a new form of femininity and adolescent female experience. Marnina

Gonick’s work on neoliberal girlhood comments that “girl power” represents a “new girl”, a girl who is “assertive, dynamic and unbound from the constraints of passive femininity.”239

This new girl is able to engage with a new form of femininity and this new femininity is established “in opposition to both feminist and patriarchal conceptualisations of femininity.”240 The feminist conceptualisation of femininity mentioned here is referring to the

“aged and redundant”241 second-wave feminism McRobbie describes, and subscribes to the assumption that second-wave feminism, in its rejection of patriarchal femininity and beauty ideals, cannot be reconciled with femininity at all. In this way “girl power” rhetoric is incompatible with third-wave feminism, as third-wave does not seek to estrange itself from previous feminist waves, but rather attempts to create a form of feminism applicable to the multiplicity of individual experience in contemporary society.

239 Marnina Gonick, “Between ‘Girl Power’ and ‘Reviving Ophelia’: Constituting the Neoliberal Girl Subject,” NWSA Journal 18, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 2. 240 Anthea Taylor, “What’s New About ‘the New Femininity’? Feminism, Femininity and the Discourse of the New,” Hecate 29, no. 2 (2003): 184. 241 McRobbie, Aftermath of Feminism, 255.

94 The term “girl power” also gained most attention through the pop group the Spice Girls, who seemed to align feminist messages with consumerism of mass culture and pop-music. In her analysis of the Spice Girls phenomenon, Catherine Driscoll raises these questions:

can anything feminist be so prominently popular (even for a short time)?; can

feminism be a mass-produced, globally distributed product?; and, can merchandised

relations to girls be authentic?242

While not coming to any solid conclusions, Driscoll notes that, while the Spice Girls seem to

“sell feminism,” the feminism they sell is still “compatible with many traditional roles for girls” and not revolutionary.243 Feminism as an ideology is about challenging social control based on gender and therefore requires some level of revolutionary thinking, as it asks people to reconsider society and envision new roles for girls and women. Driscoll also notes that

“the possibility that a feminist politics may also be a form of complicity warrants further consideration.”244 Again there is this questioning of the genuine and authentic feminist messaging in popular media. This consideration is precisely not what this thesis is aiming to do, however it is important to understand how the feminism being packaged under the title of

“girl power” and in these YA texts may have the signs of empowerment on a surface level, but are not challenging social norms and structures.

The questions raised by Driscoll on the authenticity of feminism that can be marketed and bought into also apply to the construction of a postfeminist culture and are also posed to third-wave feminism. To refer again to the language of “girl power” as the exemplification of commodified feminism, Ellen Riordan makes the point that “the idea of girl power became reified into tangible commodities bought and sold most notably by entertainment

242 Catherine Driscoll, “Girl Culture, Revenge and Global Capitalism: Cybergirls, Riot Grrls, Spice Girls,” Australian Feminist Studies 14, no. 29 (April, 1999): 178. 243 Driscoll, “Girl Culture,” 188. 244 Driscoll, “Girl Culture,” 188.

95 corporations.”245 It became a form of feminism adolescent girls could engage with, support and buy via pop stars like the Spice Girls and Britney Spears as well as television shows like

Buffy The Vampire Slayer (aired between 1997-2003) and Charmed (aired between 1998-

2006). The problem posed by the commodification of feminist ideas was that these ideologies lost their potency and the “meaning of girl empowerment became watered down so it can mean something for everyone.”246 Similarly Amber Kinser refers to this commodified feminism as “false feminism” and “weak feminism,”247 where “weak feminism is easy for the feminist, and in true feminine form is ‘nice’ to everyone else.”248 This sort of feminism is appealing because in engaging with it “one gets to feel like a revolutionary agent of change without having to take any of the revolutionary risks.”249 It becomes appealing to personally adopt language of “girl power”, feminism, and empowerment without having to engage in any actual politics or social revolution.

This desire to feel revolutionary and to validate that desire through engaging with capitalist modes of ‘weak’ feminism, while not actually engaging with feminist politics or vying for social change, can result in a stalling of feminist social progression. This mode of thinking

“results in nothing that remotely resembles change and certainly not revolution.”250 It is a co- opting of feminist language and ideology for personal gain rather than social change. This is also in part reinforced by capitalist and neoliberal structures which promote personal investment over social change and is a point that will be further explored in the following chapter. As Riordan summarises, “If empowerment stops at an individual level, it does just that, serves the individual. If this is the case, women will be forever reproducing social

245 Riordan, “Commodified Agents,” 289. 246 Riordan, “Commodified Agents,” 290. 247 Kinser, “Negotiating Spaces,” 145. 248 Kinser, “Negotiating Spaces,” 145. 249 Kinser, “Negotiating Spaces,” 143. 250 Kinser, “Negotiating Spaces,” 143.

96 relations that are rooted in patriarchal oppression and capitalist exploitation.”251 Both Riordan and Kinser posit that the way to combat this commodified and watered down version of feminism is to “distinguish what is a feminist project originating from feminist roots and what is feminist rhetoric being packaged and sold by media industries and bought by a large number of young women.”252 While YA novels are not necessarily feminist projects, they do contain and embody various feminist perspectives and this is why it is important to continually approach them from a suspicious and critical position. As mentioned in the previous chapter, given the role of the capitalist market and publishing in YA literature, there should be an ongoing questioning of whether these texts contain feminist ideas that have been co-opted to market normative and/or capitalist ideology, or whether these artefacts include an element of ‘actual’ political feminist desires.

The rhetoric of empowerment that comes from a postfeminist culture is centred in consumption, where feminism is an idea or identity that one can ‘buy into.’ Feminism is specifically “commodified via the figure of the woman as empowered consumer,” where an individual woman is now able to engage with a perceived freedom of choices.253 A woman, in “assuming full economic freedom,” may even “choose to retreat from the public world of work.”254 As long as she is in a secure financial position, a woman is able to enact her role as a consumer and her ability to consume dictates her choices. This illusion of choice and especially choice as a consumer leading to empowerment is at the core of postfeminist culture, and also creates one of the main contradictions of postfeminism. Women are constructed as both “subjects and consumers” though further elaborated this idea positions women as “subjects only to the extent that we are able and willing to consume.”255 As a

251 Riordan, “Commodified Agents,” 295. 252 Riordan, “Commodified Agents,” 295. 253 Tasker and Negra, “Introduction,” 2. 254 Tasker and Negra, “Introduction,” 2. 255 Tasker and Negra, “Introduction,” 8.

97 subject, women are presented with agency, however this agency is presented through the guise that women, specifically young women, must “focus on the self and consume in order to be empowered.”256 Empowerment can only be achieved through consumption, and the feminist ideologies presented for consumption are those such as “girl power”, which has been

“voided of any feminist content it might have once had”257 through the very process of “crass commercialism and commodification.”258 True empowerment for women and access to free choice seem elusive in a postfeminist culture. This is precisely where the specifics of the language of choice become problematized, as choice enables commodified choices. People are able to engage with feminism to any extent that they “choose” by purchasing t-shirts from high end brands with feminist slogans and consider themselves empowered agents.259

Postfeminist beliefs are maintained through capitalism, and in popularising and the literal selling of feminism it perpetuates a sense of empowerment for women, which, as opposed to politically motivated feminist thought, does not motivate them to create change.

The popularisation of feminist ideas through postfeminism and commercialisation, while contributing to the dilution of what is recognised as ‘genuine’ feminism, also creates a space for third and other wave feminism to exist and continue the promotion of ‘authentic’ feminism. While in a postfeminist culture most popular media presentations of feminism are not originating from genuine feminist motivations, but rather from a diluted and capitalistic perspective of feminism, that does not mean mass media and popular culture should be ruled out as a means of communicating actual feminist ideas. Riot Grrrl and other bands encouraged an engagement with cultural materials as a means of creating new media

256 Meredith A. Love and Brenda M. Helmbrecht, “Teaching the Conflicts: (Re)Engaging Students with Feminism in a Postfeminist World,” Feminist Teacher 18, no. 1 (January 2007): 45. 257 Gonick, “Neoliberal Girl Subject,” 10. 258 Gonick, “Neoliberal Girl Subject,” 10. 259 Fashion brand Dior currently (as of 2020) sells a printed t-shirt with the slogan “We Should All Be Feminists” retailing for US$860 “‘We Should All Be Feminists’ Print T-Shirt in Cotton and Linen.” DIOR. Accessed March 27, 2020. https://www.dior.com/en_us/products/couture-843T03TA428_X9000-we-should-all-be-feminists-print-t-shirt-in-cotton-and-linen.

98 originating in and being driven by feminism.260 The term “girl power” and other such popularist forms of feminism that are gaining media attention also help to provide what

Gonick notes as an “increased and sorely needed spaces for girls to both celebrate their girlhood and to understand and critique prevailing discourses that limit and constrain girl’s lives.”261 Meredith Love and Brenda Helmbrecht note that as feminist educators they have found that “popular culture is an important pedagogical tool (re)engagement with feminism.”262 On their pedagogy they also comment that:

Every text or speech or act of consciousness raising need not be focused on activism

or social change, but we hope that a pedagogy that seeks to not only to teach students

about feminism but also encourages them to engage and this to act might thwart the

pull of post-feminism and enable third-wave feminism to make a mark on women’s

lives today and in the future.263

Perhaps it should not be a question of media created out of ‘genuine’ feminist motivations but rather through engaging consumers and, in this case, teenagers, with feminist theory and popular culture they can themselves be motivated to act.

This issue of postfeminism versus third-wave feminism and genuine feminist ideas is largely a generational one, as younger women have previously been less likely to engage with feminism and identify themselves as feminists. As postfeminism promotes the idea that feminism was accomplished by the second-wave and is now outdated there has since been a

“ritualistic denunciation of feminism from young women.”264 Despite what Gill called the

“cool-ing of feminism”265 there remains the persistent stereotypical image and undesirable

260 Driscoll, “Girl Culture,” 179. 261 Gonick, “Neoliberal Girl Subject,” 12. 262 Love and Helmbrecht, “Teaching The Conflicts,” 53. 263 Love and Helmbrecht, “Teaching The Conflicts,” 56. 264 McRobbie, “Post‐Feminism,” 258. 265 Gill, “New Feminist Visibilities,” 618.

99 identity of the “bra-burner”266 feminist of the seventies, which was a “persistent media characterisation of the feminist” and a figure of “antithetical to conventional definitions of femininity.”267 In assuming feminism is part of dominant culture while dispelling any actual feminist message, postfeminism continues to vilify feminists, so while some young women may agree with feminist ideologies, having grown up with them, they still resist labelling themselves as feminists. It is the gains of second-wave feminism, such as the popularisation of feminist ideas, the introduction of women’s and gender studies to curriculums and fighting for equality for women in society that has made the new generation complacent. It is their duty then, as contemporary feminists, to continue being critical of society and mass culture, as feminism as a project is never done and continues to be relevant today. Similarly, Gill comments on the new visibility of feminism and feminist discourse that her work sought to:

attempt to complicate and problematize the notion of new feminist visibility to bring

out some tensions and contradictions between circulating media versions of feminism,

and also to stress the need to think together feminism with anti-feminism,

postfeminism, and revitalized misogyny.268

For this reason, this thesis will critically read two YA series that can broadly be considered as feminist books and seek to unravel the ‘actual’ feminist and gender-based messages encoded within them, and understand what this says about our contemporary context and society. It will do so by examining how the books perform, create, and manifest femininity and gender hierarchy.

266 Hilary Hinds and Jackie Stacey, “Imaging Feminism, Imaging Femininity: The Bra-Burner, Diana, and the Woman Who Kills,” Feminist Media Studies 1, no. 2 (January 1, 2001): 156. 267 Hinds and Stacey, “Imagining Feminism,” 161. 268 Gill, “New Feminist Visibilities,” 625.

100 Chapter Three

The Rhetoric of “Choice”

Understanding gender as being constructed and sustained through external and public bodily performance, the dichotomy of masculinity and femininity can then be understood and read through the ways they are constructed and performed, and this chapter will specifically look at how the language of choice values these constructions and performances. If gender is a socially agreed construct, then how are these agreements phrased and presented to readers?

Looking at the narration that occurs in the Hunger Games and Divergent series and the way characters respond to forms of femininity reveals the ways that these novels reaffirm or challenge gender expectations. Examining how femininity is constructed allows then for an exploration of an individual’s ability to choose femininity as well as how the rhetoric of choice and self-determination in relation to femininity can be manipulated by postfeminism and used to uphold patriarchal social structures. Both postfeminism and its ties to neoliberalism will be critiqued in this chapter, as the way the rhetoric of autonomy and choice is used in these paradigms is extremely problematic. If authentic femininity is a goal, and choice is a large key to this autonomy, then the way this rhetoric is used and how it can be used to disguise patriarchal modes of control must be explored before any form of femininity can be assumed to be autonomous or authentic. Third-wave feminism’s goal of revaluing femininity ultimately leads to creating a space where any expression of identity and gender, whatever the configuration, is equally valid. To present and understand the limited view of femininity as weak and purely as a patriarchal construct that is used to restrict women denies the progress of feminism and plays into a value system that places masculinity in power, rendering the ongoing feminist project stagnant.

101 In examining the construction of femininity, the social requirement that people perform and adhere to the gender binary cannot be ignored, as this requirement creates and sustains gender codes. Lori Marso uses the phrase “demands of femininity”269 to describe the narrow guidelines of femininity that a woman must follow, both in her appearance and behaviour, to perform a socially suitable level of femininity. These demands create the constructs of femininity and when someone fails to meet these demands they may be subject to question or punishment. As West and Zimmerman note on the failure to successfully ‘do’ gender:

If we do gender appropriately, we simultaneously sustain, reproduce, and render

legitimate the institutional arrangements that are based on sex category. If we fail to

do gender appropriately, we as individuals - not the institutional arrangements - may

be called to account (for our character, motives, and predispositions).270

It is the individual who is held to account, not the institution of gender or the social constructs and actual demands of gender that are questioned. This puts pressure on the individual to perform and “do” gender “appropriately” and diverts attention away from the

“institutional arrangements” that create, demand, and enforce gender. Femininity is something that has to be done properly, and as Budgeon has noted, “traditionally passivity and dependence have served as points of reference for performing socially validated femininity.”271 The woman looking to perform this socially validated femininity, and not be questioned, is likely to perform passivity and dependence. This then seemingly validates the link between femininity and passivity. When looking at constructions of femininity, and socially validated gender, the focus should not be solely on how the individual performs gender. Instead, it is through questioning the institutional arrangements that dictate what

269 Lori J. Marso, “Feminism’s Quest for Common Desires,” Perspectives on Politics 8, no. 1 (March, 2010): 264. 270 West and Zimmerman, “Doing Gender,” 146 271 Shelley Budgeon, “Individualized Femininity and Feminist Politics of Choice,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 22, no. 3 (August 2015): 304.

102 types of femininity are allowed, that the way passivity is coded as feminine can be deconstructed.

In modern capitalist society, where individuals are encouraged to continually consume and purchase, the construction of femininity and standardised feminine beauty ideals are produced through the consumption and purchasing of specific products. Expensive beauty products, ever changing fashions and the tireless list of different beauty regimes have established a strict form of femininity that can be purchased and emulated.272 These elements play into what constitutes traditional and socially validated femininity. Bordo comments on this constant need for constructing and performing this idealised femininity:

Through the pursuit of an ever-changing, homogenizing, elusive ideal of femininity –

a pursuit without terminus, requiring that women constant attend to minute and often

whimsical changes in fashion – female bodies become docile bodies – bodies whose

forces and energies are habituated to external regulation, subjection, transformation,

“improvement”.273

In centring the construction of femininity and a feminine identity around consumerism, and perfecting physical appearance and an unattainable and “elusive” ideal of femininity, female bodies become “docile” and this reinforces the association of femininity with a lack of agency. Bordo is referring to the Foucauldian idea of the docile body from his work

Discipline and Punish where Foucault says: “discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, ‘docile’ bodies.”274 Bordo and feminist philosophers such as Sandra Lee Bartky have critiqued Foucault’s work and adapted this theory to understand how these “disciplinary

272 To name a few: the removing of body hair via waxing, shaving, or laser hair removal, hair styling and dying, eyebrow tinting, manicures and pedicures, cosmetic tattooing, plastic surgery procedures and injectables, and the recent trend of multiple step and multiple product skin care regimes, inspired by trends in Korea. 273 Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 166. 274 Foucault, Discipline & Punish, 138.

103 practices”275 specifically apply to feminine bodies. In this way, ideal femininity - socially validated femininity - is always elusive, docile, produced by disciplinary practices, and prevents active participation in society.

The monitoring of women’s bodies and behaviours by themselves and their peers is a way that patriarchy uses the construction of femininity to constrain women and limit their agency.

They become “docile bodies” as they are not active socially, instead they are focussed on their own “regulation.”276 As Bartkey comments, the woman who is constantly checking her makeup or appearance has become “a self-policing subject, a self committed to a relentless self-surveillance. This self-surveillance is a form of obedience to patriarchy.”277 The patriarchal control over women through surveillance and disciplined practice of femininity is what second-wave feminism fought against. This particular form of femininity is tied to patriarchal control, and thus the third-wave feminist project to revalue the feminine seeks to remove femininity from that oppressive relationship and then revalue it on its own merits. No longer is femininity a way to control and produce docile bodies, but rather it is something that can be empowering and a space for reclamation. This self-empowerment through femininity and the attempts to revalorise femininity is problematised however by the postfeminist co- opting of the rhetoric of empowerment. Rosalind Gill notes how in a postfeminist culture “the body is presented simultaneously as women’s source of power and as always unruly, requiring constant monitoring, surveillance, discipline and re-modelling (and consumer spending) in order to conform to ever narrower judgements of female attractiveness.”278 The reclaiming of bodily autonomy and constructions of femininity are corrupted in a postfeminist culture as they continue to remain trapped in patriarchal control yet also position

275 Bartky, “Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” 84. 276 Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 166. 277 Bartky, “Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” 81. 278 Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 10, no. 2 (May 2007): 149.

104 the feminine body as a “source of power”. It becomes a paradox. A body constantly being monitored and surveilled is not a powerful body and thus this form of femininity that is presented as powerful is empty. Gill goes on to say that: “Indeed, surveillance of women’s bodies constitutes perhaps the largest type of media content across all genres and media forms. Women’s bodies are evaluated, scrutinized and dissected by women as well as men, and are always at risk of ‘failing’.” 279 The proliferation of this media content normalises the evaluation of women’s bodies by women and men and gives the illusion of empowerment to viewers as people feel they are actively choosing to participate in this culture and therefore have the right to evaluate others. This complicates the project of revaluing the feminine as it positions femininity as both empowering but also a mode of control depending on how one chooses to engage.

These tensions surrounding feminism and femininity are exacerbated by the promotion of

“choice” feminism and the language of autonomy. The revalorisation of femininity hinges on the notion that femininity is performed autonomously and outside of patriarchal parameters.

Claire Snyder-Hall comments on the importance of autonomy in feminist theory thus:

“Women’s right to self-determination forms a core value of feminism.”280 While others may disagree with putting self-determination at the core of feminism,281 it is hard to deny that a women’s ability to be self-determining plays an important part in structuring feminist theories and arguments. Historically a key element of feminist philosophy has been to establish women’s right to citizenship and as ‘individuals’, as citizenship and individualism have been associated with maleness and male subjecthood. As Joan W. Scott notes of the history of feminism, “The point was not to establish women's likeness to men in order to

279 Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture,” 149. 280 R. Claire Snyder-Hall, “Third-Wave Feminism and the Defense of ‘Choice’,” Perspectives on Politics 8, no. 1 (2010): 256. 281 Marso, “Feminism's Quest,” 264.

105 qualify for citizenship, but to refute the prevailing equation of active citizenship with masculinity, and, at the same time, to associate women - explicitly as women - with the notion of the active citizen.”282 This feminist mission to locate women in classical understandings of the word ‘individual’ has now manifested in an on-going move towards self-determination and the development of autonomy as an individual. Autonomy, in the context of this thesis, has been adapted to refer to an individual’s capacity to enjoy and participate freely in gender expression and namely in femininity and feminine acts in ways that involve active choices that exist outside patriarchal or capitalist social constructs.

Focusing on the element of choice however raises several questions on the validity of choice as an exercise of autonomy and as a feminist act, as it de-politicises feminism. Where third- wave feminism is structured around respecting and embracing multiplicity in the experiences of women, much of this thinking has focussed on women’s autonomy and right to self- determination. This has resulted, however, in the proliferation of choice feminism, a form of postfeminism, that is centred on women’s individual choices rather than political motivations.

Choice feminism is a term coined by Linda Hirshman in Get to Work: A Manifesto for

Women of the World in which she looks at women’s choices regarding careers, housework and labour. It is a mode of feminism that is centred on women’s individual choices, rather than any social activism or political change: “‘Choice feminism,’ the shadowy remnant of the original movement, tells women that their choices, everyone’s choices, the incredibly constrained ‘choices’ they made, are good choices.”283 In accepting the variation in women’s lives and lived experiences, in order to make feminism applicable to contemporary women,

“choice feminism takes this variation to mean, however, that differences between women are so immense that feminism can only remain relevant to women’s differences by validating not

282 Scott, “Universalism.” 283 Hirshman, Get to Work, 1-2.

106 the content but the act of choice itself, thereby diverting attention away from normative demands of gender.”284 Choice feminism, in centring on the act of choice rather than the content of the choice, then indicates that the act of choice is somehow autonomously feminist. What this does is disguise the reinforcement of traditional patriarchal standards and

“normative demands of gender” that occur in postfeminist culture and repackage them as seemingly free choices available to women. In focusing only on the active element of choice and the language of choice feminism rather than questioning the structures behind the choices available, changes to greater social structures cannot occur.

We cannot uncritically accept the language of choice and autonomy as fundamentals of modern feminism, as these notions are tied to an inherently postfeminist and neoliberal position. Neoliberalism, being a system that is structured on “individual freedoms” and

“autonomy and choice,” focusses on the role of the individual and the individual’s ability to make choices.285 Davies and Bansel, using Foucauldian discourse of the individual, add that

“within this discursive framing the individualized subject of choice finds it difficult to imagine those choices as being shaped by anything other than his/her own naturalized desire or his/her own rational calculations.”286 This is why there is a lack of questioning what greater structures are at play in valuing different choices and making certain choices available to some and not others. Once people assume they are individuals capable of choice, and their choices thus being reflective of their position as autonomous individuals, they are unlikely or unable to question this position and thus will not be interested in any collective action or social change.

284 Shelley Budgeon, “Individualized Femininity,” 309. 285 Bronwyn Davies and Peter Bansel, “Neoliberalism and Education,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 20, no. 3 (May-June 2007): 251. 286 Davies and Bansel “Neoliberalism and Education,” 251.

107 As many feminist theorists have noted, neoliberal and postfeminist positions go hand in hand as they both place the individual as the site of freedom and personal choice, rather than pointing to greater social influences and structures.287

The effects of neo-liberal discourses individualize and depoliticize and have enabled

post-feminist discourses to thrive, since the individualizing, fragmenting logic works

to destabilize collective movements like feminism.288

In pursuing an individual-based neoliberal and postfeminist position, the actual progress of the feminist movement, and the collectivity of the movement, can become undone. Catherine

Rottenberg notes how the neoliberal feminist is focussed on the individual experience of gender inequality rather than addressing it as a structural problem: “The neoliberal feminist is thus mobilized to convert continued gender inequality from a structural problem to an individual affair.”289 This movement away from critiquing and attempting to change structural inequalities, such as those that occur under a patriarchal and capitalist society, undermines the ongoing work of feminists and perpetuates pre-feminist ideas. Gender inequality becomes a personal problem rather than something institutional. Postfeminism also invites young women to “see themselves as inherently powerful; that is, a priori empowered, choice-making agents.”290 This assumption that young women already have agency and power, renders the need for a collective and political feminism seemingly absent. Instead then it is the act of choice that becomes powerful and assumes the same level of agency is available for every choice available and every choice-maker. The assumption of agency also diminishes the need to continue questioning structural inequalities as it leads one to believe that every individual has the same opportunities available to them and it is only their personal choices, their “individual affairs” that affect them.

287 See (Gill, “Critical Respect,” Gonick, “Neoliberal Girl Subject,” and McRobbie, Aftermath of Feminism) 288 Marnina Gonick, et al., “Rethinking Agency and Resistance: What Comes After Girl Power?” Girlhood Studies 2, no. 2 (Winter 2009): 2. 289 Catherine Rottenberg, “The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism,” Cultural Studies 28, no. 3 (2014): 420. 290 Anita Harris, and Amy Shields Dobson, “Theorizing Agency in Post-Girlpower Times,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 29, no. 2 (2015): 152.

108 Within this neoliberal and postfeminist paradigm of agency and choice-making ability, there comes an expectation to respect and not question other women’s choices, as the act of choice is presented as a feminist and autonomous act. For many feminist scholars, there now exists this grey area of respecting a woman’s choice as a feminist, but also continually striving to critically examine how these choices came to be. Gill has raised these questions on the issue in relation to respecting women choosing certain beauty practices and surgical modifications:

Why the emphasis on young women pleasing themselves when the look that they

achieve – or seek to achieve – is so similar? If it were the outcome of girls’ individual

idiosyncratic preferences, surely there would be greater diversity?291

If all young women are enacting their own autonomy and engaging with their personal preferences free from external influence one would suppose their choices would reflect their sense of individuality rather than conformity. Similarly, Budgeon, in commenting on this tightrope of acceptable performance of femininity, says “Just as one might be judged for being too feminine (girly) and, therefore, not an autonomous individual, one must also avoid outwardly and directly threatening the security of masculine privilege by critiquing or rejecting specific feminine qualities.”292 What is being demonstrated here is the clear value system that exists making some ‘choices’, and a particular type of femininity, preferable to others. This femininity is one that does not challenge patriarchal social structures yet is framed as an autonomous choice for women. It is essential that a critique of these choices

— and what social constructs validate which choices are available — is ongoing. Only then can there be a discussion about how to reclaim femininity beyond patriarchal modes of control.

291 Rosalind Gill, “Critical Respect: The Difficulties and Dilemmas of Agency and ‘Choice’ for Feminism: A Reply to Duits and van Zoonen,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 14, no. 1 (February 2007): 74. 292 Budgeon, “Gender Hegemony,” 327.

109 The language of choice is dangerous as it stifles on-going social critique. Women living in postfeminist culture are able to enjoy the gains and liberations of feminism while rejecting the feminist label, or equally they are able to act any way they wish and still claim the identity of being a feminist without any political engagement. This in turn re-problematises femininity. Rather than extracting it from patriarchal structures as third-wave feminism seeks to do, choice feminism, as a form of postfeminism, allows the construction of femininity to be perpetuated as a capitalist, neoliberal ideal and sustained as a form of patriarchal control.

When a woman engages with femininity but does not actively engage with feminism this question of personal agency reappears. As Budgeon describes, “feminist dis-identification allows women to practise femininity according to the logic of post-feminism, that is, as the product of individual empowered choice guided by an ethic of self-fulfilment.”293 So long as they feel empowered or fulfilled, they are enacting their feminist right to choose whatever form of femininity they want, and somehow this practise of femininity must not be critiqued.

Choice is a form of restraint, or as McRobbie calls it, “a modality of constraint,”294 as it operates under the illusion of free agency while disguising the postfeminist undoing of actual feminist progression. Instead of working to revalorise femininity in relation to the construction and performativity of gender, the patriarchal construction of femininity is labelled an as a self-liberating postfeminist ‘freedom’ and it is this type of femininity that should be questioned, particularly in these YA texts.

The ongoing issue of postfeminist freedoms disguising patriarchal modes of control, coupled with the amnesiac tendencies of feminist movements in an attempt to remain as modern as possible, has resulted in a reintroduction of late second-wave theoretical perspectives.

Specifically, turning again to Gill who says: “seductive as the call to ‘respect’ girls’ ‘choices’

293 Budgeon, “Individualized Femininity,” 309. 294 McRobbie, Aftermath of Feminism, 19.

110 is, it remains trapped in precisely the individualizing, neoliberal paradigm that requires our trenchant critique.”295 As feminist theorists we cannot uncritically respect these choices as somehow autonomous and empowering, as they are not liberated positions.

As long as women’s choices continue to be made under conditions of oppression and

exploitation the reliability of individual choice as guarantor of freedom is open to

debate.296

We cannot assume that every choice is equally constructed and valued, and rather than falling into postfeminism’s assumption that feminism is no longer needed, third-wave and other contemporary configurations of feminism, through the questioning of these choices and holding social structures accountable, must pay deference to past feminist movements and promote these feminist conversations as never-ending. It is, therefore, through literary and cultural production that we must seek to “expand the possibilities for women to imagine themselves outside of the boxes of patriarchy.”297 In a media driven society, where there is space and opportunity to create new narratives for women, we must remain critical of how choice and autonomy are being represented and what other options can be shown and made accessible. YA fiction is one such space where there is creative space to imagine and represent a broader spectrum of choices and identities available to people.

These elements of choice in gender expression are always being influenced by the value system of masculinity and femininity in relation to one another. An individual’s choice regarding gender performance cannot be free or neutral when the masculine is considered as more valuable and preferable in society than the feminine. In order to examine how femininity is portrayed, constructed, and valued in the Hunger Games and Divergent series

295 Gill, “Critical Respect,” 72. 296 Budgeon, “Individualized Femininity,” 308. 297 Snyder-Hall, “Defense Of ‘Choice’,” 258.

111 this chapter will first look at how these texts construct and value choices. It is important to consider what choices are available to the protagonists and how are these presented to the readers, and further then to consider how femininity is posed as a choice, and to what degree do the characters choose to engage with it. By examining how the characters position their choices in relation to femininity and feminine clothing, accessories, and beauty practices, there can then be a discussion of what forces, seen or unseen in the text, are dictating these choices. It is these seen or unseen forces that require our constant critique, and in identifying them and challenging them, a valuing of femininity outside of these forces and constraints can occur.

In the Hunger Games series, given the dystopic nature of their society, choice is a luxury that is not afforded many of its citizens. The people are ruled by the Capitol, are isolated to and limited by their district. Katniss, as first-person narrator, often reveals the way in which the people of the districts are controlled and cannot access any real choice in their lives. This is a key dynamic to consider in the background as any choice made under such tyrannical rule cannot be a free choice, however the choices examined in this thesis will focus on the personal in relation to gender and physical presentation. This examination of choice will be focussed on the dichotomy of masculinity and femininity and how they are valued in the choices Katniss can make and those she feels free to make. Katniss is from a poverty-stricken district and constantly judges the people of Capitol for their excess, as well as openly mocking their elaborate fashion sense and voice affectations, linking class and leisure with affected femininity. This establishes the Capitol and its residents as Other to Katniss before they even appear in the book and eventually guides the reader to similarly view their excessive and commercialised performance of femininity as something undesirable and mockable. When we first hear of Effie Trinket, a delegate from the Capitol and “the

112 maniacally upbeat woman who arrives once a year to read out the names at the reaping,”298

Katniss and Gale are mimicking her accent: “We have to joke about it because the alternative is to be scared out of your wits. Besides, the Capitol accent is so affected, almost anything sounds funny in it.”299 The Capitol is positioned as an oppressive force that literally threatens the lives of the people of the districts, and despite being unseen, their accents and affectation become mockable, challenging their power. The physical appearance of Effie in District 12 is a disruption to the world we are familiar with through Katniss’ eyes, “with her scary white grin, pinkish hair and spring green skirt.”300 Effie’s appearance stands in contrast with the humble world of District 12 and the natural landscapes of the forest which Katniss’ narration shows a preference for. Effie is ornately dressed and groomed in a way that is recognisably feminine yet represents the horror and control of the Capitol over the districts; she appears as a spectre of the Hunger Games reaping, there to draw the names of the children who are to be sent to their likely death. The reader is being guided to fear the Capitol and what it and its citizens represent while also criticising them. The catalogue of Effie’s appearance is discordant to the world the book has initially set up and introduces a visualisation of this overwhelming and oppressing force that controls the districts and their lives.

While Effie was the disruptive force drawing attention to the styling and physical imagery of the Capitol and its citizens, Katniss and her physical presence is equally disruptive to the logic of the Capitol and their lifestyle when chapter five opens in the Remake Centre. Her physical presence in this foreign space and her narration of the makeover process make otherwise recognisable beauty practices foreign to readers, tilting them towards the uncanny.

Her bodily presence being so different to those of the Capitol citizens also pulls focus to the

298 Collins, The Hunger Games, 9. 299 Collins, The Hunger Games, 9. 300 Collins, The Hunger Games, 21.

113 difference she catalogues in describing the prep team who surround her. As the reader has been previously guided to identify with and trust her voice, despite Katniss being in the unfamiliar territory, it is the prep team who are positioned as Other. Katniss is drawn to question their Capitol accents as a marker of difference: “Why do these people speak in such a high pitch? Why do their jaws barely open when they talk? Why do the ends of their sentences go up as if they’re asking a question?”301 These accents are described as something being done, perhaps even as an active choice of the people of the Capitol given that none of the other members of any district seem to speak like this. Later in the introduction of Cinna, a

Capitol stylist, it is indicated that some citizens of the Capitol also lack the accent. Given that

Katniss’ voice is the one that reveals the books’ sense of valuing the choices available, it is subtly showing that the “choice” of the Capitol accent, and aligning oneself with this Other, is the less favourable, or wrong, choice.

While this accent is being shown then as a choice, the physical and stylistic markers of the

Capitol are not chosen by Katniss but are instead enacted upon her by the prep team. In the

Remake Centre she receives what the reader can readily recognise as an exfoliating body scrub and a manicure, and she goes through a waxing hair removal process. Since Katniss has no choice in her makeover, the language used in the scene reflects how foreign such choices and practices seem to her.

This has included scrubbing down my body with a gritty loam that has removed not

only dirt but at least three layers of skin, turning my nails into uniform shapes, and

primarily, ridding my body of hair. My legs, arms, torso, underarms, and parts of my

eyebrows have been stripped of the stuff.302

301 Collins, The Hunger Games, 74. 302 Collins, The Hunger Games, 75.

114 The language used makes the process seem bizarre, describing a manicure as turning nails

“into uniform shapes” shows how deeply foreign to Katniss it is and in turn makes the reader reflect on the unnaturalness of these beauty practices. The beauty practices described in this scene, both enacted on Katniss’ body and as embodied by the prep team begin in the realm of recognisable practices from contemporary society, but then begin to veer to the uncanny and excessive. After being waxed, the description becomes absurdist as Katniss stands there

“completely naked, as the three circle [her], wielding tweezers to remove any last bits of hair.”303 While using tweezers after a waxing hair removal process is common, this image of being swarmed and plucked pushes the process into the realm of bizarre. Small instances such as this push the unrelatability of the scene beyond Katniss’ narration and perspective and again force the reader to question the nature of these beauty practices and how they understand them or their importance.

Similarly, the descriptions of the prep team range from easily translatable beauty practices from the real world and slowly ramp up into absurd images that push the readers’ understanding of these practices. Venia is the first prep team member described and is “a woman with aqua hair and gold tattoos above her eyebrows” and with a “silly Capitol accent.”304 Tattoos are a common practice in contemporary society, but aqua hair is not common and the addition of the noted marker of the Capitol accent establishes how she is unfamiliar. The combination of familiar and unfamiliar is what becomes unsettling. Flavius is next described; he has “orange corkscrew locks”305 and is wearing purple lipstick, which is a look not unachievable in the real world but is again uncommon and would be particularly striking. The absurdity ramps up when Octavia is last described as “a plump woman whose

303 Collins, The Hunger Games, 75. 304 Collins, The Hunger Games, 74. 305 Collins, The Hunger Games, 75.

115 entire body has been dyed a pale shade of pea green.”306 While Venia and Flavius exceed our contemporary understanding of beauty modifications, their styling is recognisable and achievable. It is Octavia, however, who veers into the realm of the truly excessive, and is verging on inhuman, as skin dying is not common practice in the real world. The increasing excessiveness in their descriptions serves to emphasise how the Capitol citizens are far removed from our understanding of contemporary beauty and are, by comparison to Katniss and her value system, ultimately undesirable.

These descriptions of the prep team as examples of citizens of the Capitol are used explicitly to present to the reader how this construction of image and investment in what seems as excessive beauty practice is situated as being very different to Katniss’ own views, unfavourably so. In seeing the prep team Katniss remarks that “they're so unlike people”307 and describes them as a “trio of oddly colored birds...pecking around my feet.”308 This bird imagery is used to further separate Katniss from the prep team as she does not recognise them as human. Neither do they, however, recognise Katniss as human until she is fully plucked of her body hair, or as she describes herself as “a plucked bird, ready for roasting.”309 Flavius even exclaims, “Excellent! You almost look like a human being now!”310 emphasising the difference between them. This divide between what is human and what is non-human is measured by the level of investment in beauty practices. The birds are those who have chosen to construct their image in such a way that the Capitol deems favourable and it is only once

Katniss is without “all the hair and dirt”311 that she resembles a bird, or to the prep team, a human. This allocation of identity as human or bird works to reveal to the reader what

306 Collins, The Hunger Games, 75. 307 Collins, The Hunger Games, 76. 308 Collins, The Hunger Games, 76. 309 Collins, The Hunger Games, 75. 310 Collins, The Hunger Games, 76. 311 Collins, The Hunger Games, 76.

116 choices are being valued by the Capitol and what choices Katniss is being shown to reject.

She is not choosing to engage with these beautifying practices and deems those who do, and do to excess, are inhuman. In contrast, citizens of the Capitol only grant the status of human to those who have gone through this rigorous beautifying procedure. Readers who are guided by Katniss learn to value the choices she makes and devalue the choices of beauty modifications and a hyper feminised constructed image that the Capitol values.

Femininity, in this scene, is aligned with the construction of image. It is only achieved after rigorous body modifications and ‘beautifying’ processes, and stands in opposition to the apparent authenticity and masculinity that Katniss values. This makeover scene starts to expose the artifice of self-presentation and forces the reader to keep it in mind throughout the reading experience. This has been seen by some scholars as questioning gender and gender roles in the series. Jennifer Mitchell notes:

while the self-presentation of characters like Venia and Octavia may initially exist as

an extreme projection of contemporary feminised makeup application, the far more

gender-inclusive transformations of the Capitol blur previous gender distinctions…the

artifice inherent to their treatment and presentation of their bodies is suggestive of an

approach to gender that equates body reality only with surface appearance.312

While the lines of gender may be blurred in the Capitol, what Mitchell points out is that the emphasis is on constructed performance and this performance is coded towards femininity.

By highlighting their “artifice” in the way they treat and present their bodies it directs the reader, like Katniss, to want to reject the Capitol’s obsession with this sort of femininity and

312 Jennifer Mitchell, “Of Queer Necessity: Panem’s Hunger Games as Gender Game,” in Of Bread, Blood, And The Hunger Games: Critical Essays On The Suzanne Collins Trilogy, ed. Mary F. Pharr, Leisa A. Clark, and Donald E. Palumbo (Jefferson: McFarland & Co. Incorporated Publishers, 2012), 135.

117 choose the more desirable option, which is a masculine, or through Katniss’ view, a more authentic expression of self.

The prep team display forms of femininity that appear excessive and absurd to Katniss and are presented to readers as an extreme of femininity dictated by the Capitol’s beauty standards. It is when these characters are held in comparison with Cinna, the head stylist who appears next, that they seem especially grotesque.

The door opens and a young man who must be Cinna enters. I’m taken aback by how

normal he looks. Most of the stylists they interview on television are so dyed,

stencilled and surgically altered they’re grotesque. But Cinna’s close-cropped hair

appears to be its natural shade of brown. He’s in a simple black shirt and trousers. The

only concession to self-alteration seems to be metallic gold eyeliner that has been

applied with a light hand. It brings out the flecks of gold in his green eyes. And,

despite my disgust with the Capitol and their hideous fashions, I can’t help thinking

how attractive it looks.313

Only once Cinna is introduced, and his appearance catalogued are some concession to typically feminine beauty practices appreciated. Cinna offers a halfway point between

Katniss’ rejection of, and the prep team’s adherence to, the fashions of the Capitol. A halfway point between masculinity and femininity. The specific noting of how he has engaged with makeup minimally yet is more “attractive” to Katniss’ eye directly contrasts how she views the physical appearance of the prep team and other citizens of the Capitol.

Cinna’s voice is also described as lacking the “Capitol’s affectations” which have been noted as a marker of the Other in the books and thus aligns him more closely to what Katniss values; Michelle Abate comments: “Of course, by deeming Cinna’s personality ‘normal,’

313 Collins, The Hunger Games, 77.

118 Katniss implies the other residents of the Capitol are abnormal.”314 What this serves to do is firmly establish for the reader what the internal logic of the novel and the value systems at play are. Those who engage with “self-alteration” to excess are abnormal, and those who do not are normal and valued.

This minimal concession to feminine beauty coding in the novels is facilitated not only in

Katniss’ appreciation of Cinna’s appearance, but also in the way he dresses her for public display. Katniss is put in minimal make-up as part of her initial costuming and her hair is kept in her now iconic style: “My face is relatively clear of makeup, just a bit of highlighting here and there. My hair has been brushed out and then braided down my back in my usual style.”315 Cinna notes that this is to ensure that the audience recognises her and remembers her face. The relationship between minimal makeup and recognisability occurs again a few pages later where Katniss notes of her and Peeta’s appearance, “Cinna was right about the minimal make-up; we both look more attractive but utterly recognisable.”316 Through

Katniss’ perspective in this moment, the book restates that indulgence with makeup and overly constructed feminine fashions results in a loss of seemingly authentic identity and the notion of self. Rather than value femininity in the way that late second-wave and third-wave feminism seek to, this series seems to repeat the idea that femininity is solely aligned with methods of control, oppression and a lack of individual autonomy and recognisability; it is a mask. Despite the world of the Capitol being fixated on body modification and decoration,

Byrne notes that in the texts “both affinity with nature and excessive body decoration are coded as ‘weak’ and ‘feminine’” which “emphasises that hegemonic femininity is

314 Michelle Ann Abate, “‘The Capitol Accent Is So Affected Almost Anything Sounds Funny in It’: The Hunger Games Trilogy, Queerness, and Paranoid Reading,” Journal of LGBT Youth 12, no. 4 (2015): 403 . 315 Collins, The Hunger Games, 82. 316 Collins, The Hunger Games, 85.

119 multivalent, yet consistently positioned as inferior.”317 In presenting hegemonic femininity in such a way, the books demonstrate how femininity in various forms remains positioned as inferior, and thus the correct choices available for women and girls and the way they present their gender and femininity are limited to or favour masculinity. Mimi Schippers defines hegemonic femininity in her work as consisting of “the characteristics defined as womanly that establish and legitimate a hierarchical and complementary relationship to hegemonic masculinity and that, by doing so, guarantee the dominant position of men and the subordination of women.”318 The existence of and adherence to this multivalent hegemonic femininity reinforces the subjugation of women and ultimately is to the detriment of women.

Katniss wants to make the right choices, and the right choices that are not positioned as inferior are shown through her and Cinna’s appreciation of minimal makeup and rejection of the grotesque excessive femininity of the Capitol.

While the choices in the world of the Hunger Games are presented through Katniss’ interactions with the world around her, the dystopic world of Divergent trilogy is heavy handed with the rhetoric of choice. The taglines on the books of the main trilogy point explicitly to this, as printed on the covers they read “One choice can transform you”319, “One choice can destroy you”320, and “One choice will define you.”321 The first book opens with

Beatrice (who later renames herself as Tris), a sixteen year old girl facing the Choosing

Ceremony, a ceremony that in the world of the series forces all sixteen year olds to choose their future home and what faction they will belong to. In the world of Divergent people can

317 Byrne, “Analysis of Clothing,” 51. 318 Mimi Schippers, “Recovering the Feminine Other: Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender Hegemony,” Theory and Society 36, no. 1 (March 2007): 94. 319 “Divergent - Veronica Roth - Hardcover,” HarperCollins Publishers: World-Leading Book Publisher, accessed 22 June 2020, https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062024022/divergent/. 320 “Insurgent - Veronica Roth - Hardcover,” HarperCollins Publishers: World-Leading Book Publisher, accessed 22 June 2020, https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062024046/insurgent/. 321 “Allegiant - Veronica Roth - Hardcover,” HarperCollins Publishers: World-Leading Book Publisher, accessed 22 June 2020, https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062024060/allegiant/.

120 belong to one of five factions, Abnegation, Candor, Erudite, Amity and Dauntless, with each faction focussed on a different human attribute. If a person cannot be aligned with one faction, or fails to pass their faction’s initiation, they wind up Factionless. Those who are

Factionless are the homeless lower class of the city.

Decades ago our ancestors realized that it is not political ideology, religious belief,

race, or nationalism that is to blame for a warring world. Rather, they determined that

it was the fault of human personality—of humankind’s inclination toward evil, in

whatever form that is. They divided into factions that sought to eradicate those

qualities they believed responsible for the world’s disarray…Those who blamed

aggression formed Amity…Those who blamed ignorance became the Erudite…Those

who blamed duplicity created Candor….Those who blamed selfishness made

Abnegation….And those who blamed cowardice were the Dauntless.322

When each person turns sixteen they participate in the Aptitude Test, a virtual reality obstacle course that is designed to reveal which of the factions each person should belong to, and then at the Choosing Ceremony they may pledge loyalty to their original faction or choose to transfer factions determined by the test, leaving behind their family. The loyalty to the faction is expected to be stronger bond than the familial, emphasising the importance of committing to and making the right choice: “Faction before blood.”323 Throughout the series much of the character’s motivations and actions are framed through this lens of choice: choosing a faction, choosing to fight, choosing to rebel. Many of the main protagonists of the novel,

Tris, her boyfriend Tobias/Four,324 and her brother Caleb are faction transfers which guides the novel to focus on the nuance of their choices and how they let their choices define them and dictate their expressions of self.

322 Veronica Roth, Divergent (London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2012), 42. 323 Roth, Divergent, 43. 324 The character of Tobias/Four goes by Four for a majority of the series however is also referred to by his birth name Tobias at varying points in the series. I have stylised his name in this way to reflect this dual name usage.

121

The flaws of this system are demonstrated once again to the reader through the perspective of

Tris who is the primary narrator of the series. Her aptitude test exposes her as a Divergent, a person with an aptitude for more than one faction, and establishes her as a marked Other. It is unsafe to be Divergent however as they are hunted and ‘killed’, so Tris must keep her identity secret while also navigating the world of the factions. As a Divergent, Tris is able to question the faction system as she is not confined to being suited to one of the five factions. From the moment Tris discovers she is Divergent she becomes more critical of the world around her, which is demonstrated through comments that only the reader is privy to:

“Welcome to the Choosing Ceremony. Welcome to the day we honor the democratic

philosophy of our ancestors, which tells us that every man has the right to choose his

own way in this world.”

Or, it occurs to me, one of five predetermined ways.325

Tris is revealing to the reader what the flaws in the faction system are and begins to question the freedom of the choices available to her. Tobias/Four also exhibits resistance to the faction system and has the symbols of all five factions tattooed down his back: “I want to be brave, and selfless, and smart, and kind, and honest.”326 While these moments of resistance lead the reader to distrust the faction system, they reinforce the theme of choice, and act as means of questioning what constitutes free choice. In a world where choices dictate a character’s future, it important to recognise which choices are truly free, and which force the character to play into the social structure of their world.

While the books frame the faction choices as almost essentialised and all-encompassing in a way that suggests they are born of pure unobstructed motivation (as demonstrated by the

325 Roth, Divergent, 42. 326 Roth, Divergent, 405.

122 ‘proof’ in the aptitude tests) the main plot twist of the series is that their walled city is actually a small part of a larger genetic experiment. In an attempt to erase what the books call the Murder Gene there was a mass genetic experiment performed on the population of the

United States, however it resulted in a Purity War between those with damaged genes and the

Government. These “genetically damaged” individuals were put into the walled city as means of eventually breeding genetically healed individuals, the Divergent:

They would wait for the passage of time—for the generations to pass, for each one to

produce more genetically healed humans. Or, as you currently know them . . . the

Divergent.327

This revelation explains why the faction system worked. The occupants of the city were genetically predisposed to certain behaviours that naturalise and support the construction of the factions. This narrative of genetic predetermination destabilises the series’ previous emphasis that these individuals are operating under completely free choices. As a character notes later in almost a metatextual commentary on how the books deal with choice and genetics: “‘Genes aren’t everything,’ Amar says. ‘People, even genetically damaged people, make choices. That’s what matters.’”328 While these genetically damaged people are capable of making choices, such as Tobias/Four who chose Dauntless yet also chooses to value the traits of the other factions, they are not able to make choices as freely as the Divergent.

Choice, and free choice, however, remains a key theme and as an attainable and performable action in the series.

This plot twist complicates the way the series has been emphasising the importance of choice.

Now that the idea of free choice is complicated by genetic manipulation it allows for the destabilising of the concept of choice in our reality. This revelation also renews the

327 Veronica Roth, Allegiant, (London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2016), 124. 328 Roth, Allegiant, 127.

123 importance of Tris’ choices in particular, as being a Divergent she is more capable of being self-determining and having freer choice in her actions. Her choices, free of genetic direction, are influenced then by other external value systems placed on the factions: “It’s my choice now, no matter what the test says. Abnegation. Dauntless. Erudite. Divergent.”329 Initially

Tris is confident in her choice of Dauntless over Abnegation and is constantly reassuring herself that she truly belongs to that faction: “Divergent or not, this faction is where I belong.”330 However throughout the books she begins to realise that being Divergent means she is capable of being more than the narrow confines of the factions: “I am no longer Tris, the selfless, or Tris, the brave. I suppose that now, I must become more than either.”331 By reiterating the importance of Tris’ choices and the perceptions of a self-determining female being able to choose agency and power the books allow for the examining of what actually influences her choices and how these choices still conform to preconceived and set identities of the ‘strong female protagonist’.

Now that the idea of free choice in the series has been complicated by genetic manipulation it allows for the destabilising of the concept of choice in reality. By reiterating the importance of choice and the perceptions of a self-determining female being able to choose agency and power it allows for the examination of what actually influences her choices and how these choices still conform to preconceived and set identities of the ‘strong female protagonist’. As

Gill’s question about the lack of variation in the choices girls make with regards to their beauty practices points out, if Tris is truly free to choose how to present herself or how to act, why does she conform to Dauntless standards of beauty, and more broadly why does the book, though her characterisation, repeat played out tropes of female agency, strength and

329 Roth, Divergent, 23. 330 Roth, Divergent, 413. 331 Roth, Divergent, 487.

124 beauty that we see in other postfeminist texts.332 The internal logic of the novel is restrained by our understanding, as readers, of gender performance and representation, as well as Roth’s if we consider the author’s intent. Roth uses visual shorthand to situate Tris as the physically strong heroine. The choices available to Tris regarding her physical appearance are dictated by our understanding of existing gender tropes and the only way to allow for freer choices and options of gender expression to become available is for our understanding of gender performance to be changed.

This image of one who is performing a specific style to fit the role of the strong female hero comes up again when Tris cuts her long blonde hair to a shorter style. In Allegiant the narrative perspective is split and alternates between Tris and Tobias/Four and getting an outsider perspective on how Tris looks and how she is beginning to embody this hero image gives an external validation that does not come from her own narration. While Tris’ narration shows her agency, Tobias/Four’s commentary on her hair acts to reinforce how her agency and her “choice” was correct. Tris’ hair now “stops above her neck instead of below it” and

Tobias/Four says, “I was happy when she cut it, because it was hair for a warrior and not a girl, and I knew that was what she would need.”333 It shows to the reader that both Tris needed this haircut to embody the position of warrior but also that the shorter hair, that is not hair for girls, is a marker of a warrior. Warrior and girl here are set as dichotomous terms. If the warrior has agency and is able to fight, then the position of girl is one without agency and is unable to be recognised as a fighter.

332 Such as in the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the video game character Lara Croft. Character designs and costumes in both favour tight fighting, dark coloured clothing that have tactical gear elements. More contemporary references would be the female characters in the television show Shadowhunters. 333 Roth, Allegiant, 5.

125 The Divergent series has a complex relationship with the word “girl” as it has commonly been used in the series as a way to denote weakness and position Tris as less powerful than she is. It is often used in opposition with Tris’ actual physical power and abilities and to position them as surprising:

“He wanted you to be the small, quiet girl from Abnegation.”334

“You think we convinced him you’re just a silly girl?”335

While the books, and certainly this thesis and third-wave feminism, are invested in the positioning of girls, and thus typically feminine figures, as heroic, the continual reliance on situating Tris as more than a “girl” problematises “girlish” behaviours as unfavourable choices and through which agency cannot be accessed: “That little girl act may have worked on me before, but it won’t work again. You’re the best attack dog they’ve got.”336 Despite this dichotomy the books establish, they also work constantly to state and re-position Tris as definitively a girl, and that this is integral to her character and narrative:

“Can you just be a girl for a few seconds?”

“I’m always a girl.” I frown.

“You know what I mean. Like a silly, annoying girl.”

I twirl my hair around my finger. “’Kay”337

Here Tris states that she is “always a girl”, yet the position of “girl” means more than just how Tris identifies. To Christina (whom Tris is talking with) it means a specific performance of girlhood and femininity. To be a girl is to be “silly” and “annoying”. Through the series

Tris affirms that she is a girl and that she also holds the position of heroine, however the books seem to sustain an undercurrent that re-establishes this dichotomy of favourable femininity and what is weak or passive “girl” behaviour. This continually problematises what

334 Roth, Divergent, 285. 335 Roth, Divergent, 367. 336 Veronica Roth, Insurgent, (London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2015), 188. 337 Roth, Divergent, 369.

126 is being thought of when the books say “girl” and establish choices of femininity, as it is clear that some forms of “girl” are acceptable and even desirable, and also some forms that are not.

Many of these questions of what choices are available to the characters related to gender and gender performance are revealed to the reader through the way they interact with gendered clothing. To understand the choices that Katniss makes in the Hunger Games series with regards to her gender expression, a continued questioning of what guides her choices and the value placed on the gender dichotomy in the narrative is required. In aligning femininity with the Capitol and its residents, femininity in the series is related to the leisure of the rich, from which Katniss is excluded. There series also initially aligns femininity with her mother and thus to weakness and a loss of agency, which Katniss openly rejects. Katniss is required to wear a dress for the reaping and this is the first time the reader sees her interact with the requirements of femininity openly. The clothes Katniss and the other children from her district wear to the reaping are gender conforming and more formal than the clothes they would usually wear. Gender becomes part of this formalised ritual through these outfits and is associated with their subjugation by the Capitol. Rather than being able to wear her father’s hunting jacket, which Katniss’ prefers, for the reaping she wears her mother’s old dress: “To my surprise, my mother has laid out one of her own lovely dresses for me. A soft blue thing with matching shoes.”338 After Katniss dresses in her mother’s old clothes and lets her mother style her hair into a braid she is unrecognisable to herself:

“You look beautiful,” says Prim in a hushed voice.

“And nothing like myself,” I say.339

338 Collins, The Hunger Games, 17. 339 Collins, The Hunger Games, 18.

127 These early interactions with clothing in the narrative are used to demonstrate how Katniss willingly aligns herself with her father and masculinity, whereas she rejects being forced to dress like her mother, as she feels it is inauthentic and unlike herself. As Byrne comments in her analysis of the use of clothing in the Hunger Games “Functional clothing is depicted as masculine, while decorative garments are perceived as feminine.”340 Katniss took up the role of the provider for her sister Prim after the death of her father while her mother became near catatonic and unable to care for her daughters. In aligning the feminine and femininity with

Katniss’ mother and her incapacity, it is presented as weak and undesirable, whereas the masculine clothes Katniss dons are agentic and desirable and align with her perception of herself, showing how the books are subtly guiding the reader's understanding of gender and how authenticity is an important part of forming one’s identity.

The construction of the Capitol as the grotesque manifestation of overly performed femininity and commercialism that is presented to the reader is another way the book demonstrates how femininity is abject and lacks agency. The type of femininity demonstrated by the Capitol is a hyperfemininity, a name that Carrie Paechter gives to the emphasised femininity which mirrors hypermasculinity.341 It is an over-performance of external and material femininity that sets a standard for women to attempt to conform to in order to perform femininity correctly. Hyperfemininity in this form is also an “idle or at least leisured”342 femininity that denotes a “form of dramaturgical, glamourized femininity that bears little relation to those activities conventionally given to women such as cleaning houses, doing laundry or caring for children.”343 It is a form of femininity that is unachievable, one that reveals the unreality of the construction of femininity, which strives to

340 Byrne, “Analysis of Clothing,” 53. 341 Carrie Paechter, “Masculine Femininities/Feminine Masculinities: Power, Identities And Gender,” Gender and Education 18, no. 3 (May 2006): 255. 342 Paechter, “Masculine Femininities,” 255. 343 Paechter, “Masculine Femininities,” 255.

128 be effortless but does in fact require great effort. Hyperfemininity, despite being a construction women strive for is, Paechter goes on to say, “a powerless position, one that is defined by the absence of the power inherent not just in hegemonic masculinity, but, by virtue of the patriarchal dividend and the dualistic construction of masculinity and femininity, all masculinities.”344 In representing this form of hyperfemininity, the Capitol and their investment in beauty modification and overly commercial consumption of idle femininity is exposed as being weak and powerless despite them being the ruling District. Therefore

Katniss’ ‘authenticity’ and masculine attitude allows her to be revolutionary. In order for

Katniss as a character to be agentic and cause change, she must portray powerful masculine traits to conquer the overly feminised and constructed Capitol. In the language of choice feminism, the book presents the more agentic choice for women to be the more masculine and reject over investment in femininity. In order to really show equal choices for women and girls we need to show agentic feminine heroines rather than heroines that constantly reject femininity, as again it is not the femininity that is the problem, it is the ties to consumerist culture and oppression that makes femininity problematic.

Where the Hunger Games series reconstructs second-wave feminist thinking through presenting the construction of femininity as a result of patriarchy and a bad personal choice, the Divergent series tackles another position of second-wave feminism, which understands feminine modesty as a mode of patriarchal control over women’s bodies and social conduct.

Tris starts the book as part of the Abnegation faction, a faction that values selflessness and believes in forgetting oneself. The people of Abnegation are unassuming, wear grey clothes and have plain hairstyles, which is directly opposed to the “hellions” of Dauntless who are

344 Paechter, “Masculine Femininities,” 256.

129 “pierced, tattooed, and black-clothed.”345 While each faction has its own style of dress and mannerisms the greatest divide is between where Beatrice starts in Abnegation and what she later becomes as Tris in Dauntless. The book opens with the lines:

There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs.

Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month,

the day my mother cuts my hair.346

We the readers are immediately set up to understand the level of modesty and selflessness that Tris overcomes by becoming Dauntless. Where excessive femininity and beautification procedures in the Hunger Games are depicted as frivolous and empty, it is minimalism and modesty that are the feminine trappings in Divergent series. Throughout the first few chapters

Tris’ attention is constantly being drawn to the Dauntless, who are loud, brash and physically dynamic. They are presented as alluring and much like Tris whose eyes “cling to them wherever they go”347 the reader is similarly drawn to them. The subtle gearing towards the longing to be Dauntless and the shedding of Tris’ Abnegation identity (“New place, new name. I can be remade here.”348) demonstrate how modesty and passivity are being shunned and how self-expression through clothing and sexuality is celebrated as liberating

Tris’ makeover into a Dauntless initiate, complete with a new haircut, wardrobe, make-up and tattoos demonstrates a move from understanding femininity as passive to seeing women who are agentic in a particular mode of sexualised heroism. While at Dauntless Tris is given a makeover by her friend Christina and is put in more form fitting clothes and black eyeliner:

Ten minutes later I stand in front of a mirror in the clothing place wearing a knee-

length black dress. The skirt isn’t full, but it isn’t stuck to my thighs, either—unlike

345 Roth, Divergent, 7. 346 Roth, Divergent, 1. 347 Roth, Divergent, 7. 348 Roth, Divergent, 60.

130 the first one she picked out, which I refused. Goose bumps appear on my bare arms.

She slips the tie from my hair and I shake it out of its braid so it hangs wavy over my

shoulders….My eyes were blue before, but a dull, grayish blue—the eyeliner makes

them piercing. With my hair framing my face, my features look softer and fuller.349

This literal transformation from modest Abnegation Beatrice to physically striking Tris resembles what Susan Hopkins notes of postfeminist female action heroes. Hopkins comments that: “female action heroes are still sold on the basis of sex appeal.”350 Tris in this scene can become a powerful, agentic, and feminine but only by conforming to an archetype of sexualised femininity. The masculinity of physical strength and fighting ability that Tris has developed as a Dauntless initiate is matched by the expression of feminine sexuality, again showing her agency and ability to choose how she is presenting herself. Tris rejects overly sexualised clothing however, remaining relatively moderate in her transformation from demure to powerful and sexual, demonstrating how she is exhibiting her agency and choice in the makeover. Similar to the value system at play in the Hunger Games series, which places masculinity over the construction of femininity, the Divergent series allows Tris access to physical strength and agency only when she enacts postfeminist understandings of the liberated female who retains her femininity as a means of sexualised power. The book is geared around her choices and she chooses Dauntless. She cannot be agentic and Abnegation, she must become a “hellion” to have the freedom she craves, again positioning the notion of the traditionally feminine as being restricting and oppressive.

Like much young adult fiction, especially dystopian YA fiction, The Divergent series allows its young readers to be more critical of the world around them. As explored in chapter one,

349 Roth, Divergent, 86-87. 350 Susan Hopkins, Girl Heroes: The New Force in Popular Culture (Christchurch, N.Z.: Hazard Press, 2002), 107.

131 YA literature lets readers see the ‘truths’ of their society.351 By exposing the ‘truths’ of the world of the books and the value systems they have, it encourages the readers to be more critical about the world around them. If the key to neoliberal freedom is the ability of the individual to make choices, then the choices shown should always be questioned. As Nancy J

Hirschmann says:

If choice is key to freedom, then what is necessary to understanding freedom is an

examination not only of the conditions in which choices are available but also of the

construction of choice itself; what choices are available and why, what counts as

choice, who counts as a chooser, how the choosing subject is created and shaped by

social relations and practices352

What the Divergent series does, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is question greater social structures dictating our concept of freedom through the language of choice. It directly asks the reader to think about what choices are available in this world, who counts as a chooser, and how these choices are valued.

A critical part of YA fiction and its subversive nature is that it allows for this interrogation of the language of choice in the books, and thus critiques the nature of choice and personal freedoms in relation to the formation of identity and personal autonomy. The rhetoric of choice feminism and autonomy should always be critiqued as then we can understand what identities are being identified as the ‘right choices’ and how we then might apply this critique to the greater oppressive social structures at play in our own lives dictating what choices are available. The Hunger Games series has a value system at play that highlights some expression of femininity as more favourable than others and relies on Katniss’ agency and

351 Scholes and Ostenson, “Understanding the Appeal.” 352 Nancy J Hirschmann, The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 202.

132 ability to make the correct choices, thereby leading the audience to understand how choice is being used to create an identity and position oneself as an individual. The Divergent series offers a more direct engagement with the rhetoric of choice which helps readers to understand how choice, and the concept of “free” choice, plays out in their own lives and in the ways they present themselves. By exposing and critiquing this rhetoric of choice, especially as it pertains to femininity and gender performance, there can be a refocus from looking at the act of choice to looking at the content of the choices, and an attempt to understand what the choice of femininity is and then conceive of what is possible when other choices of identity and gender are available.

133 Chapter Four

The Masquerade of Femininity

In using Butler’s theory of gender performativity and understanding how gender, specifically femininity, can be performed and sustained through external bodily signification, this thesis has looked at how these performances are valued and treated in society, and how the rhetoric of choice is used to value these performances. To understand how the performance of femininity is problematised in a patriarchal society, and attempt to revalue it, this chapter will elaborate on how, as well as why, femininity is constructed through external signs and signification as described in these text and how this performance of femininity relates to the perceived authenticity of the characters. In a society where hegemonic masculinity is taken as the base level or norm, a way for a woman to survive, or rather pass through society, is to perform emphasised femininity in response. This need for the feminised performance, whether for safety or simply in response to social structures, highlights the lack of genuine choice in gendered expressions and demonstrates a need to question the nature of autonomous femininity. While part of the ongoing work of contemporary feminism is to find a way for femininity to exist outside of this masquerade and the structure of hegemonic masculinity, the language of masquerade and mimesis remain relevant to discussing how femininity is performed. This chapter uses the language of Irigaray’s theory of masquerade and mimesis, which helped inform Butler’s theories of gender performativity, to explore

Katniss’ and Tris’ abilities to engage consciously with and perform femininity as well as develop alternative identities. The use of the makeover as a means of producing and replicating these feminine performances and normative identities will also be explored. In the

Hunger Games series Katniss uses performative shows of femininity to disguise her hunting abilities, killer instincts and masculine favouring personality. She is rewarded by the Capitol

134 for her performance however she remains aware of the facade she has adopted and that she exists separately from the role she is performing. In contrast, Tris in the Divergent series uses the transformative powers of clothing and femininity to form a new identity for herself. She is empowered through conforming to a style and heavily coded femininity and does not distinguish herself from this performance.

Masquerade, Mimicry, and identity

Judith Butler’s work popularized the theory of gender as a performance and part of her inspiration was drawn from the theory of femininity/womanliness as a masquerade, a gendered guise that is performed by women in a patriarchal society. In Joan Riviere’s work

Womanliness as Masquerade she noted: “Womanliness…could be assumed and worn as a mask, both to hide the possession of masculinity and to avert the reprisals expected if she was found to possess it.”353 Riviere used examples of women who downplayed their intelligence and capability in areas such as plumbing in front of professional tradesmen to demonstrate how women were performing this notion of womanliness in their everyday life. The examples given demonstrate how the theory of femininity as a masquerade had real world effects and influence in every woman’s life. The mask, or the performance, is used to “hide the possession of masculinity” as a safety mechanism and allow a woman to survive in a hegemonic masculine society.354 For Riviere, this masquerade and womanliness were inseparable: “whether radical or superficial, they are the same thing.”355 Womanliness, or rather, femininity, as well as all gender expressions, are performances. The difference is that this constructed feminine identity, which is located as Other to and less valued than the masculine, positions masculinity and masculine behaviours as the normative understanding of

353 Riviere, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” 306. 354 Riviere, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” 306. 355 Riviere, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” 306.

135 autonomy and action. A woman performing womanliness hides her skills and knowledge, which aids this assumption that such traits are inherently masculine.

A further definition of the term masquerade, as well as an understanding of the term mimicry, in relation to the feminine performance is derived from Luce Irigaray’s work in her book This

Sex Which Is Not One. Irigaray’s explanation of the masquerade of femininity is also one that places femininity as something women perform in society:

What do I mean by masquerade…in particular, what Freud called ‘femininity’. The

belief, for example, that it is necessary to become a woman, a “normal” one at that,

whereas a man is a man from the outset. He only has to effect his being-a-man,

whereas a woman has to become a normal woman, that is, has to enter into the

masquerade of femininity.356

In this view, women are, at all instances, performing the societal expectations of what a woman must be, and woman is a category one must become, one never is. The masquerade is also a means of keeping woman separate from man and relegated to the state of the Other.

“But in fact that ‘femininity’ is a role, an image, a value, imposed upon women by male systems of representation. In this masquerade of femininity, the woman loses herself, and loses herself by playing on her femininity.”357 For Irigaray the woman performing this masquerade is not aware that she can exist elsewhere; she understands that her position is one separate from men but does not herself exist beyond the masquerade. The way these texts interact with femininity provides a unique insight into masquerade as the reader can observe how characters exist within their performance of femininity. There is an element of knowing and understanding how the performance exists beyond the self in the narrative, whether it is

356 Irigaray, Sex Which Is Not One, 134. 357 Irigaray, Sex Which Is Not One, 84.

136 questioned or not, and it is this clear performance of femininity and how it influences the characters sense of self that is being interrogated.

Masquerade is not the only way a woman may engage with the performance of femininity; she may also engage in what Irigaray calls mimesis. While mimicry in gender performance is less elaborated on in Irigaray’s text it is a performance of femininity that is a more knowing engagement with the feminine. In mimicry:

One must assume the feminine role deliberately. Which means already to convert a

form of subordination into an affirmation, and thus to begin to thwart it….To play

with mimesis is thus, for a woman, to try to recover the place of her exploitation by

discourse, without allowing herself to become simply reduced to it.358

While a woman engaging in mimicry is also aware of her own performance of femininity, she does not use femininity as a means to disguise herself, but rather as a means of empowerment and enablement. She consciously chooses to mimic femininity as a way of navigating a patriarchal society and uses it to expose how traditional femininity can be constraining.

Mimesis makes “‘visible,’ by an effect of playful repetition, what was supposed to remain invisible.”359 Unlike in Irigaray’s understanding of masquerade where the woman does not exist elsewhere, in mimesis “they also remain elsewhere”360 which is of key importance. This is more in line with the pursuits of third-wave feminism and fits into the narrative of the reclamation of the feminine. Deliberately choosing an empowered expression of femininity in this way exposes the mechanisms of gender by engaging with them in different and playful ways. Femininity can be used as a way to expose the lack of options available to women and the double standards to which they are expected to adhere. This theory of mimicry also

358 Irigaray, Sex Which Is Not One, 76. 359 Irigaray, Sex Which Is Not One, 76. 360 Irigaray, Sex Which Is Not One, 76.

137 allows for the analysis of how young women in particular use clothing and style to their advantage as a means of identifying and expressing themselves.

Clothing plays a large part in the creation of teenage identity. For teenage girls especially, style is an important part of self-expression and identification. As Pomerantz notes:

Style operates as a tool for playing with identity precisely because it enables girls to

shape how they have been positioned by others. Their embodied self, of embodied

subjectivity, as scholars call it, suggests that the mind and body are not split, but

rather operate in tandem as a single unit.361

Their external dressings, their mechanisms of style (clothing, accessories, makeup, hairstyling etc) are directly correlated to who they believe themselves to be as individuals.

Changing their style to alter how they are seen socially shows how “style can also be viewed as a form of agency.”362 Teens place a strong emphasis on clothing and style; it both demonstrates their social standing and expresses their concept of self and identity, while also helping to form and dictate their identity and personality. There is little separation between dressing to reflect their identity, and the way they dress as forming their sense of self. Susan

Hopkins relates this correlation between identity and clothing to the widely popular and iconic toy doll Barbie. Barbie has been a driver of young girl culture since her release in 1959 and represents idealised femininity. In the Barbie world a few accessories and key fashion items can change her profession and shape her identity. While we see these things as external performances of style, in the Barbie realm they form an understanding of her core identity:

“Identity is understood as a series of costume changes and poses.”363 Similarly in the world of teenage girls their “social visibility is wrapped up in style; their identities are contingent

361 Shauna Pomerantz, “Style and Girl Culture,” in Girl Culture: An Encyclopedia Volume 1, ed. Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid- Walsh (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), 65. 362 Pomerantz, “Style and Girl Culture,” 65. 363 Hopkins, Girl Heroes, 107.

138 upon it.”364 This complicates the idea of understanding how concepts of masquerade and mimicry work for teens as there is little separation between the external performance of femininity, an exhibiting of personal style, and self-presented social identity.

Additionally, another complication of the performance of gender and style for teenagers is the desire to conform and fit in with their peers, perpetuating a cycle of masquerade and mimicry that replicates the same styles and “identity” over and over again. As shown above, with teenagers there is little difference between the external performance through clothing and internal subjectivity, which is to say that teens believe that their personal and internal identity is fixed through their adherence to their external performances of identity. Hopkins goes on to add that Barbie as “the ‘living doll’ is one of the most powerful archetypes of our culture because she seems to promise a malleable ‘plastic’ self which is always emerging, always becoming.”365 Identity is always attainable by remaining malleable and changing. The self is not fixed, but rather something to achieve and is always in process. This is why it is crucial to analyse the way young adult literature specifically handles the ideas of gender roles and gendered performance, as the teenage readers internalise and replicate these ideas of how identities are made and what identities they can become. The novels can act as a way of demonstrating the different ways to create, construct, and understand one’s own identity and as such can reflect potentials not previously considered in society.

Using makeovers to create normative identities

The makeover trope is liberally used in YA literature as a way to repeat and perpetuate ongoing beauty standards and an understanding of identity that can be formed through external performance. Makeover plots are a staple and recognisable part of girl culture as

364 Pomerantz, “Style and Girl Culture,” 65. 365 Hopkins, Girl Heroes, 107.

139 they are centred on “tensions between commodity, style and identity.”366 Teens are highly focussed on using their style to express their identity and in turn centre their identity on their style, and this style is one produced by commercialism and consumption. As such these makeovers are not simply a change of style, they are a reforming of identity. The teens reading these novels are already using material objects and gendered style performances to shape their identities and behaviours, and therefore are able to understand how a makeover scene can offer a character the material tools to change their image as well as their identity.

In order for female characters in these YA novels to uncover their full potential, the makeover usually makes them more attractive and desirable. Currie, Kelly, and Pomerantz in their study of teen girls and their relationship to beauty ideals noted that the girls found that

“the ambiguous and contradictory nature of acceptable girlhood was stressful.”367 A makeover is the cure for this stress as it packages acceptable girlhood and forms of identity and delivers it directly to its intended audience. The readers of YA literature enjoy makeover scenes as a way to see how they too can use style and fashion to alter or solidify their understanding of their identity. The problem is of course that in depicting the self as something that is altered through conforming to beauty ideals that are promoted through capitalism, there is no radical change to the way gender or identity is understood and constructed. The beauty ideals being sold through magazines and popular media are framed as postfeminist and radical options, however they repeat patterns of patriarchal social control and therefore the enjoyment of these makeovers disguises an acceptance of normalising patriarchal commercialised beauty norms.

Furthermore, the delight of a makeover narrative for readers is that it proposes that people have the power to turn themselves into a more active subject with a fully realised identity.

366 Catherine Driscoll, “Girls Today - Girls, Girl Culture and Girl Studies,” Girlhood Studies 1, no. 1 (Summer 2008), 17. 367 Currie, Kelly, and Pomerantz, “The geeks,” 427.

140 The makeover offers them new agency and an identity that can be easily read and understood on the body and performed in society. Brenda Weber’s work on makeover television shows looks at why the makeover plot is so popular, and what it actually perpetuates:

The makeover’s ideologies evince a deep cultural desire for a coherent celebrated self,

here described as empowered and confident, where selfhood will find loving

consummation in romantic and social acceptance. The makeover thus indicates that

achieving such love and empowerment requires writing normative gender, race, and

class congruence on the body in ways that can be visually policed and affirmed by a

collective body of like-minded citizens.368

What this quote confirms is the appeal of a makeover as well as how a makeover is used to make an individual desirable. A person who feels like an outsider can gain “social acceptance”369 through conforming to performative elements of identity. These performative elements include such things as clothing, hairstyle, and behaviour, and as Weber notes, they are “visually policed and affirmed” by peers.370 This is similar to the policing of gender commented on earlier, but also goes further; it is a general policing of normative identity.

Rather than this conformity being framed as something that quells individuality, it is presented as something that is desirable and even integral to a person's happiness. The perception is therefore that a person who is unsatisfied with their life and self can go through this makeover, conform to societal norms, form a selfhood that is framed around already acceptable social identities and somehow believe they have become a fully realised and satisfied individual.

If we understand how makeovers allow a person to adopt a socially acceptable identity, then

368 Brenda R Weber, Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2010), 257. 369 Weber, Makeover TV, 257. 370 Weber, Makeover TV, 257.

141 we must question the need for and desire for a makeover more closely. Weber further notes that the makeover is less about “being normal than being normative, residing not in an actual body, but in an imagined body;” 371 she argues that more privilege is granted to those who uphold hegemonic ideals rather than challenging them, which helps explain why makeovers promote the same type of beauty, body, and style ideals. While the makeover comes with a promise of agency and identity, rather than creating an active subject it creates passive objects for consumption. It supposedly turns people into idealised subjects, however in their conformity to social pressures and reduction of themselves to their normative external performative practices, they become objects. For example, a woman who goes through such a makeover in order to make herself more sexually desirable and socially acceptable is supposedly enhancing her neoliberal subjectivity; she is choosing to live a certain type of life and lifestyle. She is, however, merely reducing herself to fit into a well packaged mould of an identity. She has become a subject only through her ability and willingness to purchase and consume.372 This is notably similar to Gill’s comments quoted in chapter three which questioned the lack of variety in how girls present themselves. It promotes the creation of these ‘docile bodies’ that are focussed on constantly replicating elusive beauty ideals in an attempt to achieve a stable identity. These “docile bodies” are trapped in a capitalist structure of consumption, where they consume in an attempt to conform and they in turn are consumed by society as a stylised and idealised commodity, an achievable goal of a person. Confidence, which is something granted by the makeover, is therefore no longer an attribute of a free- thinking subject. It becomes the reward for someone who has conformed to hegemonic ideals and is performing gender and identity in an appropriate way.

371 Weber, Makeover TV, 255. 372 Tasker and Negra, “Introduction,” 8.

142 The makeover trope plays out differently in the Divergent and the Hunger Games series. In each case it taps into different types of social anxieties teen girls experience and the different types of pleasure makeovers can bring. Readers, especially female teen readers, are meant to enjoy makeover scenes, as they offer a type of imaginary pleasure in which the reader can envision themselves on the receiving end of such a makeover, one that changes their identity, saves them from the ongoing insecurity of not fitting in and somehow makes them conventionally beautiful. Tris’ makeover in Divergent operates on a smaller scale than

Katniss’ in the Hunger Games. Tris’ makeover focusses on anxieties of societal and peer pressures to conform and attempts to resolve them by showing how some black eyeliner, tighter black clothing and tattoos can act as a means of forming an identity that is both conforming but also somehow feels personal and authentic to the characters. It helps her to transform smoothly into conformity with the Dauntless faction’s expectations so as no longer to be marked as an Abnegation “Stiff”373, a derogatory term used to mock Abnegation members. Tris’ makeover guides her into the codes of appropriate clothing behaviour of the

Dauntless way of living, as well as conforming to teen codes of cool. It seems to be a gendered element of the training she must go through to reach her full heroic potential. It is not enough for her to have the fighting and athletic skills of a Dauntless initiate, to fully inhabit this new identity and solidify her new self, she must physically look and dress the part.

Katniss’ makeover operates in an opposite way to Tris’. Rather than externalising Katniss’ change of identity, it pushes her further away from the constructed and performed identity and operates on a much larger scale. Rather than becoming just a ‘cooler’ more attractive and socially conforming self, Katniss is transformed into an elaborate spectacle from which she

373 Roth, Divergent, 56.

143 can easily separate herself. Her makeover seeks to help her embody a persona that is able to fit in with the grandeur of the Capitol but is also able to be somehow extraordinary and remarkable in order to stand out amongst the other tributes. Katniss finds herself in several situations where she is forced to dress and act in certain ways, both to perform for the Capitol and for the rebellion. Where Tris’ makeover is one that reflects teen fashion and teen desires,

Katniss’ makeovers are not grounded in fashion but rather in costumes for specific occasions and reasons.374 Much has been written on the use of spectacle and voyeurism in the Hunger

Games series375 but it is Diedre Byrne’s in-depth analysis of the clothing in the Hunger

Games that offers a way of considering how Katniss’ is dressed and made-over by the Capitol as a way of enforcing the “power of the state.”376 In Timothy Lubin’s work on spectacles he defines a spectacle as “a complex public display (on religious, historical, or social themes) intended to attract attention and arouse curiosity by virtue of its large scale and dramatic features”377 and Byrne uses this quote in relation to the initial tribute processional. Katniss’ makeover that this thesis has previously considered was in preparation for this initial display and used to derive interest from the members of the Capitol. In referencing Lubin’s work again Byrne surmises that “one of the functions of spectacle is to enhance the separation between ordinary citizens and participants in the ritual”378 and goes on to say that “Katniss’s dresses are designed to demonstrate precisely this by means of exaggerated glamour: her weak, vulnerable youth is emphasised by re-coding her appearance as hyper feminine.”379

Katniss, in becoming this spectacle, not only is separated from the citizens of the Capitol, she begins to transcend beyond the ordinary citizens of the districts and become manipulated into a visual symbol that is used by the people, both of the Capitol and the rebellion. This

374 Byrne, “Analysis of Clothing,” 52. 375 See: Montz, “Female Spectacle,” and Driscoll and Heatwole, Girl Action Hero 376 Byrne, “Analysis of Clothing,” 59. 377 Timothy Lubin, “Veda on Parade: Revivalist Ritual as Civic Spectacle,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 69, no. 2 (June 2001): 379. 378 Byrne, “Analysis of Clothing,” 54. 379 Byrne, “Analysis of Clothing,” 54.

144 separation of the spectacle and the citizens also occurs separating Katniss from the spectacle she is performing, which is shown to the reader through her narration where she comments on and acknowledges her own performance: “What am I going to do? I take a deep breath.

My arms rise slightly - as if recalling the black-and-white wings Cinna gave me - then come to rest at my sides. ‘I'm going to be the Mockingjay.’”380

While the makeover trope is a vehicle for perpetuating hegemonic ideas about gender performance and normativity it also offers a starting point to examine how the masquerade of femininity is exposed and how gender is being constructed and performed in the Hunger

Games and in the Divergent series. As discussed above, Katniss’ initial makeover on entering the Capitol also results in her becoming a spectacle, which in being so removed from her actual identity allows Katniss an insight into her ability to perform femininity. This lesson is one she carries into the Games and throughout the series in order to make the Capitol favour her, as the stakes are so high her life literally depends on it. Katniss’ makeover into a more a feminine spectacle, while allowing her to survive the Games, strips her of her agency and turns her into an object for the Capitol’s consumption. In the Tribute Parade the tributes are

“supposed to wear something that suggests [their] district’s principal industry.”381 More specifically they are dressed to represent the main commodity of their district. This is one way that the Capitol dehumanises the tributes and the districts; as Sean Connors notes it is

“conflating them with raw materials and goods they produce for its benefit,”382 as well as reducing them to objects for their entertainment. By going in a different direction, Cinna’s styling produces Katniss’ most iconic image and the very gendered title of her spectacle persona, “the girl who was on fire.”383 Connors also comments on Katniss being a spectacle

380 Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay, (London: Scholastic Children’s Books, 2011), 37. 381 Collins, The Hunger Games, 80. 382 Sean P Connors, “‘I TRY TO REMEMBER WHO I AM AND WHO I AM NOT’ The Subjugation of Nature and Women in The Hunger Games,” in The Politics of Panem, ed. Sean P Connors (Rotterdam: SensePublishers), 148. 383 Collins, The Hunger Games, 85.

145 that “As a contestant in the Hunger Games, she is expected to perform gender in ways that

Cinna,… Haymitch,… and Peeta… establish for her. This coupled with the knowledge that she exists under the omnipresent gaze of television cameras, influences the way that she carries herself in both the Capitol and later in the Hunger Games.”384 Katniss, through the ongoing makeover and performance forced on her by several characters, is manipulated into this mimicry of femininity. Katniss herself remains separate to this feminine spectacle that she is made to perform, and the reader is repeatedly reminded how different her preferred behaviour and identity is to the performance expected by the Capitol. Again it is her narration that gives clues to the reader to how she understands that she is being watched and how she performs accordingly while keeping in mind how her performance will be received by the unknown audience.

Rather than being alienated by the performance of femininity, as Katniss is, Tris’ masquerade of femininity and replication of the Dauntless style gives her agency and solidifies her identity, which is the ideal goal of makeovers. While Katniss is pushed into her makeover, Tris is led more easily into conforming to her new identity as a Dauntless initiate through the external factors of makeup and clothing. Her makeover can be recognised by readers as a successful one. It is a makeover that, rather than exposing the falsehoods of constructed beauty standards, is one that supports postfeminist and capitalist understandings of female empowerment through conformity and consumption. The satisfaction of makeovers has become an inherently postfeminist and capitalist creation, as they support what seems to be a free choice to conform and transform into a more socially acceptable identity. The initial guidance from Christina gives Tris stylistic instruction on how to move away from her Abnegation self, Beatrice, to her new Dauntless self, Tris: “Beatrice was a girl

384 Connors, “Subjugation,” 147.

146 I saw in stolen moments at the mirror, who kept quiet at the dinner table. This is someone whose eyes claim mine and don’t release me; this is Tris.”385 Once Tris looks the part and claims this identity she gains agency and is able to navigate through her world with a clearer self-awareness. After making the choice to join Dauntless, the makeover and physical transformation to fit in with this new faction signals a new chapter in her life: “For the first time, the idea of leaving my Abnegation identity behind doesn’t make me nervous; it gives me hope.”386 Through the makeover Tris is beginning to reach this idealised self, this ideal of a girl-power heroine. This ideal heroine model conforms to traditional notions of gender binaries and postfeminist ideas of how an empowered female should dress and behave, rather than offering any new interpretation of the empowerment femininity can offer.

The world of the Divergent series is centred on the notion that identity can be created and performed externally through style, clothing and attitude. Each faction has a dress and style code they adhere to that is colour coded and can easily identify each person with their faction.

For example, Abnegation wear modest grey clothing demonstrating how they do not invest time into their physical appearance, and Amity represents their valuing of kindness by wearing warm colours such as reds and yellows. This colour and style coding of the factions reinforces for the young adult readers how clothing represents and shapes identity and personality. It teaches the reader the internal signs and signifiers of the world of the series while also reinforcing visual shorthand that we see in other media, for example how people in

Erudite, the faction that values intelligence, tend to wear glasses which can be seen as a sign of intense study. Tris’ brother Caleb starts wearing glasses when he transfers to Erudite and she calls out the artifice of it as he has perfect vision: “‘You have glasses,’ I say. I pull back

385 Roth, Divergent, 87. 386 Roth, Divergent, 88.

147 and narrow my eyes. ‘Your vision is perfect, Caleb, what are you doing?’”387 Given that it is common for YA novels to offer an explanation of what each character is wearing and what they look like, when a reader is familiar with the style and colour coding of the universe of the book they can make quick judgements about the characters and understand their behaviour. The distinct faction styles resonate with readers who have even made fashion collages on the popular website “Polyvore,” showing how readers are linking these clothes and colours with the factions and possible identities represented in the books.388 This investment in the fashion and style of the books shows how the readers are engaging specifically with the clothing worn in the book and understand how these clothes seemingly create different personalities and identities.

Tris’ transformation from Abnegation to Dauntless, signified externally by her clothing, demonstrates how identity can be solidified through clothing and conformity, which is a notion the series later works to complicate. As the divisions between the factions become blurred and the nature of the genetic experiment is revealed, the clothing being worn becomes mixed and neutralised. Tobias/Four, who always favours black clothing even when he is trying to assimilate with other factions, begins to wear a mix of clothing demonstrating this neutralisation, yet again highlighting how his choices have still affected him: “I am wearing a gray shirt, blue jeans, black shoes – new clothes, but beneath them, my Dauntless tattoos. It is impossible to erase my choices. Especially these.”389 While previously the clothing symbolised the firm segregation of factions, it now represents overcoming the faction system and the outfit Tobias/Four is described as wearing sounds more like something that would be worn in the real world. This nod to modern “cool” clothing remains significant as now that

387 Roth, Divergent, 351. 388 Which, since starting this thesis, has been since been shut down and removed from the internet (in 2018), however many of these images can still be found on websites such as Pinterest and Tumblr. 389 Roth, Allegiant, 25.

148 the clothing code of the faction system has dissolved, there remains another code being read and understood by teen readers. While Danesi notes how teens construct their identities through clothing in order to conform to different cliques and lists different styles teens engage with, this image of Tobias/Four fits into a modern understanding of a regular teen which resonates with readers.390 As noted earlier, fans have created their own fashion looks based on the style and identity choices presented in the books. Their understanding of and investment in cool fashion demonstrates that no clothing in these books can simply be; it is always coded and this coding can be and is being understood by teen readers.

The Divergent series is continually noting how identity and allegiance to factions or leaders is demonstrated through clothing, colour, and performance. While Tris comes to understand herself and her identity through replicating the Dauntless style, the books also work to expose this relationship between clothing, faction identity and behaviour showing how, by using fashion to reflect faction identity, identity can be performed and formed through external clothing and behaviour. In the second book Insurgent, Tris, Tobias/Four and others take refuge from the Erudite army in the Amity faction. While there, they have to adopt Amity colours to hide amongst the cheerful Amity people. It is not enough, however, for Tris and the others to wear the Amity clothing; they also must disguise their Dauntless and

Abnegation traits by behaving in a more carefree Amity way: “It is amazing how pretending to be in a different faction changes everything—even the way I walk.”391 This offhanded comment acknowledges the books’ complex relationship with the nature of identity. On the one hand, they suggest that identity can be, and is, enriched through performance, which is demonstrated through Tris in her performance of the feminine Dauntless girl hero. On the other hand, the books simultaneously expose the artifice that is performance as demonstrated

390 Danesi, Cool, 78. 391 Roth, Insurgent, 77.

149 through the faction’s colour coding eventually disintegrating. While Tris enacts masquerade, the Divergent series itself tends towards exploring the world of mimesis and exposing the

“playful repetition” that occurs in the different factions.392 There is an acknowledgement of the performance in recreating identity through fashion and behaviour, while also using this explicit performance as a means of navigating through a society reliant on it in order to expose the artifice to readers.

Using secondary female characters to reinforce femininity

Looking at the Divergent series and its understanding of identity and performance through the concept of repetition and conformity reveals a way to decode the construction of gender and identity in YA literature. Reinforcing the notion of identity being formed through external performance and further, demonstrating that these traits are ones that can be easily copied and assumed, limits the representation of femininity and female protagonists. The masquerade of femininity used in these books suggests that femininity is relegated to the world of superficial performance, and only a certain mould of femininity can be empowering.

It also falls into the repetition of upholding restrictive beauty ideals, as seen in a description of main villain Jeanine Matthews. Despite Jeannine being the mastermind behind the Erudite attacks on Abnegation, and the leader of the Erudite faction, her weight is subject to comment as Tris makes this observation when they finally confront each other: “She wears a blue dress that hugs her body from shoulder to knee, revealing a layer of pudge around her middle.”393

While Jeannine is performing femininity in wearing a form fitting dress, her pudge is her

‘failing’. She is not athletic and lean like Tris, who has now developed muscles as a result of the Dauntless training: “I see muscles that I couldn’t see before in my arms, legs, and

392 Irigaray, Sex Which Is Not One, 76. 393 Roth, Divergent, 428.

150 stomach.”394 As commented earlier, Tris’ Dauntless training also acted as a gendered part of the training montage, which modified her physical appearance as well as her athletic ability, allowing her to tap into the trope of the physically strong yet conventionally attractive female heroine.

Jeanine’s body being subject to question also invites readers to make a comparison between her ‘failing’ body, which is not lean and athletic, and Tris who is positioned as the hero and has the more desirable body. There is yet another aside about Jeanine’s body, which seem incongruous to the confrontation occurring; her knees are described as having stretch-marks:

“She perches on the edge of the desk, her skirt pulling away from her knees, which are crossed with stretch marks.”395 If we understand these instances of noting a character’s physical appearance as a trope of YA fiction and as a series of signs and signifiers, then it raises questions about what these comparisons are trying to indicate to readers. In becoming the muscular hero, Tris is repeating the desired construct of femininity and through the descriptions of Jeanine the book is reinforcing which bodies and which femininity is preferred. It is not enough to just show the successful body; Jeanine, to be solidified as the villain and enemy, must also have a failing body. In Tris replicating this one form of femininity, one that is rooted in a problematic understanding of how to represent heroines, the books lack the ability to further the discussion about constructive representations of femininity for a young audience.

While Tris’ masquerade enables her to have more agency as a Dauntless initiate and later in realising her identity as a Divergent, Katniss’ feminine mimicry reinforces her own separation from the feminine and her repulsion of the Capitol. This thesis has noted how the

394 Roth, Divergent, 167. 395 Roth, Divergent, 430.

151 men in Katniss’ life pressure her to perform femininity for the Capitol and in the Games, but it is the training offered by Effie Trinket, the manager for the tributes of District 12, that demonstrates the masquerade of femininity. While Katniss is aware that she is performing mimicry in taking Effie’s instructions, Effie herself represents an individual trapped in the masquerade of femininity, not existing elsewhere, and it is through her character and her coaching that the way femininity is constructed and sustained is exposed in the text. Effie as a character “reveals the superfluousness, not of the woman herself, but of her role in coaching

Katniss to become a decorative item, like a trinket.”396 Not only is her external appearance and her personality set in opposition to Katniss, the play on her name being a trinket is also contrasted to Katniss who is named after a plant. While Katniss is therefore symbolically closer to the earth and is grounded in this natural imagery and in functionality, Effie is symbolic of the decorative but functionless nature of emphasised hyperfemininity. Effie is entirely a product of the Capitol, she has crafted an “official persona of supreme artificiality”397 through clothing and feminised body decorations and talks with the Capitol voice affectation that Katniss mocks. As noted in the previous chapter, her appearance at the

Reaping is a garish disruption to the visuals that describe District 12 and the reader immediately distrusts the over feminised artifice that Effie represents, as the text is geared to value the authentic and heroic Katniss who in that scene has just volunteered as tribute to save her sister.

Part of Effie’s role, both in the book and more symbolically as a character, is to coach

Katniss (and the readers) on feminine behaviour and how to perform femininity convincingly.

The book has demonstrated how clothing and beauty processes are used as a means of

396 Byrne, “Analysis of Clothing,” 51. 397 Byrne, “Analysis of Clothing,” 53.

152 constructing the feminine performance but in these scenes the reader gets to see the intricacies and depth of the “performance”.

The shoes are the worst part. I've never worn high heels and can't get used to

essentially wobbling around on the balls of my feet. But Effie runs around in them

full-time, and I'm determined that if she can do it, so can I. The dress poses another

problem. It keeps tangling around my shoes so, of course, I hitch it up, and then Effie

swoops down on me like a hawk, smacking my hands and yelling, “Not above the

ankle!” When I finally conquer walking, there's still sitting, posture - apparently I

have a tendency to duck my head - eye contact, hand gestures, and smiling.398

It is not enough for Katniss to have a makeover of clothing; to properly perform femininity she must learn the correct deportment. As Riviere says of the masquerade, “a woman has to become a normal woman.”399 This scene is coaching not only Katniss in the ways of femininity, but reveals to the reader the construction of traditional womanliness. By highlighting the artifice in this feminine persona, not only in the construction of beauty ideals, the books are playing into a value system that favours masculinity and views it as a more naturalised and falsely as a neutral gendered expression. Katniss’ struggle with the heels and dresses demonstrates their impracticality and reinforces the idea that femininity is impractical and decorative, making the masculine more agentic in response. The bird imagery that was discussed in the previous chapter as being used to dehumanise and Other the characters from the Capitol reappears here where Effie is likened to a hawk. Repeating this imagery and language of birds sustains the notion of how separate these characters are from

Katniss and how nonhuman they seem. While Katniss’ symbolic ties to nature seem organic,

398 Collins, The Hunger Games, 139. 399 Irigaray, Sex Which Is Not One, 134.

153 the language of the bird imagery makes a mockery of this, as the very point is that the people in the Capitol are so far removed from the natural.

Katniss remains fully aware that the femininity of the Capitol is a performance but she also understands how it can be used to her advantage. Effie however has no such luxury. She cannot fully leave her constructed self behind, despite shedding some level of artifice through her relationship with Katniss and her journey through the series.400 During the rebellion Effie is captured and imprisoned alongside the rest of the prep team, and does not reappear till midway through the third book, Mockingjay, and is seemingly unchanged: “Polished from her metallic gold wig to her patent leather high heels, gripping a clipboard. Remarkably unchanged except for the vacant look in her eyes.”401 Effie has remained a product of the

Capitol and despite her imprisonment, appears as the ornate trinket once again. The way

Katniss talks about Effie, throughout the books, also reinforces her status as decorative trinket lacking substance:

“But I said, and this is very clever of me, I said, ‘Well, if you put enough pressure on

coal it turns to pearls!’” Effie beams at us so brilliantly that we have no choice but to

respond enthusiastically to her cleverness even though it's wrong.402

While Katniss may admire some traits of Effie’s, she is constantly being presented as dim and overly superficial, and Katniss’ narrative commentary indicates how she infantilises and dehumanises Effie. Katniss’ responds similarly to the whole prep team, not seeing them as human and being unable to hate them for their stupidity because they have good intentions.

400 Interestingly in the film adaptation Effie is proven to exist outside of her constructed persona when she comes to live in District 13, is visually stripped of her former self, and is dressed in monochromatic plain clothes. This perhaps shows a dissatisfaction with the way Collins handled her character, and that audiences would more enjoy Effie having a fulfilling ending rather than one still trapped in the masquerade forever. 401 Collins, Mockingjay, 425 – 426. 402 Collins, The Hunger Games, 139.

154 Effie’s virtue is that she is endearing to Katniss in her enthusiasm and determination to help her survive in the world of the Capitol. When Effie reappears to Katniss after her captivity

Katniss notes: “It's quite a stretch. Effie Trinket, rebel. But I don't want Coin killing her, so I make a mental note to present her that way if asked.”403 While Katniss is able to move between performing feminine and masculine traits and become an agentic hero, Effie is incapable of having such depth of character as she is trapped in the artifice of her persona and therefore reliant on Katniss to spare her life, rather than being able to survive by herself.

It is Katniss’ explicit awareness of the masquerade of femininity and artifice of gender performance that allows her to participate cleverly and thereby survive in the Capitol’s culture and the Games. The tools of creating a convincing performance of emphasised femininity are given to her by Effie, Cinna, and the others helping her navigate the Capitol, but it is Katniss’ own self-awareness and conscious employment of these techniques that result in her success. In the Interview scene before she goes into the Games for the first time she notes not only her own efforts at performativity, but also those of the other contestants too: “I sit like a lady, the way Effie showed me, as the districts slip by. 2, 3, 4. Everyone seems to be playing up some angle.”404 All the tributes are playing an angle, creating a persona to sell to the audience of the Capitol in order to gain favour and sponsors. While

Katniss openly despises the Capitol, its excessive nature and artificiality, as well as despising feminine coded beautification processes and passive femininity, Katniss knows her best chances of survival in this context are to play the game, and that includes a world of makeovers.

403 Collins, Mockingjay, 426. 404 Collins, The Hunger Games, 151.

155 Employing the elements of conventional femininity to survive does not make Katniss

enjoy them, but she suffers through this beautification process because she realizes

that passivity can be a means to an end: clothing and style exert great power in the

Capitol and beyond.405

Emphasised femininity and passivity associated with traditional femininity are used as methods of staying safe and assimilating in a hegemonic masculine culture. The Hunger

Games series twists this, however, as emphasised femininity is needed to stay safe in a hyper- feminine society. In having Katniss needing to employ the mimicry of femininity the series is critiquing this performance of passivity and alerting readers to the falseness of constructed femininity. However, in creating the Capitol as a hyper-feminine society the novels are also criticising these mechanisms of commodified femininity as a whole and presenting them as undesirable. Interestingly, or unintentionally, this lack of critique offered to masculinity leaves it unchecked and again positioned then as the naturalised norm.

Femininity, in being portrayed only as something artificial, that Katniss can put on, perform, and not value outside of it serving the purpose of survival, guides readers to see how the books code Katniss’ masculine self as lacking pretence and is therefore a preferred mode of being. Through the physical makeovers and literal assumption of feminine costumes Katniss becomes a product of the Capitol like Effie, yet she also becomes aware of the role she is playing: “Katniss’s costumes enable the state to manipulate her embodied identity at the same time as she develops a limited degree of agency through her growing understanding of the political games in which she is entangled.”406 While Tris developed her agency through conforming to popularised forms of heroic femininity, the feminine performance reveals to

Katniss the agency she has in her ability to literally play the “game” of “gender”. Katniss has

405 Hansen, “Metamorphosis,” 167. 406 Byrne, “Analysis of Clothing,” 46.

156 a unique ability to play the game of the Capitol and of the Games themselves in order to survive, most notably when she tricks the Gamemakers into allowing both her and Peeta to live. She understands her own ability to control and construct her public image and uses it to her advantage. Her awareness of the benefit of playing both gender roles allows her to be both the fearsome warrior in the Games, as well as the gentle girl in who has fallen in love, and in doing so Katniss finds some agency in situations where she may otherwise be helpless.

This awareness of a structure at play that is pushing Katniss to this feminine performance, and her understanding of her own performance and how she can navigate within the Capitol’s society as she conforms to traditional femininity, seems to take a step towards deconstructing femininity from patriarchal values. Yet it doesn’t follow through. For the interview Katniss’ dress and performance will further solidify her gendered identity to the Capitol as “the girl who was on fire.”407 In seeing herself in Cinna’s outfit Katniss remarks:

The creature standing before me in the full-length mirror has come from another

world. Where skin shimmers and eyes flash and apparently they make their clothes

from jewels. Because my dress, oh, my dress is entirely covered in reflective precious

gems, red and yellow and white with bits of blue that accent the tips of the flame

design. The slightest movement gives the impression I am engulfed in tongues of fire.

I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.408

This response seems positive and offers a moment where Katniss is not repulsed by conventional feminine beauty, however it is a joy short lived. She is still dissociating feminised beings from humans, noting herself as a “creature.” After her interview where she twirled her dress, she reflects on her performance as being “A silly girl spinning in a

407 Collins, The Hunger Games, 85. 408 Collins, The Hunger Games, 146.

157 sparkling, dress. Giggling.”409 This return to condemning even momentary enjoyment of femininity continues the books’ tradition of relegating femininity to something other people can enjoy, but not an empowered and progressive heroine. Lem and Hassal comment on this point saying, “on one hand these feminine moments may invite girl readers to identify with her anxieties, vulnerability, and sometimes her pleasure at embracing the trappings of physical beauty; on the other hand, they seem to reinforce the idea that Katniss is most powerful when she embraces masculine ways.”410 In inviting the female readers to enjoy these moments of femininity only to reinforce the preference of masculinity demonstrates the need to question continually how gender is being performed, understood and valued in these

YA texts. They may have elements of progressive third-wave feminism yet continue to repeat outdated notions of gender and devaluing the feminine.

As the word and concept of “girl” was explored in the previous chapter as a loaded and problematised term, that values and rejects concepts of femininity, the word “pretty” is also a word that is similarly problematised in both series and reflects a veering towards valuing the feminine but yet simultaneously rejecting it. As Katniss says, “I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun”411, Tris similarly notes after her makeover “I am not pretty…My face is noticeable.”412 This avoidance of the word pretty and the move towards more assertive language such as “radiant” and “noticeable” shows the kind of performance of femininity that is deemed acceptable. It is not a passive, pretty feminine, it is an active, noticeable, bold, powerful feminine. The Hunger Games series and Divergent series reveal how gender, identity, and femininity is constructed, and through the internal value system at play in the novels, which is influenced by our current understanding of a hierarchised gender

409 Collins, The Hunger Games, 165. 410 Lem and Hassal, “‘Killer’ Katniss,” 124. 411 Collins, The Hunger Games, 146. 412 Roth, Divergent, 87.

158 binary, show readers what constructions of femininity are desirable. If identity is constructed through external performance then it makes sense that one would reject passivity and seek agency. Perhaps it is as Christina says when giving Tris the makeover, “Who cares about pretty? I’m going for noticeable.”413 It is this “noticeable” version of femininity that is the revalued feminine performance. It is only through understanding the performance of femininity through material signifiers that the true constraints of gender can be identified, and only then can gender be re-understood and rearticulated in a way that does actually offer agency.

413 Roth, Divergent, 87.

159 Chapter Five

Liminality and Rebellion

The dichotomy of masculine and feminine expressions of gender are not isolated to material objects and signifiers, such as clothing and beauty practices as were explored in previous chapters. Such a dichotomy extends to the gender coding of behaviours and actions and it is how these acts are valued that will be the interest of this chapter. As in previous chapters where this thesis sought to understand how to revalue femininity through reframing and reinterpreting the external performance and coding of femininity, this chapter looks at behaviour as a site to revalue femininity and to understand new conceptions of gender and identity. In the genre of dystopic young adult fiction there is a thematic trend of characters facing a need to deconstruct and reconstruct the world around them and in this deconstruction of the world around them the characters also discover ways to deconstruct and reconstruct concepts of identity. Where previous chapters explored the need for deconstruction, this chapter will also examine the tools that can be used to enact this deconstruction and reconstruction. These texts, as YA fiction, focus on the movement from adolescence to adulthood and explore how a person is able to gain autonomy and agency by moving through this liminal space. The liminal operates both as the locational space between categories of identity, and as a temporal liminality, where these characters need to move between phases of their lives, their past and their potential future. In these dystopic fictions the oppressive social structures stunt the characters development into fully realised autonomous adults and they remain in this liminal space. To escape they must act to change the world around them. Only then can they move beyond the liminal to a new concept of the future.

160 Creating the ‘nice girl’

Ringrose and Walkerdine’s work looking at aggressive girls and “mean girls” offers a lens to understand what behaviour is expected of girls and how they are required to perform within the rigid confines of ‘successful’ and passive femininity. Their work notes that in

“responding to constant imperatives to be good and nice, girls described learning to downplay conflict and hide disputes and emotions from teachers and parents.”414 This is another instance of how girls, and women, are being monitored by their peers and by themselves, to ensure that they are performing a certain type of femininity, much like the

‘double’ monitoring described earlier when considering how young girls form their subjectivity in relation to their clothing and performance of femininity.415 Here femininity and successful girlhood is achieved through the performance of being “good and nice”, meaning girls who behave outside of these constraints are not performing well. Anger and aggression are, in the binary of gendered behaviour, masculine and thereby undesirable for girls and are consequently downplayed. This link between “good and nice” behaviours and how girls are taught to behave is one of the ways that gender binaries and the subjugation of women are sustained. Women’s experience of a full range of human emotions and behaviours is denied despite the fact that they do experience them. What this work also indicates is how the concept of femininity is socially tied to these “good and nice” behavioural ideals, and thus when trying to revalue femininity it is hard to remove it from these behaviours and guidelines.

This emphasis on women and young girls performing the role of the “nice girl” is a form of patriarchal social control that forces women to remain in a docile state, focussing on their

414 Jessica Ringrose, and Valerie Walkerdine, “What Does It Mean to Be a Girl in the Twenty-first Century? Exploring Some Contemporary Dilemmas of Femininity and Girlhood in the West,” Girl Culture: An Encyclopedia Volume 1, ed. Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid- Walsh (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), 8. 415 Currie, Kelly, and Pomerantz, “The geeks,” 427.

161 own status as “nice girl” rather than questioning or challenging greater social constructs.

Greer Litton Fox examines the “nice girl” construct in society and highlights how this construct is used to limit women’s power, to determine their “degree of participation in the public world”416 and ultimately to “facilitate[s] the hegemony of men in a sex stratified world.”417 This portion of Fox’s argument examines how the “nice girl” construct sets an unattainable behavioural goal that women must always be striving towards and which ultimately hinders the progression of women in the social hierarchy. Again this echoes previous discussions in this thesis about womanhood and femininity being constantly challenged, having to be re-proven and re-performed, something to strive towards and never fully achieve. It also draws to mind the way choice feminism and postfeminist rhetoric focuses on the individual monitoring their own behaviours in society rather than questioning any greater social structures which are enforcing these behavioural roles on them. The constant focus on the untenable status of “nice girl” allows and encourages the policing of women’s behaviour from external sources and even more so from themselves. This suggests that, without the fear of failing to perform ideal femininity, women would be able to participate more fully and actively in the world and therefore challenge hegemonic masculinity and patriarchal social control. Once a woman is able to understand her identity, and femininity, as not being something always tenuous, constantly challenged and to constantly become, there is the potential for new understanding of feminine, or other gender, identities to exist.

The nice girl construct that Fox examines is one that is sustained through certain behaviours being coded as feminine and more valuable when performed by women than others that are

416 Greer Litton Fox, “‘Nice Girl’: Social Control of Women through a Value Construct,” Signs 2, no. 4 (Summer 1977): 817. 417 Fox, “Nice Girl,” 817.

162 coded as masculine. Specifically Fox looks at how it is the value system of these behavioural traits that is the basis of this social control:

This form of control over the social behaviour of women is embodied in such value

constructs as “good girl”, “lady,” or “nice girl.” As a value construct the later term

connotes chaste, gentle, gracious, ingenious, good, clean, kind, virtuous,

noncontroversial, and above suspicion and reproach.418

A “nice girl” is the ideal of submissive, docile, and hyper feminine woman who is ascribed these virtues that distinguish her from other women and more importantly, distinguishes her from men. By listing how these more docile behavioural traits are assigned social value, Fox is also drawing attention to which traits are not socially valuable when performed by women.

These traits of the “nice girl” reinforce hegemonic femininity and women and girls who do not adhere to these traits are engaging with characteristics that Mimi Schippers calls “pariah femininities.”419 These include for example, more masculine aligned traits such as aggression, anger, over-confidence, assertiveness, and being messy or dirty. Schippers goes on to note that “the possession of any one of these characteristics is assumed to contaminate the individual…these women are considered socially undesirable and contaminating to social life more generally.”420 It is only through the value system clearly exposed here that value is placed on certain behaviours for women and often for men, and it is this value system that must be challenged. This chapter theorises that should a woman, or in this case a female character, not be policed by her society and through her own internalised control, not considered undesirable for performing a different form of femininity, she would be able to perform these traits freely and without repercussion.

418 Fox, “Nice Girl,” 805. 419 Schippers, “Recovering the Feminine,” 95. 420 Schippers, “Recovering the Feminine,” 95.

163 These hegemonic masculine social constructs are sustained through the external and internal policing of girls’ and women’s behaviour by denying them the ability to perform and exhibit certain masculine coded behaviours. By placing these behavioural expectations on women and girls, those who fail to meet these social constructs by performing inappropriate or nonvaluable behaviours are seen to be ‘failures’. This is how the behavioural binary that constrains women is created and sustained. These behavioural policing methods can be seen in both the Hunger Games and Divergent series where the female protagonists are forced or heavily encouraged to perform certain feminine and “nice girl” behaviours. The characters themselves also perform self-policing behaviours that are revealed through the narration and draw attentions to the different levels of behavioural policing. The novels, however, make a point of having Katniss and Tris reject these external constructs as a shorthand coding for agreeing with contemporary feminist and anti-patriarchal ideas. While in their worlds these protagonists are ultimately rewarded for their rebellious behaviour, which will be examined later, the novels seem to carry both the message of encouraging the “nice girl” construct and behaviours while also rejecting it and exposing its artifice. It offers an interesting way to examine what values are at play in the texts and to see what key messages are being promoted through the novels.

The faction system in the Divergent universe provides an easily read value system of different traits and behaviours, as each faction upholds different values. Those in the faction

Abnegation favour modesty, selflessness and peace which can be interpreted as a form of the

“nice girl” construct, despite being applied to both men and women. They embody the many of traits listed by Fox as characteristic of the “nice girl”. Through Tris’ narration, in choosing to leave Abnegation and join the Dauntless faction, the impact of upholding these values and how they feel stifling to her is revealed. When she first becomes an initiate of Dauntless, the

164 difference between her life in Abnegation and that in Dauntless is emphasised. Tris finds herself shedding the identity and behaviour of a “Stiff” behaviour by literally stripping off some of her modest Abnegation clothes before plunging into the first challenge of Dauntless initiation, which required the initiates to jump off the ledge of a building to get to the entrance of the faction. When faced with this challenge all of the initiates are extremely hesitant (“No one looks eager to leap off the building”421) and Tris steps forward to be the first one to jump:

My hands fumble along the collar of my shirt and find the button that secures it shut.

After a few tries, I undo the hooks from collar to hem, and pull it off my shoulders.

Beneath it, I wear a gray T-shirt. It is tighter than any other clothes I own, and no one

has ever seen me in it before. I ball up my outer shirt and look over my shoulder, at

Peter. I throw the ball of fabric at him as hard as I can, my jaw clenched.422

Where earlier Tris felt embarrassed when Peter, another initiate, mocked her for rolling up her sleeve (“Ooh. Scandalous! A Stiff’s flashing some skin!”423) she is now using this removal of clothing as a way of shedding her old life while also demonstrating how she will not be constrained by this Abnegation identity any longer. The shirt she is wearing underneath is also described as tight, a clothing style favoured by the Dauntless, and something that no one has seen her in before, indicating how this side of her has always been there but was previously unseen. Standing on the ledge she removes her clothing and thus symbolically is leaving her Abnegation self at the entrance to Dauntless, where she can now assume a new identity and the artifice of the “nice girl” construct is exposed and abandoned:

“I can be remade here.”424

421 Roth, Divergent, 57. 422 Roth, Divergent, 58. 423 Roth, Divergent, 56. 424 Roth, Divergent, 60.

165 Once in Dauntless Tris begins to reaffirm her rejection of the constraints of Abnegation lifestyle and embrace the raucous and dangerous Dauntless way of life. In the scene in the dining hall of Dauntless, Tris notes how different and loud the dining hall is compared to the

“calm, pleasant nights”425 of her home in Abnegation. She specifically notes that, “Peace is restrained; this is free.”426 Dauntless is not only freedom, it is freedom from Abnegation ways of living, from this “nice girl” construct. In this way the series is establishing how the forced peace and pleasant inoffensiveness of Abnegation is unfavourable, thereby demonstrating to readers that it is more satisfying to embrace a more “authentic” and “free” way of life. Tris is navigating her search for her authentic sense of identity by experimenting with these categories. This comment about freedom in Dauntless also shows how Tris is beginning to live her life on her own terms and to recognise the social constraints she was previously under but did not notice: “I jumped off because I already was like them, and I wanted to show myself to them. I wanted to acknowledge a part of myself that Abnegation demanded that I hide.”427 She is revealing aspects of her personality and identity and gaining pleasure from this experience. This sense of authenticity and autonomy is what is most valued in this series and demonstrates how the concept of artifice is a problem that must be challenged. “To be categorised is comforting”428 and Tris is experiencing comfort in finding a faction that suits her better and helps eventually navigate her most authentic identity as a Divergent. The call to categorisation is shown to be pleasurable and reaffirming, however Roth’s work can also be seen to be warning against this pleasure of categorisation.429 Above this joy she feels in initially belonging to Dauntless, as the series progresses, Tris understands that the faction system actually forces people to behave in accordance with their faction and not

425 Roth, Divergent, 250. 426 Roth, Divergent, 250. 427 Roth, Divergent, 263. 428 Balaka Basu, “What Faction Are You In? The Pleasure of Being Sorted in Veronica Roth’s Divergent,” in Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers, ed. Katherine R Broad, Balaka Basu, and Carrie Hintz (New York: Routledge, 2013), 20. 429 Basu, “Being Sorted,” 20.

166 authentically. The faction system and this form of categorisation is therefore exposed as negative and is something to be removed.

If authenticity is key to countering the “nice girl” construct, and is a way to access more third-wave feminist aligned representations of identity and femininity, then when considering the Hunger Games series’ relationship with authentic femininity we must not look to Katniss, but rather her younger sister Primrose (Prim). While Tris is constantly affirming her position of resistance against the “nice girl” construct, Katniss begins the series already opposed to the

“nice girl” construct and the feminine in general, and does not need to reaffirm her position or go on a journey of identity in the same way that Tris does. The artifice of this construct is revealed to readers the same way artificial femininity as a means of control is revealed, through the characterisation of the residents of the Capitol and other characters’ insistence on altering Katniss’ behaviour and appearance. Katniss knows that if she performs the softer, docile feminine role, in combination with her masculine hunting abilities, she is viewed more favourably by those watching the Games. Where Katniss’ opposition to being a “nice girl” draws to light the complications of the construct, her younger sister Prim embodies all the virtues of the “nice girl” and in her these traits are valued and loved. Katniss’ love of Prim, and therefore valuing of all of her traits, is in part because Katniss acts as a parent to Prim and Prim thereby occupies the space of a beloved child: “How could I leave Prim, who is the only person in the world I’m certain I love?”430 The narrative is underpinned by Katniss’ love for Prim and her desire to protect her (“I protect Prim in every way I can”431), as it was

Katniss volunteering as tribute to protect Prim that instigates the plot.

430 Collins, The Hunger Games, 11. 431 Collins, The Hunger Games, 18.

167 Katniss associates showing emotion with weakness and as such strives not to express emotions or display any form of weakness, however expressions of empathy and even being moved to tears are a valued trait in Prim’s character. The descriptions of her in the narrative serve to indicate to the reader how much Katniss cherishes her sister and of the symbolic innocence of children being sacrificed in the Games.

Sweet, tiny Prim who cried when I cried before she even knew the reason, who

brushed and plaited my mother’s hair before we left for school, who still polished my

father’s shaving mirror each night because he’d hated the layer of coal dust that

settled on everything in the Seam.432

In this passage we learn the small acts Prim does around the house to care for her mother and maintain the memory of her father. From Katniss perspective their household is a burden she must bear as the primary caregiver, however these details of Prim’s relationship to the house and her family shows to the reader how she and Katniss embody different styles of nurturing.

In many ways Prim is infantilised by Katniss’ view of her, especially in these early scenes, and the femininity she portrays is a childish and stereotypical type of femininity. By

Mockingjay however, Prim demonstrates more agency and is actively taking part in the world by helping out in the hospitals of District 13, and notes to Katniss that she will likely be soon trained as a doctor: “I think they’re going to train me to be a doctor. … They’ve been watching me when I help out in the hospital. I’m already taking the medic courses. It’s just beginner’s stuff. I know a lot of it from home. Still, there’s plenty to learn.”433 Her nurturing has moved beyond a feminine trait she possesses, it now indicates her suitability for and skill in medical care. The reader is able to see how Prim embodying these feminine traits is no longer simply because of her symbolic role as the child, or the sheltered young female, but instead leads to her empowerment.

432 Collins, The Hunger Games, 33. 433 Collins, The Hunger Games, 176.

168 In pointing out how Prim is described and the language used by Katniss especially in those early excerpts, attention is being drawn to how, while the books seem to devalue traditionally feminine traits in Katniss and hyper-femininity in the Capitol, the femininity shown by Prim is one that is valued and worth protecting above all else. Prim’s femininity and gentle nature is framed as innate and “authentic” and therefore not a part of the “nice girl” construct and is free of patriarchal social control. Her presentation of femininity is not critiqued, but rather valued. Where Katniss rejects femininity in others, and in other forms, it is something she values and loves in Prim, showing the reader a different facet of how femininity can be expressed and valued. Prim’s femininity, which happens to align with the “nice girl” construct, is the embodiment of this third-wave feminist conception of an authentically feminine identity, despite being problematically presented and stereotypically rendered by

Collins’ characterisation. She is no longer simply a child that Katniss and others dote on and value, her femininity is an authentic part of her. Interestingly in the scene where Prim tragically dies, she is the one helping a child, as she is no longer a child herself. After a bombing, Prim, as part of the rebel medics, rushes in and Katniss slowly recognises her:

“Then as she yanks off her coat to cover a wailing child, I notice the duck tail formed by her untucked shirt.”434 Prim is now helping other children and acting as a protector, however

Katniss still recognises her by the markers that identified her as the innocent child in the first book. By moving between these categories of child, and female character with agency and autonomy, Prim’s performance of femininity and her feminine behaviours become solidified as authentic to her identity. The novels here are showing clearly this preference of authentic and genuine displays of femininity that exist beyond the patriarchal values system yet Prim’s death denies any further exploration of what this authenticity means and what her

434 Collins, The Hunger Games, 406.

169 performance of authentic femininity would look like as she grows up and moves fully into adulthood.

Fox makes the point that the “nice girl” construct is enforced by keeping the concept of “nice girl” and the attribute of “ladylike” as tenuous concepts that must always be reinscribed and reinforced. As she says: “one’s identity as “lady” or as “nice girl” is never finally confirmed.

Rather, it is continually in jeopardy, and one is under pressure to demonstrate one’s niceness anew by one’s behaviour in each instance of social interaction.”435 By remaining in jeopardy, these constructs remain always out of reach for women and force them into behavioural patterns that must recreate these constructed identities. This tenuously created identity is similar to Simone de Beauvoir’s theorisation that one is not born a woman but rather becomes a woman436, and how Judith Butler understands gender as “in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time--an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts.”437 This need for repetitive actions and of always striving to become is where gender and femininity become tools of patriarchal social control. When one is always striving to become there can be no completion, no solid identity, and no progression. By having to constantly replicate and reaffirm one’s position, gender, and identity, stagnation occurs. Gender and identity become goals to achieve, and the most admired identity is one that is authentic and attainable.

The liminal space of becoming — creating queer futures

In this desire to achieve an identity, or gender, or reach some category, there is a constant striving towards a concept that does not exist. These goals are not fixed, they require constant

435 Fox, “Nice Girl,” 809 436 De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 293. 437 Butler, “Performative Acts,” 519.

170 reproduction and affirmation. They require some movement between the liminal space of becoming into a category, into the space between identities, and it is the constant need for this type of becoming where stasis occurs, because the liminal space of always becoming and replicating existing systems and roles does not offer any progression. This is the same liminality that exists in dystopic YA fiction, in the space between childhood and adulthood, where the adulthood options exist in highly organised social structures. In constantly recreating the same pre-ordained identities, trapped by classist social structures found in the

Districts or in genetically organised factions, there is no new future and no new possible identities for these characters. These categories, however, imply a liminal space between them but also that there is a beyond, that there is going to be a transformation occurring.

These books, as dystopic fiction and young adult fiction, are liminal according to the nature of their genres, however the societies they present can only move past the liminal stage if the protagonists interrupt the repetition and move beyond the liminal themselves. It is only through envisioning and progressing to a new beyond that these protagonists are able move themselves and their society forward. Sarah K Day, Miranda A. Green-Barteet, and Amy L.

Montz look at this phenomenon specifically. Drawing on Booker’s understanding of dystopias the authors understand how “the label ‘dystopia’ typically applies to works that simultaneously imagine futures and consider the present, essentially occupying a liminal space between these times.”438 It is not enough to consider this liminal space or to occupy it; it is the impetus of the protagonists to move their society forward that creates the imagined future. In the face of a seemingly unending and all-encompassing world structure where there are limited adulthoods and identities to become, the protagonists must create new identities, and in turn, constructions of gender that will become part of those identities.

438 Day, Green-Barteet, and Montz, “Introduction,” 9.

171 Day, Green-Barteet, and Montz further explore how it is the role of these, specifically, young and female protagonists to alter their world in order to create their own identity. The worlds of the Divergent series and the Hunger Games series are unable to sustain the developing identities of Tris and Katniss. They are developing their sense of self in ways that contradict their social world order, though in some way might also affirm it, and in order for these identities to develop and manifest themselves these characters must alter the society around them.

The female protagonists of contemporary young adult dystopias occupy liminal

spaces as they seek to understand their places in the world, to claim their identities,

and to live their lives on their own terms. Further, and perhaps most significantly,

these young women also attempt to recreate the worlds in which they live, making

their societies more egalitarian, more progressive, and, ultimately, more free.439

This liminal space is one that is created and enforced by the social structures of these books; it is oppressive and seeks to contain their populations in well-defined and clearly identifiable categories. The structures set up in these fictional dystopian societies force their citizens to be always performing and creating rigid gender based roles that are tenuous, just as the binaristic gender categories and patriarchal modes of femininity and oppression relegate women as

Other. A potential resolution is to develop an understanding of femininity as accessible to all genders, thereby creating an understanding of gender performance that is not limiting and sustained in hierarchical binary opposition. A resolution could also be found in altering the structure of society and fundamentally changing the possibilities of identity that are available and offering a way to conceive of an ‘authentic’ identity.

439 Day, Green-Barteet, and Montz, “Introduction,” 3.

172 The liminality of this state of becoming is not only created in the worlds of the novels but is also a state embodied by the protagonists Tris and Katniss. They are caught in societies that force them continually to attempt to recreate normative and easily categorised identities, leaving them trapped in the liminal process of always becoming but never achieving the

‘correct’ or ‘authentic’ identity. This in turn demonstrates how the characters themselves internally manifest this liminal space of becoming as they are always stuck in a process of becoming with no progression; they are always becoming to no future.

[Y]oung women in late twentieth- and early twenty-first century dystopian fiction

embody liminality, straddling the lines of childhood and adulthood, of individuality

and conformity, of empowerment and passivity. They may also be understood as

representations of contradictions, of strength and weakness, of resistance and

acquiescence, and, perhaps especially, of hope and despair.440

They embody all the potentiality available to them, however, given that their dystopic societies do not allow all these potentials, they must overcome their own liminality and enact upon the world around them to create a new society, to force a new future. The focus on this liminality, in the YA dystopic genre, as well as the liminality embodied by the protagonists is what creates the stasis of becoming that this chapter explores. It is these tensions that are being teased out between characters who occupy a space between “strength and weakness”441, or masculine and feminine, and the worlds that are constructed around them to instruct the readers so that they can understand these dualities and contradictions and conceive of a new possibility of identity, gender performance, and future.

It is not only the liminality of being between two physical states, or two categories of identity, there is a temporal liminality to also consider, that being the lack of future. In order

440 Day, Green-Barteet, and Montz, “Introduction,” 4. 441 Day, Green-Barteet, and Montz, “Introduction,” 4.

173 to understand getting trapped in a liminal stasis through the cycle of repetition, the lack of future, and how these terms are being situated, I am turning to queer theory.442 Where in previous chapters this thesis has sought to identify the way binaries are constructed and how femininity is performed and situated in this binary, it is not enough to identify where deconstruction of binaries must occur. This chapter looks at how we can consider a future with no binaries, what other futures can exist and how can they be achieved. Much has been written about how Katniss and the Capitol embody different “queer” identities, particularly in the work of Riley McGuire, Lisa Manter and Lauren Francis, which specifically look at the

Hunger Games series in relation to Lee Edelman’s influential queer theory text No Future.

McGuire’s summation of Edelman’s figure of the Child offers a clear way to understand how

Edelman determines that the queer offers no future while the Child embodies future: “In sum, for Edelman, the Child embodies endless creation and the queer negates; the Child is a figure of compulsory futurism and the queer is a figure of no future.”443 Previously in this thesis it has been indicated that the Capitol is aligned with the feminine and in turn with the queer, with their performative fashions, affected accents and extravagant body modifications.

McGuire also draws this conclusion, understanding the Capitol as queer and President Snow as “a queer with no dynamic future.”444 In identifying the Capitol as queer it is by this logic un-aging, not reproducing and thus stagnant. The social order as it currently stands, and the

Capitol and President Snow’s control over it, offer no possibility for the future.

If Edelman understands the Child as emblematic of the future and the queer as lacking future, then the world of the Hunger Games series both adheres to this idea while skewing it. The

442 I was introduced to these theories through my research as well as presentations given by Ally Wolfe and Dr. Grace Sharkey at conferences. The work of Wolfe and Sharkey has been useful to my understanding of this theory and how it applies to my understanding of the queer future and queer potentiality. 443 Riley McGuire, “Queer Children, Queer Futures: Navigating Lifedeath in The Hunger Games,” Mosaic: a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 48, no. 2 (June 2015): 65. 444 McGuire, “Navigating Lifedeath,” 67.

174 figure of the child is not only emblematic of the future, it is the necessary sacrifice to sustaining a future of servitude to the Capitol. McGuire notes how: “In an inversion of

Edelman’s figuration of the Child, it is the death of children that allows for the future, not their maintenance.”445 The children in Panem are used by the Capitol as a means of sustaining their future by cutting off the future of these children and their potential. This is how the Hunger Games series demonstrates the lack of future possibility — there is no alternative to a life that requires the sacrifice of children to sustain the order of the queered

Capitol. Manter and Francis examine how the figure of the Child is used in the Hunger

Games series through the figure of Prim. They explain that idealising Prim as the figure of the Child “serves Katniss in two ways: first, by casting Prim as an idealized form of the Child that Katniss herself was prior to her father’s death, she is able to live vicariously through her sister as the protected Child; second, Prim as the symbolic Child provides Katniss a fetishistic investment in the future that is designed to conceal the bankruptcy of the Symbolic within the novel.”446 Katniss’ desire to protect the Child (both Prim and Rue who later acts as a stand in for Prim in the Games) motivates her, and eventually leads to her killing President Coin, who was set up as a prospective leader after the rebellion and also supported the sacrifice of children. Katniss, in wanting to protect the Child, reveals how the books have been using children as a sacrifice to create this dystopia and how the figure of the Child in this series does not symbolise the future but instead serves to sustain this dystopic power.

The death of children to sustain the Capitol and the social system of the books leads to an undesirable and untenable future. Katniss must intervene in order to create new possibilities.

McGuire examines the intersection between the queer and the child demonstrated in the

445 McGuire, “Navigating Lifedeath,” 69. 446 Lisa Manter, and Lauren Francis, “Katniss’s Oppositional Romance: Survival Queer and Sororal Desire in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games Trilogy,” Childrens Literature Association Quarterly 42, no. 3 (Fall 2017): 294.

175 character of Katniss, who is a child, a killer and can be read as queer.447 While Katniss is read as a queer figure, it is through her actions against a queered Capitol that produces a new world.

Snow’s revelation that Coin and her Rebellion are just as capable as the Capitol of

killing the children in order to gain power drives Katniss to abandon faith in any

social system, pushing her to actively embrace the symbolic function of the Queer.448

The figure of the Queer that Manter and Francis are referencing here is the one that they define in Edelman’s words as “responsible for the undoing of social organization, collective reality, and inevitably, life itself.”449 According to Edelman, if “there is no baby and, in consequence, no future”450 then it is due to the lure of this queer embodiment. The queer is the “no future” with no children. However, Edelman also notes the queerest is “to insist that the future stop here.”451 The queer, therefore, stops the repetition of the past through the reproduction of the child, thereby forcing a new future and creating a new realm of possibility. It is only through Katniss and her actions, particularly her killing of Coin, that the

Capitol and the lack of new future is dismantled. Her actions, which lead to a rebellion amongst the districts, are what forces a new future to be formed, a future that does not kill children and is full of new possibility, rather than a future that is “mere repetition and just as lethal as the past.”452 There cannot just be repetition, there must be something more. A similar thread can be found in the Divergent series which queers traditional YA narratives by having the protagonist Tris sacrifice herself. Tris’ death, the death of a teenager though not the symbolic Child, creates a future where others (the Divergent) will not be hunted and no more deaths must occur. Tris’ sacrifice, similar to the way Prim was made into a sacrifice,

447 McGuire, “Navigating Lifedeath,” 67. 448 Manter and Francis, “Katniss’s Oppositional Romance,” 300. 449 Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 13. 450 Edelman, No Future, 13. 451 Edelman, No Future, 31. 452 Edelman, No Future, 31.

176 uses this death of the Child to create an unknown future, rather than a stagnant one. Both were killed as a child before they were able to develop fully into adulthood, however they were acting with autonomy and stepping into their new identities. With their deaths, the old future was stopped. Then, due to Katniss’ intervention motivated by Prim’s death and Tris’ intervention of her own death, a new future is conceived and created. It is through the figure of the queer, and through queer theories, that these new futures are possible to imagine. This can only occur when they break beyond their own state, constantly developing and reaffirming an identity, when they develop into an identity founded on and made possible by rebellion.

The queer can create a world without a future, as Edelman’s work explores, and can create a new way to conceive of new imaginings of the future. Jose Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia theorises how the future is not simply the domain of the child and the reproductive heteronormative, but rather sees the future as belonging to queerness:

The future is queerness’ domain. Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of

desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present. The here

and now is a prison house. We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing

rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there.453

This striving for a new future, free of the “prison” of “the here and now” is precisely what occurs in these dystopic novels. There is a desire for the utopia, for a new world and social structure that allows for a freedom not offered by the past. This utopia is the space beyond the liminal, it is what can occur through actively moving and working towards this particular queer future: “Queerness is also a performative because it is not simply a being but a doing for and toward the future. Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and

453 José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 1.

177 an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.”454 Rather than being a state of trapped in a cycle of constant repetition, attempting to ‘be’ something that can never fully exist, the utopic future is about the always developing. It is “a doing” not “a being”. It is the conscious and deliberate developing that pushes forward, rather than the aspirational goal that never becomes, and can never be achieved. It is the imagined future and the imagined future identity offered to Katniss and Tris that is beyond their current conception of categorised identities and categorised social structures. By representing this future possibility in these texts and characters, readers can themselves understand how to break social cycles and the power they have in creating identities beyond our current understanding.

The identities that can be formed in this imagined future are those beyond the binary and a hierarchy of gender. They exist in a queer understanding of gender, an understanding of gender that is beyond binary and allows for a blending of masculinity and femininity in the male and female characters. If the constant striving towards perfecting and performing femininity is what creates the stasis of becoming it is only conceiving of a future beyond this current understanding of gender and identity which creates a process of becoming. There is now a future to become into, a future identity and a new future world which allows and is ready for that new identity. Young women are required to adhere to ever changing and sometimes unspoken rules of conduct. The adherence to the clothing and behavioural regulations causes great distress as the mixed messages, overload of influences, and the regulation of behaviour creates another site of contention in their lives:

What is revealed is ample evidence that in the cultural and representational terrain of

contemporary girlhood in the West there is heavy regulation of femininity and the

promotion of enduring, impossible contradictions surrounding girls' relationships to

454 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 1.

178 success, aggression, and violence. These are heavily contested affective sites that girls

must continuously navigate.455

YA fiction is one of the ways young girls can navigate these manifestations of girlhood.

These books offer a space to understand different representations of girlhood and behaviour.

The dystopic fiction genre demonstrates the new worlds of possibility available to girls when they challenge the current status quo of their worlds.

The blending of masculine and feminine traits appears to be a solution to the conflict of adhering to regulated femininity. This is the queer future that allows for a new identity and a new society to occur.

Once we understand that not all masculinities are entirely masculine, or femininities

feminine, we may be able to think of ourselves as humans who construct our identities in

various ways, some of which are related to ideal typical forms of masculinity and

femininity, and some of which are not.456

It is only through the conceiving of gender as free of a hierarchical binary that one can form a new identity free of the constraints of a society. This is problematised however as it requires the step of relocating action and power outside of the realm of the masculine which is not necessarily being done in these novels. It requires the evaluation of actions and behaviours outside of gender hierarchies and the ability to conceive of the potentiality of a world free of gender binary constructs, where these books have often reaffirmed binaries, genders, actions and behaviours.

455 Ringrose and Walkerdine, “Contemporary Dilemmas,” 11. 456 Paechter, “Masculine Femininities,” 262.

179 Gaining agency through rebellion

One way women are able to access agency and power is through acts of rebellion against oppressive social regimes. Miranda Green-Barteet’s focus on Tris and Katniss and exploration of how acts of rebellion can be used to form identity and autonomy is useful here.

She looks at how young women’s rebellion against oppression can lead to their independence and developing sense of self, specifically looking at Katniss and Tris as examples of two rebellious young female protagonists in YA dystopic fiction. The prominent idea behind looking at the rebellious acts performed by these characters is that young women in dystopic societies need to rebel against the oppressive social order of their respective dystopic settings in order to develop autonomy and agency as this is the only way to take the next step beyond adolescence into adulthood. Green-Barteet comments how “in Collins’ and Roth’s dystopian worlds, adolescence only concludes when individuals are integrated into their society’s controlling framework.”457 There is no option to grow beyond these narrow confines and as autonomous adults unless they alter the world they live in and create a space with more opportunity and less control over the people, and this rebellion is a specifically feminine necessity.

In the tradition of YA literature dealing with coming of age stories and stories of autonomy and forming a sense of self and identity, it is the dystopic setting with rigid world structures that leaves rebellion as the only catalyst for self-actualisation. If they do not rebel the teenagers will always remain in the controlled stasis of their oppressive regimes, and not become self-aware and autonomous beings:

457 Miranda A. Green-Barteet, “‘I’m Beginning to Know Who I Am’: The Rebellious Subjectivities of Katniss Everdeen and Tris Prior,” in Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction, ed. Amy L Montz, Miranda A Green-Barteet, and Sara K Day (London: Routledge, 2016), 34.

180 As a result of their defiant behaviour, Katniss and Tris become self-governing

subjects who are capable of directing the outcome of their own lives rather than

remaining passive objects able to be controlled by their societies.458

Green-Barteet goes on to track the different ways Katniss and Tris rebel against their own societies and the motivation behind their rebellion. For Katniss, her rebellion against the

Capitol is driven by her realisation that she does not have to stay controlled by the rules of

Capitol and by the Games. Tris, however, is motivated to rebel against her society and betray those she loves in order to discover the ultimate truths about her society. Despite the difference in motivation and scale of the acts of rebellion by these two characters, both cause great changes in their society and they become active agents who are able to dismantle oppressive social structures.

Katniss’ initial notable act of defiance against the Capitol is her suggestion that both she and

Peeta eat poisonous berries and commit suicide at the end of the Games. She made this suggestion gambling that the authorities would not allow the Games to end with no winner.

At this moment Katniss begins to make choices for herself and about how she wishes to move through the world as well as understanding how she is able to change the rules of the world and not just herself. This act of rebellion shows a key moment where Katniss, becoming aware of how she can manipulate her public image to her benefit, is able to out manoeuvre the Gamemakers. Much of the Hunger Games series is structured around Katniss learning what sort of power she has and how she can use performance (whether that be performance of femininity, heterosexuality, or performance of leadership) as a means of expressing autonomy and authority in situations. Initially Peeta makes the comment that “She has no idea. The effect she can have”459 which Katniss takes as an insult and thinks it was

458 Green-Barteet, “Rebellious Subjectivities,” 34. 459 Collins, The Hunger Games, 111.

181 said to demean her. Upon reflection she wonders whether it was meant to be a compliment, and comments “It’s weird, how much he’s noticed me.”460 While this may reflect Peeta’s attraction to and admiration of Katniss, it also offers a moment where Katniss realises she has been seen and that her visibility and persona can affect others. Previously she thought no one noticed her but to be confronted with the thought that she is being noticed, combined with the hyper visibility of becoming a tribute and spectacle of the Games, Katniss is beginning to realise that she can have an effect and the books then centre on her management of this effect on the world around her.

After the death of Rue, the youngest tribute in the Games, Katniss is motivated to hold the

Capitol accountable for the Games and for the deaths of children. She decorates Rue’s body with flowers knowing that “they’ll have to show it.”461 This act of defiance, of forcing the viewers of the Games to physically see Rue’s body honoured in flowers is where Katniss begins taking direct action against the Capitol and seeks to reclaim her autonomy:

I remember Peeta’s words on the roof. “Only I keep wishing I could think of a way

to…to show the Capitol they don’t own me. That I’m more than just a piece in their

Games.” And for the first time, I understand what he means.462

While Peeta may have started the book and entered the Games with a clearer sense of self, separate to the identity the Capitol attempts to form for him, Katniss does not fully understand her role and how she is able to defy the Capitol until this moment. She comes to understand that she is more than just a subject and citizen of Panem, she is someone who is able to cause change. The language in this line is striking as the Capitol, being the top of an overly controlling social hierarchy which commodifies its citizens, does effectively “own” its

460 Collins, The Hunger Games, 113. 461 Collins, The Hunger Games, 287. 462 Collins, The Hunger Games, 286.

182 citizens. The people in the districts work for the Capitol, are given rations from the Capitol and are policed by the Capitol. They are in many ways “owned” and here we see how Peeta’s statement about not being owned by the Capitol is understood. He recognises the position he was born into in this District system yet recognises himself as an autonomous human and wants to be defiant. Katniss is now beginning to understand this and begins to strive towards explicitly exercising autonomy and agency, feeling the need to demonstrate to the Capitol that she exists beyond them.

There is also a clear acknowledgement of the surveillance they are all under in the Games and, as with all other instances where Katniss learns the power of controlling her image, she is beginning to understand the power she has to force the Gamemakers’ hands. They must show Rue’s body, and at the end of the Games, they must have a victor, and Katniss will orchestrate that ending. While Katniss and Peeta constructed a love story as a means of gaining favour with the audience, the Gamemakers use their narrative as a means of constructing a thrilling ending to the Games. Initially they announce that there has been a rule change and two people may win the Games, which forces Katniss to find and team up with

Peeta, and once they are the last two standing, the rule was retracted: “They never intended to let us both live. This has all been devised by the Gamemakers to guarantee the most dramatic showdown in history. And like a fool, I bought into it.”463 Katniss hates that she inadvertently played into the hands of the Gamekeepers and whether or not their love story is genuine or performative does not matter, is used against them by the Gamemakers. Knowing that the

Games must have a winner, Katniss, without revealing her plan, suggests to Peeta that they should begin to commit joint suicide by eating poisoned berries. For Katniss this was an act of conscious rebellion. She assumed correctly that the Gamemakers would not let them both

463 Collins, The Hunger Games, 417.

183 die, thus forcing them to keep both herself and Peeta alive. It is a key moment where Katniss tests the effect she can have, and she will use that effect to literally change the rules of the society they live in.

While many of Katniss’ rebellions stem from her being forced to understand how to strategise in the Game, and are therefore situations she is coerced into by the Capitol, Tris’ motivations and rebellions in the Divergent series are more personally motivated. Tris’ acts of rebellion are based on wanting to know what caused the attacks on the Abnegation faction and finding out the reason behind her parents’ deaths.464 In the previous readings of these books this thesis has noted that Katniss’ story is very much focussed on the grand narrative of rebellion and the very public performance of spectacle whereas Tris is much more focused on her internal struggles and her personal life. After members of the Dauntless faction are used in an armed attack against the Abnegation faction, Tris’ key motivation for the rest of her actions is to discover the truth about the attack and understand the situation that caused the death of her parents: “I have to know. I have to find out what could possibly be important enough for the Abnegation to die for—and the Erudite to kill for.”465 While the rest of the factions begin to rebel and great unrest comes over their world, Tris’ singular goal is to find the truth and in doing so she must lie to her friends and loved ones.

The kind of rebellion that Tris engages in is a more personal one; she rebels by going against the dystopic segregated society she is a part of but she also rebels by betraying her boyfriend

Tobias/Four in order to find out the truth. After the attack carried out against the Abnegation in Divergent Tris works towards her singular goal of understanding why the attack happened

464 Green-Barteet, “Rebellious Subjectivities,” 46. 465 Roth, Insurgent, 26.

184 throughout Insurgent and again betrays Tobias/Four in Allegiant in order to uncover the truth about her society and her mother’s past.

“Listen to me. The timing of the simulation attack wasn’t random. The reason it

happened when it did is because the Abnegation were about to do something—I don’t

know what it was, but it had to do with some important information, and now Jeanine

has that information” … “thing is, I haven’t been able to find out very much about

this, because Marcus Eaton is the only person who knows everything, and he won’t

tell me ... it’s the reason for the attack. It’s the reason. And we need to know it.”466

While Katniss’ gaining autonomy is through her understanding that she must perform in certain ways to survive in Panem and the Games, Tris’ autonomy can only be gained when she uncovers the truths about the attack and in turn uncovers the secret of the city they live in.

As is finally revealed, the city the Divergent series takes place in a futuristic Chicago and is a scientific experiment to breed out genetically altered humans. While this twist is related to

Tris’ personal story, her desire for the truth and facts beyond her personal life is what motivates her and exists beyond her personal gain. The revelation of these deeper secrets then enables Tris and her allies to dismantle the oppressive society they currently live in and gives space for a new world order to exist.

Green-Barteet also makes the point that Katniss and Tris’ acts of rebellion are shaped by and made in response to their respective love interests. She elaborates that “Katniss’s decision to keep Peeta alive no matter the cost is the most consciously rebellious action she undertakes in the first two books of the series. This decision both pushes her to carry out other acts of rebellion and solidifies her as a subject.”467 It is Katniss striving to keep Peeta alive that drives her to succeed at the first Hunger Games she is in, and then in the Quarter Quell when

466 Roth, Divergent, 316. 467 Green-Barteet, “Rebellious Subjectivities,” 42.

185 they are both sent in once again. Green-Barteet then says of Tris that her “most rebellious act” is her “betrayal of someone she loves”468 and this is what solidifies her subjective position. Tris’ decision to go against Tobias/Four’s plans and follow her own path, which results in the final book being split between their two perspectives, is what forces her to engage in the most rebellious acts. Part of her betrayal of Tobias/Four is believing and partnering with his abusive father Marcus, whom Tobias/Four does not trust and has sought to escape from his whole life, however Tris knows Marcus is her only way of finding the truth about the factions: “Tobias said that dealing with Erudite was more important than finding out the truth… I have to help Marcus, if there is even a chance that he is telling the truth. I have to work against the people I love best.”469 Tris’ journey between factions and developing her sense of identity and autonomy all leads her to this decision where she acts alone and follows her instinct to uncover the truth, at the expense of her relationships with those she loves.

Perhaps it may be troubling to realise that the male love interests play such an important role in the rebellious acts that form the basis for the Katniss and Tris forming their subjectivity however this can be read a demonstration of their capacity for caring and empathy. It is

Katniss’ ability to protect and care for Peeta, as well as her respect and caring for Rue’s body that results in a televised act of rebellion which incites greater fighting against the Capitol that motivates her actions. For Tris it her transgression of betraying the man she loves that demonstrates the importance of their relationship and how Tobias/Four plays an integral role in Tris’ self-actualisation. It also demonstrates her connection with her mother as it is the drive to know about her mother’s death that pushes her to constantly be seeking the truth.

Green-Barteet rounds out her chapter by saying that Katniss’ and Tris’ acts of rebellion reject

468 Green-Barteet, “Rebellious Subjectivities,” 46. 469 Roth, Insurgent, 424.

186 the roles set out for them in their society but also allow them to “redefine themselves and their roles in their societies, through claiming individual autonomy and their subjectivity.”470

In a dystopic society where every citizen is oppressed and forcibly categorised, it is only through rebellious acts that the female protagonists are able to change themselves and change their society. Their acts of aggression are not masculine behaviours, they are necessary to the character’s autonomy and tied to their actual identity.

The rebellious acts that are performed in these texts, and the notion of female rebellion, is a form of feminine autonomy and agency. This form of rebellion is centred on how young women are able to use aggressiveness and assertiveness as a means of better understanding themselves, their situation in society, and the ways in which they are capable of changing or inciting change in oppressive societal structures. The typically favoured masculine labelled traits, aggressiveness and assertiveness, that are the direct opposite of the “nice girl” labels that Fox outlined, are rewarded when performed by these female characters. They are not punished for their behaviour. Fox examines forms of social control that are used to restrict women and their progress in society to maintain a stratification system that places hegemonic masculinity as always in power and control. As mentioned previously, one method of socially controlling girls and women is through the “nice girl” paradigm, where women’s behaviour is policed by others and themselves to ensure they are performing the submissive role of the

“nice girl”. Acts of rebellion are directly opposed to performing the role of the “nice girl” and the way that Tris and Katniss are able to rebel against the policing of their societies as well as the social organisations that oppress them.

470 Green-Barteet, “Rebellious Subjectivities,” 48.

187 Perhaps the way to escape the liminal state of becoming is not to be focussed on the self, but rather to be focussed on the self in relation to the social world and to the oppressive state. It is about changing the world before stepping into a new identity. Tris and Katniss must recreate themselves in order to recreate their world, and their world must change to accommodate them. In these dystopic narratives it is very clear and literal what the expectations placed on people are and how society controls their growth and potential identities. This reflects the real world where readers can see that is not just obvious patriarchal or oppressive social control that must be questioned and rebelled against. It is all the expectations of gender and the labelling of young women that stunts their formation of identity, and therefore must be destroyed. In order to achieve an identity and a gender that is not tenuous and does not require constant performance and reperformance, the reaffirmation of the concept of how identity is formed, and the role personal autonomy plays in that, has to be altered. Only then can masculine and feminine behaviours no longer be held in a binary hierarchy. Instead, all of these behaviours become accessible to all, enabling them to achieve a fully realised sense of self.

188 Chapter Six

Masculine and Queer Women

Reading masculine women and the forms of masculinity presented or performed by women is similar to reading and examining femininity and its construction. It requires an understanding of the performance of gender and an understanding of how the gender binary prioritises hegemonic masculinity in men and both values and others hegemonic femininity performed by women. Previously this thesis attempted a revaluing of femininity external to this gender binary by exploring how femininity is created and performed and considering what methods or theories can be used to imagine beyond a hierarchical binary of gender. This chapter will directly invoke Sedgwick’s paranoid and reparative reading methods explicitly to enact a paranoid and reparative reading of the Hunger Games series and the Divergent series as a way to examine how forms and types of masculinity are being performed by the female characters. In doing so, this chapter seeks to revalue masculine women. It will be paranoid in that it assumes representations of masculine women can be harmful as they sustain patriarchal values of preferencing masculinity and masculine behaviours and othering femininities. While masculinity is preferred in this value system, when it is being performed by women it becomes problematized. These masculine female characters are often used to show both the artifice and construction of femininity or how it is the ‘preferred’ state for women in a patriarchal gender system. It demonstrates how masculinity is naturalised and positioned as hierarchically above femininity, again placing femininity as the less valued and

Other. The reparative reading will then attempt to see these characters as not reinforcing gender binaries but rather as transgressing and changing this binary in a constructive way that allows for new conceptions of gender and performance to emerge.

189 The terms paranoid and reparative, as developed by Sedgwick, form the basis of this chapter’s analysis. Broadly, a paranoid reading is a project of “unveiling hidden violence”471 and Sedgwick says it “would seem to depend on a cultural context.”472 It is not enough to be paranoid about a text as it is, but rather one should also be paranoid of the context within which it exists. A reparative reading, on the other hand, is reading from a position of hope, and is opposite in affect to paranoid reading: “No less acute than a paranoid position, no less realistic, no less attached to a project of survival, and neither less nor more delusional or fantasmatic, the reparative reading position undertakes a different range of affects, ambitions, and risks.”473 Rather than looking for hidden and harmful violence, a reparative lens looks to heal. Paranoid and reparative readings are affective, they are personal, and this is what makes it difficult to analyse objectively how the protagonists of these series represent gender. Each reader will be personally affected in a different way and experience these texts differently; their experience of reading and understanding gender in these texts will be different. These experiences will be different still from the critical reader’s experience, and it is the experience of a critical reader approaching gender in these texts that this chapter is focussed on. A paranoid critical reader is looking for this harm; they are ready to respond personally to the texts and be personally hurt by them. The degree to which they are affected cannot be known until they read the text, which is why it is important to read these texts with paranoia in order to find how hurtful representations of gender and identity possibilities occur and how they might negatively impact readers.

The previous chapter introduced queer theory as a way to consider liminality in these texts and imagine the potential futures and the identities that can be created when the restrictions

471 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 140. 472 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 140. 473 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 150.

190 of oppressive social orders are altered. Queer theory is particularly useful here to understand the dystopic genre of YA fiction and concepts of utopia, as well as to explore how gender binaries can be problematized and deconstructed, and what can occur after this. The word dystopic has many facets in this analysis, most obviously these texts are part of the dystopic fiction genre. They present a dystopic society where people are categorized, stifled by social immobility, and in the extreme of the Hunger Games series, the children are made to fight to the death as part of a televisual spectacle. The dystopic nature of the Hunger Games series was related to Edelman’s work where the symbol of the Child is linked to futurism. Actively killing children to sustain the queer power of the Capitol creates a dystopia where there is no sense of a future. Michelle Abate makes a similar reading of the queer and the Hunger

Games, drawing the connection between the residents of the Capitol, the queer, and the dystopic. In her paranoid reading of queerness of the Hunger Games Abate comments that

“the trilogy suggests that the rise of a cosmopolitan form of queerness will lead to the downfall of the United States.”474 In this paranoid reading the queer figure and the queer society is one that is stagnant, lacking future and lacking potential. Taking Sedgwick’s use of paranoid reading to its logical conclusion, these books are subconsciously hurtful to queer readers by making this link, and they are therefore covertly homophobic.

A reparative reading of the queerness in these texts would instead look at how the queer can be used to explore a world beyond a dystopia and the possibility of a utopia instead. As

Manter and Francis comment, Katniss as a queer figure is able to undo the current social organisation and push for a new future. Edelman argues in No Future that “to insist that the future stops here”475 is what is queerest about the figure of the Queer, and this is why Katniss is able to make such a change to her society: she stops the impending future. The future

474 Abate, “Queerness, and Paranoid Reading,” 405. 475 Edelman, No Future, 31.

191 stopped here, however, is the current concept of the future, the current replication of the past going forward to create a future, and in the case of these novels, it is this future that remains dystopic. Muñoz’s work is useful here to see how the concept of queer can offer hope and a multiplicity of potentials and futures rather than stagnation and finality. In Cruising Utopia

Muñoz challenges “various exhausted theoretical stances” of queer criticism and instead he implores those working in the field to “approach the queer critique from a renewed and newly animated sense of the social,” looking for the “varied potentialities that may abound.”476 In this call to reinvigorate queer criticism, Munoz not only asks the reader to reconsider hope and utopia, but he poses a challenge to them to instead “feel hope and to feel utopia.”477 It is a

“performative provocation” to invite readers to consider the new future, and the new potential: “Utopia in this book has been about an insistence on something else, something better, something dawning.”478 It is not enough for critics to theorise about concepts of futurity and examine what utopia may be, but to feel it and experience it. It is about feeling hope and utopia for the future.

Reading the utopic in the dystopic

The Hunger Games series and the Divergent series, while being dystopic fiction, both end with a sense of hope for the future, and a sense of physical and emotional healing after escaping the dystopic. Part of this hope plays into several generic expectations of both dystopic fiction and young adult fiction. YA fiction, previously categorised under the title of children’s fiction, still holds many genre similarities, such as the traditional happy ending.

Mike Cadden writes that children’s fantasy fiction often uses the now “unfashionable” literary device of the epilogue as “it can provide the implied reader reassuring completion

476 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 18. 477 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 18. 478 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 189.

192 beyond closure.”479 The epilogues of these series’ are not ‘happy’ endings though, as the protagonists do not escape the realities of death and trauma caused by their experiences.

Notably Tris is dead at the end of Allegiant and it is Tobias/Four who has to live through his trauma, and while Katniss and Peeta both survive they are forever changed by their trauma.

As Cadden notes: “The epilogue offered by Collins denies us a simple, thoughtless happily- ever-after for the champion Katniss insofar as even with security and love, she is understood to be the product of her experiences, and so happiness has to be constructed continuously, maintained rather than just experienced by her.”480 These narratives are not typically happy but they are hopeful. They end on a message of healing, showing how happiness and healing can occur, and they are a message of hope for a future beyond the dystopic society that the protagonists escaped though changing their society.

This feeling of hope and a sense of healing is common to endings of YA dystopic fiction.

Day, Green-Barteet, and Montz comment on this, noting that “the potential for hope has often been identified as a feature that distinguishes YA dystopias from those written for adult audiences.”481 There is an expectation that these YA stories will inspire hope in their readers.

Similarly they note that open endings are also prevalent in dystopian fiction written by women authors, and that by resisting “closed” endings these female authors of dystopian fiction “allow readers and protagonists to hope.”482 There is a theme of recovery, that does not naively hope but instead recognises the trauma that has occurred, but allows for a healing.

The final lines from Allegiant and Mockingjay respectively demonstrate how the texts use this more open ending that invites hope and healing. Tobias/Four is left to move forward after

479 Cadden, “The Epilogue,” 343. 480 Cadden, “The Epilogue,” 354. 481 Day, Green-Barteet, and Montz, "Introduction," 10. 482 Raffaella Baccolini, “The Persistence of Hope in Dystopian Science Fiction,” PMLA 119, no. 3 (May, 2004): 520.

193 Tris’ death and Katniss is reflecting on how to explain to their children what she and Peeta went through:

Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, every one. We can’t

escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend

each other.483

I’ll tell them how I survive it. I’ll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to

take pleasure in anything because I am afraid it could be taken away. That’s when I

make a list in my head of every act of goodness I’ve seen someone do. It’s like a

game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years. But there are

much worse games to play.484

These endings are the utopic sense described by Muñoz, it is the sense of something dawning and something better. It invites readers to see the potential for the future, to see how dystopia can be overcome, to feel hope in the face of past hardship. There is a sense of mending and of community. Unlike the repetition of constructing binary gender and identities, and the repetition that creates a stagnant dystopic future, this future requires a repetition that Katniss prefers, and it is through this new repetition that we mend each other.

A paranoid reading of texts would be looking for the dystopic, not just in their societies, but also looking for the concept of ‘queer’ and how queer identities limit and stagnate. A reparative reading is looking for utopia in the queer, it is creating potentials and new perspectives. With regards to masculinity in women (and masculine women and the variants that also exist in the complicated relationship between women and feminine coded bodies

483 Roth, Allegiant, 526. 484 Collins, Mockingjay, 455.

194 accessing and performing masculinity) it would be paranoid to read these characters as trapped in the gender binary and constantly in peril as a result. If we acknowledge the trappings of the gender binary and societal expectations placed upon people to perform accordingly within this construct, then a reparative look at masculine women as accessing both sides of the gender binary in a positively valued transgressive move. A paranoid and dystopic reading of these characters would assume that they are disguising normative gender tropes, that they are not transgressive but rather that they are reaffirming gender binaries and offering no potential for growth outside that gender construct, personally or socially. To find the utopic depends on reparative reading of masculine women, and to push this concept further, to fully locate gender as not isolated to the physical body but instead in the realm of the theoretical. The utopic is the insistence on “something else”485 and that something else is not adhering to concepts of gender constructs but rather exists beyond and separate to that.

Perhaps a lack of a gender binary being performed can allow more potential, more identity and more freedom.

All of this is not to say that masculine women are inherently queer, though this is a point to return to later; it is however the transgressions of the gender binary that are queer.

Dismantling the binary of gender and the revaluing of femininity from the othering of a hegemonic masculinity is key to queer theory as much as it is foundational to feminist theory.

Masculinity or masculine behaviours in women are often tolerated or allowed if the women are conventionally attractive and visibly coded and recognised as feminine. This joint occupation of femininity and masculinity however is not seen as a goal; it is positioned as a condition of accessing masculinity and the associations of agency and power that go along with it. Therefore paranoid readings of masculine women, as women who occupy masculinity

485 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 189.

195 and femininity, can reaffirm harmful gender binaries and hierarchies. Punishing masculine women for their masculinity reaffirms a naturalisation of a gender binary that aligns women solely with femininity and denies them access to masculinity. Masculine women have often been vilified and used to force women into performing and pursuing compulsory femininity and compulsory heterosexuality lest they be found lacking and socially ostracized. A paranoid perspective of this would then assume that masculine women therefore forces compulsory femininity and relegates femininity still as the Other. Alternatively, another paranoid reading of masculine women if they are a somehow rewarded, would suggest that they reaffirm the position of masculinity as the most valued in the gender hierarchy. This paranoid position creates impossible contradictions in the lives of women and eventually sustains gender stereotypes and a gender hierarchy, as there is no winning. To look as masculine women reparatively however would be to acknowledge the gender binary and the hierarchy as what is flawed, not the individuals who embrace or perform forms of gender. It would be reparative to consider how in containing multitudes of gender expression these masculine women are offering a representation of how a person can exist outside of the trappings of the hierarchical understandings of binary gender. They would be seen as transgressive rather than reaffirming gender hierarchies. The examination going forward will look at the joint occupation of masculinity and femininity through the paranoid lens to first see if these characters repeat and recreate patriarchal gender stereotypes, and then move to a reparative reading to consider how they may be transgressive representations beyond gender stereotypes.

196 A paranoid look at heterosexuality and the joint occupation of masculinity and femininity

This blending of masculinity and femininity in a character can be read either as paranoid and dystopic, as feeding into the sustaining of gender norms and hierarchies, or can be read reparatively and as a first step towards a utopic future that imagines itself beyond the gender binary. This joint occupation of masculinity and femininity is notable through the ways that femininity is used as a form of mitigation of masculinity in female characters. Physical attractiveness is one such narrative shorthand to reassure readers that these characters can still be read as feminine rather than masculine, and are not, therefore, transgressive by being both.

The question of conventional attractiveness is one that is raised in both the Divergent series and the Hunger Games series in order to feminise their main characters and reassure readers that they are performing an appropriate balance of femininity and masculinity. It is this balance that allows the characters to be ‘accepted’ in a society that rejects masculine women.

It is, however, a specific kind of conventional attractiveness; it is a heterosexual and heteronormative form of attractiveness, that clearly positions Tris and Katniss as attractive to men. Hegemonic femininity must be constructed and performed in response and relation to hegemonic masculinity. Vikki Krane’s work on the performance and construction of gender in sportswomen and female athletes is useful when looking at the way masculine women occupy the space of both masculinity and femininity in a tenuous way. In her work, Krane finds that these sportswomen are allowed access to masculine traits and behaviours on the condition that they also perform satisfactory level of hegemonic femininity. These real world examples of physically strong and exceptional women having to perform successfully this balance of masculinity and femininity offer an entry point into how this concept is represented in fiction.

197 Expressive and demonstratable heteronormativity and attractiveness is not isolated to women crossing the gender binary however, as Krane also notes in her assessment of sportswomen performing femininity, sportsmen must also conform with hegemonic masculinity.486 In the field of sport importance is placed on clear gender definitions between masculinity and femininity, which Krane summarises as corresponding “to characteristics of compulsory heterosexuality:”487

Women in sport learn to carefully balance feminine and less feminine characteristics.

They can be strong and athletic yet also must have a heterosexually attractive

appearance.488

It is not enough for them to excel in their field of physical athleticism, these sportswomen must have specifically a “heterosexually attractive appearance.” There must be clear gender coding being performed by both men and women in order to establish the difference between them. Perhaps from this example we can understand then that masculinity is allowed to be performed by a feminine person so long as femininity and heteronormativity are not given up.

Earlier in this thesis there was an unpacking of the theoretically feminine and conventionally attractive, whereas now this chapter will look at the specific form of femininity and sexuality being expected and performed by women in terms of the heterosexual and hegemonic feminine. There is a clear distinction between the feminine and heteronormative femininity, as while both are positioned as Other to hegemonic masculinity, the heteronormative feminine requires another set of codes and performances. Women are not only expected to perform femininity and be conventionally beautiful, they must be heterosexually attractive to

486 Vikki Krane, “We Can Be Athletic and Feminine, But Do We Want To? Challenging Hegemonic Femininity in Women’s Sport,” Quest 53, no.1 (2001): 118. 487 Krane, “Women’s Sport,” 118. 488 Krane, “Women’s Sport,” 116.

198 the hegemonic masculine. There remains the fear of the “ugly” woman, the undesirable women, and Jack Halberstam’s work on female masculinity draws this line between the ugly woman and lesbian:

Lesbianism has long been associated with female masculinity and female masculinity

in turn has been figured as undesirable by linking it in essential and unquestionable

ways to female ugliness. The dilemma of the masculine and therefore ugly woman

functions as the spectre that haunts feminine identification in order to ensure that few

women cathect onto female masculinity through either identification or desire.489

Fear of ugliness and a fear of presenting as non-heterosexual is a way to control women’s bodies and performance of femininity and identity. By engaging with this fear of the homosexual woman as a haunting spectre, women reject female masculinity and eagerly embrace hegemonic femininity to retain their status in society as heterosexual women. Rather than rejecting constructs of masculinity and femininity in binary, there is a knee-jerk total rejection of masculinity.

While beauty is a way of mitigating the masculinity performed by tough or strong women, beauty alone it is not enough. What is required is an attractiveness predicated on the male observer and made heterosexual by his desire and gaze. Laura Mulvey theorised how the male gaze projects male fantasy onto females490, and similarly John Berger’s work in Ways of

Seeing shows how women understand themselves as being surveyed by men; it is how women are perceived by men (and how women understand that perception) that is important:

“She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what normally

489 J. Halberstam, “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Men, Women, and Masculinity,” in Masculinity Studies & Feminist Theory: New Directions, ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 359. 490 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 11.

199 thought of as the success of her life.”491 The Hunger Games and Divergent series mitigate

“ugliness” and fear of lesbianism by featuring heterosexual relationships and notable scenes that comment on Katniss’ and Tris’ physical beauty from the perspective of the male characters. It is key that the female characters are shown to be understood as how they appear to men. Katniss and Tris are presented as not just attractive girls but as heterosexual love interests for the male leads. In keeping with the understanding that the only acceptable femininity is authentic, and that authenticity is the most valued identity trait, Katniss and Tris don’t view themselves as beautiful. It is only through their relationships and being observed and told by these male characters that they are attractive that they, and we the reader, register them as heterosexually attractive. This relates to Berger’s comment of the inclusion of the mirror in the nude renaissance painting. He notes, “You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the paining Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.”492 These female characters are beautiful, but are unable to register their own beauty or bodies, as that positions them as vain or inauthentic. To draw again on contemporary teen culture, we see this point summarised by teen boyband sensation One

Direction in their debut song What Makes You Beautiful (2011) when they sang: “You don't know you're beautiful…That's what makes you beautiful.”493 Young women who do not know their beauty and are not aware of how they are physically attractive, particularly to men, are the most attractive. They are authentic in their attractiveness. Katniss and Tris both fall into this trope of being more attractive because they don’t know their beauty. They are not performing an excessive and unattractive level of femininity that is tied to vanity and has previously been discussed in this thesis as an undesirable performance of femininity. Rather,

491 John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 2008), 46. 492 Berger, Ways of Seeing, 51. 493 One Direction “What Makes You Beautiful,” recorded July 2011, track 1 on Up All Night, Syco Music and Columbia Records, 2011, compact disc.

200 they have managed to capture the right amount of ‘authenticity’ that renders them unknowingly attractive and free from the traps of the overt ‘performativity’ of femininity.

In the Divergent series Tris and Tobias/Four begin having a romantic relationship in the first book and much of their narrative involves how their relationship evolves during the rebellion.

While Tris’ makeover scene allows the readers to see how Tris is becoming “noticeable”,494 it is through Tobias/Four’s actual noticing of her that her status as an attractive female is solidified. Even when her relationship with femininity becomes tenuous as she develops muscles and he body changes, Tobias/Four’s attraction to her does not waver. In fact, it increases and is more notable as they begin to flirt with each other. In a scene that fans have come to quote as a memorable moment for the couple, Tris comes across Tobias/Four while he is drunk, and he comments “You look good, Tris.”495 Tris is surprised by him saying this as she is unsure of his feelings for her and does not realise that he is attracted to her, showing her authenticity of beauty. In the later published book Four: A Divergent Collection, Roth has written select scenes from Divergent from Tobias/Four’s perspective and this scene is one included giving the readers an insight into why Tobias/Four says this iconic line: “‘You look good, Tris,’ I say, because I’m not sure she knows it, and she should.”496 Even here it is notable that Tris does not register her own appearance as “good,” but Tobias/Four is able to see her attractiveness and is compelled to tell her. Publishing this scene from both perspectives solidifies its place and importance in the Divergent universe, both as significant to their relationship but also to the qualifying of Tris’ attractiveness.

494 Roth, Divergent, 87. 495 Roth, Divergent, 249. 496 Veronica Roth, Four: A Divergent Collection, (London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2014), 285.

201 Through their relationship Tris’ status as heterosexually attractive is further solidified and qualified in a later scene where Tris and Tobias/Four finally kiss after the tension has been building between them for most of the book. There is dialogue that is explicit about her attractiveness and Tobias/Four’s attraction to her. Tris again comments on how she does not see herself as pretty, and it is up to Tobias/Four to explain why he finds her attractive:

“I’m not trying to be self-deprecating,” I say, “I just don’t get it. I’m younger. I’m not

pretty. I-“

He laughs, a deep laugh that sounds like it came from deep inside him, and touches

his lips to my temple.

“Don’t pretend,” I say breathily. “You know I’m not. I’m not ugly, but I am certainly

not pretty.”

“Fine. You’re not pretty. So?” He kisses my cheek. ‘I like how you look. You’re

deadly smart. You’re brave…”497

Rather than correcting her, Tobias/Four goes along with Tris’ claim that she isn’t pretty but emphasises that he likes how she looks, as well as values her other traits that are not purely physical. What this does is to agree with the assertion that perhaps physical beauty isn’t the ultimate goal nor the sole reason Tris is attractive, which is an important message to promote to young girls. It still however manages to play into this trope of authentic beauty being what is truly most attractive. Tris may not be read as hyper-feminine and does not perform hyper- femininity, however she is being positioned as heterosexually femininely attractive through the eyes of her male partner.

Heterosexual attractiveness is an easy way to establish femininity in a character as it is created by placing the feminine other in direct relation to a masculine figure. The authenticity

497 Roth, Divergent, 337.

202 of this attractiveness is essential as it implies an inherent femininity exists and continues to be sustained regardless of how many masculine traits are also performed. It eschews the fear of the ugly and the fear of the lesbian and clearly directs the reader to think of these characters as attractive, heteronormative girls. It is used much more heavily in the Hunger Games series than in the Divergent series as Katniss’ relationship with femininity and masculinity is much more in question than Tris’. Katniss’ romance plot as mitigating her masculinity plays out differently as she rejects romance for much of the series, is only invested in keeping herself and her sister alive, takes up her father’s place in the family and often performs masculine behaviours and dresses in more masculine clothing. While romance plays a part in the novels there is a distinct feeling from Katniss that she herself is not concerned about the love triangle498 between herself, Peeta, and Gale, that is being constructed around her.

Much has been written about the queerness of Katniss and how the heterosexual romances in the series are used as a way to feminise her and ascribe hegemonic heteronormative femininity to her character despite her disinterest. We see this in the interview scene when

Peeta reveals to the people of Panem that he has feelings for Katniss. The fact that she is someone worthy of male affection and attention is used as a way to make Katniss more appealing to the audience. While the authenticity of Peeta’s feelings for Katniss remains in question there is no way to deny that it adds to her performance, making her characterisation as a charming tribute more believable for the viewers: “…Peeta has made me an object of love. Not just his. To hear him tell it, I have many admirers. And if the audience really thinks we’re in love … I remember how strongly they responded to his confession…they eat this stuff up in the Capitol.”499 Where the Divergent series only hints at self-awareness of the

498 Interestingly, love triangles have been discussed by Eve Sedgwick in her work Between Men as a way to conceptualise queer desires. The erotic triangle, Sedgwick theorised, examined the tension and “homosocial desire” between the two male rivals competing for the attention and love of the female. In noting the love triangle here however, I am commenting on how the affections of two men make Katniss an object of desire, despite her disinterest in participating in a romantic plot. 499 Collins, The Hunger Games, 165.

203 performance of femininity and heteronormativity, the Hunger Games series integrates these modes of performance into the story and makes it obvious for readers. It is clearly beneficial for Katniss to perform being in a heterosexual romance story, as it makes her appear more feminine and likeable and, consequently, she will gain more sponsors while in the game.

While they are in the Games, Katniss is consciously constructing her heterosexual romance with Peeta and is always aware of how she is performing for the audience of the Capitol, the citizens of Panem, and also for Haymitch whose voice she imagines as instructing her. She is aware of the surveillance she is under and she knowingly constructs a feminine persona to portray during the Interviews. She is, therefore, constructing their romance for the viewers.

Michelle Abate’s reading of queerness in the Capitol speaks to this point, noting how just as

Katniss needed to practice femininity under the guidance of Effie, she “also needs to practice performing heterosexuality with Peeta during the games.”500 It is not something that comes naturally to Katniss, and just as the scenes where Effie and others coach her reveals the artifice of femininity and the construction of identity, Katniss’ narration in the games highlights how she is acting deliberately to construct the “star-crossed lovers” narrative:

Haymitch couldn't be sending me a clearer message. One kiss equals one pot of broth.

I can almost hear his snarl. “You're supposed to be in love, sweetheart. The boy's

dying. Give me something I can work with!” And he's right…I've got to give the

audience something more to care about. Star-crossed lovers desperate to get home

together. Two hearts beating as one. Romance.501

Katniss’ performance of heterosexuality is instructed by the desire the Capitol has for the

“star-crossed lovers” narrative as well as Haymitch driving the importance of this

500 Abate, “Queerness, and Paranoid Reading,” 414. 501 Collins, The Hunger Games, 316.

204 performance.502 It demonstrates how heterosexuality is a narrative device, one that can be performed and used to the advantage of the players. It also highlights how it is societal expectations that create and enforce heterosexuality as a means of validating girls experiences.

The citizens of the Capitol want the romance narrative to play out as it is a form of entertainment, and Haymitch, in understanding the importance of constructing a compelling narrative for consumption, exists as an instructing voice in Katniss’ mind while in the Games.

She is not motivated herself to perform this romance, but the voice of Haymitch, the idea of the sponsors and the optics of the Capitol keep her in this performance and keep her on task:

“I'm about to leave when I remember the importance of sustaining the star-crossed lover routine and I lean over and give Peeta a long, lingering kiss. I imagine the teary sighs emanating from the Capitol and pretend to brush away a tear of my own.”503 This performance is more than a construction of a romance or an identity, it is the construction of a compelling narrative to be consumed by the viewers. It is meant to be a story that the people want to see and in turn is used to make them sympathise and connect with Katniss and

Peeta. This double layer of narrative forces us as readers to question what is really being valued in the Capitol. Do they value heterosexuality and heteronormativity or the performance of heterosexual romance as a narrative trope? Is it the drive of the narrative, the suspense of doomed young lovers and is this narrative explicitly tied up in heterosexuality?

Once again, the series further complicates itself, as despite making performativity an accessible concept to readers through this lens, it also employs the heterosexual love triangle plot as a way to double down on Katniss’ position as a feminine character. While Katniss knowingly constructs her narrative of romance with Peeta in the games, Collins is

502 Collins, The Hunger Games, 165. 503 Collins, The Hunger Games, 341-342.

205 constructing a heterosexual love triangle for the narrative of the series to be enjoyed by real world readers.

No matter how masculine or queer Katniss presents, the love triangle places her as the subject of heterosexual desire and clearly indicates to the reader that while she may not acknowledge her own physical beauty there are many boys who do see her as beautiful and attractive.

Again, while much has been written about how this heterosexual love plot is used to feminise

Katniss it is interesting to consider the possibility that the love triangle actually works in favour of Katniss’ masculinity. Whitney Elaine Jones’ chapter “Katniss and Her Boys: Male

Readers, the Love Triangle and Identity Formation” is a work that takes a unique approach to looking at the ambiguous gender of Katniss and how Collins’s series creates and complicates representations of traditional gender roles. Jones starts her analysis by positioning her work as looking at the love triangle configuration of Katniss, Peeta and Gale as the site of this gender exploration. She positions her reading of the texts in the scholarship of invisible masculinities, locating her work as focussing on representations of masculine roles and how they play out in the characters of the love triangle. This is a reparative way of viewing the love triangle and further is a reparative way to examine the problematising of Katniss as a character that is both masculine and feminine. The utopic idea of an identity beyond the binary of gender is one that Jones engages with as she too reads Katniss as being representative of this utopic concept, one of unity and without binaries, one that allows

Katniss to be both masculine and feminine.

In this view, allowing Katniss to take up this utopic theoretical gender space, where she can comfortably occupy and access masculinity and femininity, the heterosexual love triangle is not a mode of control to ensure her being read as feminine. Instead the love triangle is where

206 different representations of masculinity are explored. Jones describes Peeta as being more aligned with “western ideas of passive and nurturing femininity”504 and Gale representing

“extreme Western notions of active and destructive masculinity”505 and in having to choose between them Katniss is in fact choosing between the “warring factions”506 within herself. As

Jones argues:

Katniss’ ambiguous and thus radical gender identity is manifested through the love

triangle itself, creating for Katniss not a triangle of romantic choices, but a triangle of

identity and gender choices.507

Examining the heterosexual love triangle in this way uncomplicates some of the issues other theorists have seen with the way the series seems to focus too heavily on a heterosexual romantic element. It similarly changes the marriage and children of the final scenes from being a “cop-out” that ensures Katniss remains an “appropriately gendered, reproductive, and ultimately docile subject“508 to a more queer and radical ending. Reading the love triangle and romantic relationships of the series as representative of an exploration of masculine identity and how to embrace both masculinity and femininity beyond a hierarchical binary, the series reads as a much more reparative text.

A reparative look at heterosexuality and the joint occupation of masculinity and femininity

If we shed the paranoid reading of heterosexual relationships in these novels as a mode of controlling masculine girls, we can perform this reparative reading and examine how the heterosexual relationships in these novels can actually explore this utopic future where the

504 Whitney Elaine Jones, “Katniss and Her Boys: Male Readers, the Love Triangle and Identity Formation,” in Space and Place in the Hunger Games: New Readings of the Novels, ed. Deidre Anne Evans. Garriott, Whitney Elaine Jones, and Julie Elizabeth Tyler (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014), 62. 505 Jones, “Her Boys,” 62. 506 Jones, “Her Boys,” 62. 507 Jones, “Her Boys,” 64. 508 Broad, “Utopia as Romance,” 125.

207 gender binary does not exist or at the very least is not oppressive. In deconstructing the love triangle trope in the Hunger Games series Jones is offering a reading of the text that challenges gender roles and how gender identity is being constructed in the texts:

The love triangle-turned-gender-spectrum reveals that Collins’ representation of

gender – masculine and feminine – within her trilogy seeks equality between

differences and opportunity for expression no matter an individual’s biological sex.509

This reading of the Hunger Games allows for an untangling of the heterosexual element of the relationships and reads them as metaphors of gender identity, rather than tools of hegemonic masculinity ensuring the othering of femininity. Interestingly Tris and

Tobias/Four’s relationship can also be seen to represent how the heterosexual relationships are a way to play with gender roles and expectations. Roth said that in writing both

Tobias/Four’s and Tris’ voices she was attempting to play with traditional gender roles, saying: “Tris has a stereotypically masculine ‘stiff upper lip’ kind of voice, and Four’s voice is more poetic and intimate, which we might consider stereotypically feminine.”510 This means that, while Katniss can more readily be read as a queer character, Roth has also been playing with the gender roles of the heterosexual protagonists Tris and Tobias/Four, which queers their relationship. This is perhaps the reparative consideration of their love story; their gender roles in the relationship are complex and both inhabit a masculine and feminine position in their relationship.

Jones’ work also uses the discourse of utopia quite heavily which is a recurring theme in the

Hunger Games scholarship and creates an interesting reading of the series ending where the gender binarized dystopic society has shifted into a neutralised utopia. This is an idea that

509 Jones, “Her Boys,” 77. 510 Veronica Roth, “Q&A with Veronica Roth,” in Allegiant (London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2016), 4.

208 Jones reads in the description of Katniss and Peeta’s children, that the children both are a combination of their parents attributes, and represent the complimentary nature and unity that is possible when Katniss and Peeta become a pair. Jones ends her work applauding the way the series and Katniss present to the readership that “there is no line between masculine and feminine, and that we are all just a jumble of good traits and bad, and that we can choose which of those traits best define who we are.”511 This statement is problematic, as while

Jones’ conclusion about the series is indeed also about the concept of the utopian ideal beyond gender, the series itself has not done any of the deconstructing work to get there.

Jones’ reading of Katniss is that she has achieved this gender neutrality, when really, she still exists in a narrative bound up in the gender binary and these books exist in a world equally obsessed with gender conformity. It is perhaps an idealised conclusion given that it ignores the way the Capitol is still framed as queer and “contemptible”.512 Again, in her reading of the Capitol as queer, Michelle Abate notes how the books have a more “multifaceted and complicated commentary” on the issues of heterosexuality and queerness, and of masculinity and femininity, as their lines continue to be blurred and both are framed in “less-than- flattering ways.”513 There is no definitive commentary. The books have a complicated relationship with these concepts of gender performance and queer identities which is why

Jones’ analysis feels lacking. It is reductive to suggest that there is a choice of traits, that equal access to these traits exists. This is similar to the “a priori”514 power postfeminism allows young women, in that it assumes that the hard work of deconstruction has been done and that there already exists this utopic space beyond hierarchical gender binaries. This view presumes that the way an individual makes their personal choices is what is keeps them from performing outside the gender binary, instead of considering the limits of choices actually

511 Jones, “Her Boys,” 79. 512 Abate, “Queerness, and Paranoid Reading,” 409. 513 Abate, “Queerness, and Paranoid Reading,” 416. 514 Harris and Dobson, “Theorizing Agency,” 152.

209 available that and how the goal of making these choices available to all is still an ongoing project.

Forms of social control are not always presented as inherently negative or oppressive and it is important to look beyond the language of empowerment, choice, and the individual in feminist theory to see how these social constructs are restrictive. The binary of the genders and the hierarchical valuing of hegemonic masculinity is one that is located in patriarchal ideals and control. The policing and coding of behaviour in young women, as well as the codes of femininity and masculinity, are also defined, constructed and enforced by some feminist ideals and values. If we understand that one of the goals of feminism overall is to encourage autonomy and agency in women, and to turn women into active subjects as opposed to objects of oppressive patriarchal regimes, then these too are codes being enforced on young women. Rather than attempting to locate this agency and autonomy outside of a gender binary, in postfeminist culture and in some a third-wave feminist theory, girls and women are encouraged to be assertive and engage in masculine traits. There is an encouragement to be aggressive in masculine coded ways while still performing femininity.

While this is tapping into a reparative reading of the characters’ occupation of joint masculine and feminine positions, again it is problematised as it links to concerns of neoliberal individualism where women are encouraged to participate in capitalist culture and individualism without being concerned with greater social change. They can choose to access some form of agency and autonomy while not being critical of why certain choices exist and how these choices play into upheld social beliefs that value masculinity generally.

It is not enough to theorise reparative hope that a utopia beyond a restrictive hierarchical gender binary can exist socially, or that it does, and we are all simply humans making

210 choices. Rather, it is important to look more closely at how this concept of a lack of gender binary can exist; either through neutralising hierarchies and binaries in gender or a blending of gender ascriptions and what could be the negative effect of expecting women to access both masculine and feminine roles without the social critique. One should also look at how toughness in women is a trait of the action genre entrenched in postfeminist culture and is applicable to Katniss and Tris, and what it means for them to be trapped in these archetypal tough female heroine roles. It must be acknowledged that some waves and interpretation of feminist theory in attempting to empower women do not acknowledge that it is through the recoding and revaluing of femininity that this empowerment can occur, not simply through demanding that women uncritically perform and take part in masculine behaviours.

Masculine and tough women are subversive in a society where hegemonic femininity is the social expectation, and that should be acknowledged and appreciated amongst the analysis and valorisation of femininity. They are neither the better or worse option, there are just different ways of reading gender being performed by women while certain value systems are still at play. To truly revalue the feminine there must be a deconstruction of binary gender hierarchies overall, a neutralising of what is perceived as feminine or masculine, and only then can we theorise that these traits are simply human and accessible to all.

“Supergirlhood” and the “tough girl” —ways of embodying both femininity and masculinity

If the goal is to have women and female characters occupy this joint masculine and feminine space, without their femininity being used to mitigate their masculinity and reaffirm gender binaries, what would this representation look like and is this even possible? Earlier, this thesis examined how postfeminist culture and the language of choice are used to disguise patriarchal ideas and consumer culture being packaged and sold to consumers who want to

211 engage with feminist ideals and politics. In a very similar way, autonomy is presented as an option to women who perform masculine behaviours, but who also maintain their femininity.

A term I would like to consider and continue to use for this chapter is that of “supergirlhood”; a girlhood which is beyond that of passivity and patriarchal femininity but still is inherently tied up in gender binary and othering.

It is the belief of some leading feminist researchers that the drive for perfection, for

supergirlhood, involves attempting to manage an impossible contradiction, that is, by

performing or taking up positions usually ascribed to femininity (care, nurturance,

emotionality) and simultaneously performing those ascribed to masculinity

(assertiveness, cleverness, rationality), all the while presenting oneself as

unambiguously as a woman.515

In the attempt to achieve what Ringrose and Walkerdine call “supergirlhood,” masculine traits must be performed at the same time as femininity. Neither can be surrendered. Rather than reinscribing value to femininity, what this “supergirlhood” encourages is still a devaluing of feminine traits but under the guise of being beyond them. It creates an

“impossible contradiction;” yet another untenable and tenuous form of identity for young women to strive towards.516 It is perhaps the direct opposite of the queer utopian potential – it is an identity sustained in the binary of gender and does not move beyond it.

Promoting this “supergirlhood” as a way women can access agency and form an identity in feminism without taking the necessary step to reconsider gender and the way gender is organised, binarised and sustained becomes a static form of social control. “Supergirlhood” offers no potential for revaluing the genders, rather it insists on valuing masculinity and forcing women to perform femininity to a certain measurable, critiquable and observable

515 Ringrose and Walkerdine. “Contemporary Dilemmas,” 10. 516 Ringrose and Walkerdine, “Contemporary Dilemmas,” 10.

212 level. Theoretically those engaging with “supergirlhood” can access the range of human

“traits” 517 without the constraints of binary gendering behaviours and actions, however their performance of femininity is still what is constantly being measured and critiqued. What

Ringrose and Walkerdine are noting is how women who are performing femininity as well as masculinity are held to a new elevated standard of performance. Part of this is the standard of performance of “supergirlhood” but this is also partly the expectation to perform a level of femininity that is still considered “acceptable” and unquestionable. It is presenting oneself as

“as unambiguously as a woman”518 that is the problem as it places a performative goal on women that is again unattainable and forces them into liminal forms of identity. It creates a new unattainable level of womanhood and femininity that creates again the stasis of becoming as described in the previous chapter. Attempting “supergirlhood” replicates these forms of identity that are always coded, measured, and observed in women and traps them in a liminal space rather than moving beyond it into a new creation of identity and gender.

The conditional masculine behaviours in women that must be tempered by femininity plays further into the valuing of masculinity as it forces femininity and the feminine into a position of submissiveness. As Sherrie Innes says of the “tough girl” in her book Tough Girls: “her tougher more masculine image suggests a greater variety of gender roles of women; at the same time however her toughness is often mitigated by her femininity, which American culture commonly associates with weakness.”519 Using femininity as a mitigation to masculinity is again relegating it as the Other and does not seem to offer any valuing of femininity on its own terms. This is opposed to the feminist project outlined in earlier chapters, which is about progressing towards an understanding and valuing of femininity

517 Jones, “Her Boys,” 79. 518 Ringrose and Walkerdine. “Contemporary Dilemmas,” 10. 519 Sherrie A. Inness, Tough Girl: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 5.

213 beyond binary gender roles. While the tough girl is able to access masculinity, toughness, and a greater variety of gender roles, she is being held back by an othering of femininity that speaks to the fact that popular and postfeminisms aren’t doing enough to examine how femininity is valued in society when it is performed by female bodies but also male and masculine presenting bodies.

Tough women, and physically muscular and masculine women, are inherently subversive in a society that values women for performing hyper and traditional femininity. When presented in popular media, as examined in Inness’ work, the “tough girl” can serve as a healthy representation of variant forms of gender and identity that can be performed. In creating, reading, and closely analysing these characters, however, it is not enough for them to simply exist in their stories, it is how their narrative plays out—how these tough girls exist and the social structures they are in—that matters.

Tough women can offer women new role models, but their toughness may also bind

women more tightly to traditional feminine roles — especially when the tough

woman is portrayed as a pretender to male power and authority, and someone who is

not tough enough to escape being punished by society for her gender-bending

behaviour.520

It is not enough to present tough girls to girl readers. These characters must exist in a narrative that also works to dismantle concepts of “male power and authority” and prove that tough women are not “pretenders” to this power. These tough women must be shown to be tough in a way that separates toughness and authority from binary gender ascriptions.

Presenting these women as tough and not punishable by their society will offer readers a new way of understanding how they too can perform gender and form unique identities.

520 Inness, Tough Girl, 5.

214 Toughness must exist outside gender to be just a human accessible trait in this utopia beyond gender binaries and hierarchies, however it is currently heavily coded as a masculine trait.

Femininity is commonly associated with weakness, as indicated by Sherrie Inness earlier, and therefore as the inverse of masculinity, which is associated with strength and power. This association with masculinity and strength allows men to access positions of power and denies this power to women. Inness elaborates on this in relation to the idea of “toughness” saying:

“Whatever our reservations about toughness may be, we worship it because of its association with success and strength. As long as men are the primary people associated with toughness, they will continue to be the ones associated with success and power.”521 Men and male characters can more easily access success and strength through toughness as a result of this association. Women and female characters are therefore excluded from success and strength unless they tap into masculinity and this toughness. It creates a landscape that does not allow for tough women to exist on their own merit. Just as femininity needs to be valued outside the gender binary perhaps this specific trait of toughness equally needs to be relocated outside of masculinity. By doing this, tough women can be read not as problematised masculine women, but as accessing this third option without binary gendered actions and behaviours.

Tough women can then exist on their own and as occupying their own space.

While masculinity and femininity are performed both in “tough girls” and “supergirlhood”, they are opposite concepts, as with “supergirlhood” unattainable expectations are created in relation to how women are to perform. “Supergirlhood” does not question gender stratification and gendering of actions and behaviours, whereas the tough woman draws attention to the creation and performance of gender. In “supergirlhood” is a presumption that the stratification of masculinity and femininity does not exist and that both are attainable to

521 Inness, Tough Girl, 14.

215 any woman conditionally. Unlike “supergirlhood” which does not draw attention to the binaries of gender, the tough girl forces the consideration of gender performance through her use of masculinity:

One reason the tough woman who adopts a persona that is strongly coded as

masculine is disturbing to many is that she reveals the artificiality of femininity as the

“normal” state of women. The masculine tough woman reveals that femininity is a

carefully crafted social construct that requires effort to maintain and perpetuate.522

She is subversive because she forces a consideration of how gender is created and performed.

She specifically draws attention to the artifice of femininity, which must always be maintained and performed, and in exposing the pretence behind femininity she subverts all concepts of identity. Where “supergirlhood” offers no challenge to current gender stereotypes the tough women and girls inherently do.

Beauty and beauty practices remain ways of performatively signalling femininity. Even in third-wave feminism, the reclamation of beauty practices demonstrates how there is a focus on physical beauty and its alignment with the feminine. Physical beauty and feminine attractiveness are some of the most policed form of femininity in women and are often used as a shorthand to temper the influence of masculinity on women. In looking at Vicki Krane’s work on athletic sportswomen and femininity there is a clear outlining of how women in real life who are physically strong must always tread the “fine line of acceptable femininity.”523

These sportswomen, like the character of the tough woman, must mitigate their masculinity and physical strength though emphasised femininity: “although there is greater acceptance of females engaging in sport behaviors, there still are limits as to how much athletic prowess

522 Inness, Tough Girl, 22. 523 Krane, “Women’s Sport,” 116.

216 and muscularity are socially acceptable.”524 Femininity must always be performed to a level deemed acceptable in order for these women to have access to masculinity and masculine traits, and this femininity is most readily performed through conforming to normative beauty standards. It creates a standard by which to measure physical bodies and assess which bodies are succeeding and which are failing.

As noted earlier in this thesis, in both the Hunger Games and the Divergent series, Katniss and Tris engage in normative beauty practices as a way to perform hegemonic femininity and heterosexuality, for both personal and social gain. Through their respective makeovers

Katniss and Tris are guided and coached on how to perform an appropriate level of femininity and beauty. These scenes expose the artifice of femininity to the reader by showing how femininity is constructed, and now these elements will be examined in the ways that they expose why femininity is being constructed. For Katniss the beauty practices and feminine performance she is coached to perform by characters like Effie and Cinna subdue her masculinity and make her more likeable for the audience of Panem. The build-up to the initial interview scene of The Hunger Games gives insight into how femininity is physically being constructed and performed by Katniss under instruction. It also shows how beauty gives Katniss access to the favour of the audience and allows her to retain elements of her masculine personality. Under Effie and Haymitch’s coaching Katniss is unable to find her performance angle, and finally comments to Cinna that his physical styling of her will hopefully mitigate the masculinity she is unable to stop performing: “Maybe he can make me look so wonderful, no one will care what comes out of my mouth.”525 Katniss’ personality is where she displays many masculine coded behaviours and they are made more palatable

524 Krane, “Women’s Sport,” 118. 525 Collins, The Hunger Games, 145.

217 when she is made over by Cinna and looking “as radiant as the sun.”526 Only when Katniss is dressed and performing a level of hyper-femininity recognised and appreciated by the Capitol can she access the benefits of her masculine spirit (that is greatly admired): “‘No one can help but admire your spirit.’ My spirit. This is a new thought. I’m not sure exactly what it means, but it suggests I’m a fighter. In a sort of brave way.”527 Katniss is safe to be a fighter when presented in this hyper-feminine way, and this is how beauty is used to allow masculinity in women.

In Tris’ body and physical appearance, however, the difference between muscular/masculine and feminine is less distinguished, as being more muscular is framed as being good and more attractive in the Divergent series. Returning to the scene where Tris discovers how her body has altered during the Dauntless initiation allows us to see again how her body is being read as a means of femininity or masculinity, but also why the readers are given this scene. In becoming physically stronger Tris’ body changes and when she notices it she seems almost surprised that a physical change has occurred:

I try to pull a pant leg over my thigh and it sticks just above my knee. Frowning, I

stare at my leg. A bulge of muscle is stopping the fabric…I step to the side so I stand

in front of the mirror. I see muscles that I couldn’t see before in my arms, legs, and

stomach. I pinch my side, where a layer of fat used to hint at curves to come. Nothing.

Dauntless initiation has stolen whatever softness my body had. Is that good, or bad?528

This description of Tris’ body draws readers attention to her physical change and also forces them to consider the question - is this muscular body good or bad? The language used in this scene suggests that it is bad, that somehow this gain of muscular definition and physical

526 Collins, The Hunger Games, 146. 527 Collins, The Hunger Games, 147. 528 Roth, Divergent, 167-168.

218 strength has “stolen” her “softness”, and the “hint of curves to come” which can both represent her femininity and womanhood. The word “stolen” also suggests that this femininity and softness was unwillingly taken by her newly developed muscles. It implies that something has been lost, some potential femininity that was hinted at and was yet to come will now never arrive due to her now more masculine physique.

Tris is now treading this fine line between masculinity and femininity and it allows the reader to question their understanding of muscular bodies and gender. As we know from the sportswomen, there is a limit to how much athleticism and muscularity is acceptable, and the language here suggests Tris has found that limit. By posing this question in the text, and phrasing it as a question to the reader, the text invites readers to pause and assess Tris’ body as succeeding or failing. Is her changing body indicative of a failure to perform standards of femininity or is it successful in achieving a new standard for bodies? All bodies are heavily coded, as Susan Bordo writes “the body … is a medium of culture.”529 Tris’ body does not simply change as a result of the Dauntless training, it is changing meaning, changing her abilities, and also reflects a changing culture with relation to women’s bodies. Again, turning to Bordo’s discussion of the body, “The body that we experience and conceptualise is always mediated by constructs, associations, images of a cultural nature.”530 Tris is no longer soft and feminine. As explored earlier in this thesis, she is instead beginning to conform to expectations of the idealised female hero and the body type the readers commonly associate with physically powerful women in media. While this scene when taken alone may indicate that Tris’ newly muscular body is bad, much of the overall narrative of the Divergent series actually indicates that these muscles are good. In engaging in masculine coded skills and athleticism Tris’ femininity is described as “stolen”, however the upside of this muscular

529 Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 165. 530 Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 35.

219 body is noted in the next line: “At least I am stronger than I was.”531 The strength is the benefit that frames her physical change as good and as the desired outcome.

Similarly, as previously noted, Tris’ muscular body fits into the idealised female hero body type and in order to be shown as ‘successful’, she is contrasted with the ‘failing’ body of the villain Jeanine Matthews. Matthews is described as having a layer of “pudge”: “She wears a blue dress that hugs her body from shoulder to knee, revealing a layer of pudge around her middle.”532 Jeanine Matthews is objectively the smartest character in the Divergent series.

She was selected as the sole representative of the Erudite faction (which values intelligence)

“based on her IQ score”533 suggesting she has the highest IQ of the faction. Jeanine is the one who developed the Aptitude tests, developed several of the serums used in the series, and helped orchestrate the dauntless attack by creating the serum that allowed for the dauntless faction members to be mind-controlled. These facts are important to note as it establishes her as a character who has access to social power, agency, and authority. As opposed to Tris whose journey involves her coming to power and understanding how she can gain autonomy in her faction-based society specifically by dismantling it, Jeanine has gained this power and autonomy while operating within the faction system. She is a figure who is very powerful but as a ‘villain’ of the series her body must present as opposite to Tris’ and lacking, thus her pudge is subject to comment. It is also noted later in the confrontation between Tris and

Jeanine when Jeanine’s skirt rises above her knees that her knees are “crossed with stretch marks.”534 This comment again seems out of place in scene where Jeanine has captured Tris and Tobias/Four and they are facing off. The purpose of these comments are to remind

531 Roth, Divergent, 168. 532 Roth, Divergent, 428. 533 Roth, Divergent, 33. 534 Roth, Divergent, 430.

220 readers that she is the Other. Tris is framed as the idealised hero with the idealised body type whereas Jeanine as the other must have the body that fails to perform idealised femininity.

Returning to Tris’ question about her muscular body, is this change good or bad, and within the context of the book and in the contemporary world, the answer is that the change, and her body, is good. As relevant today as it was when released in 1993, Susan Bordo’s Unbearable

Weight notes the shift towards valuing the muscular body as a “cultural icon.”535 Historically a well-muscled body has symbolised “masculine power”536 as well as being tied to “racial and class biases of our culture”537 which associate muscles with “the insensitive, unintelligent, and animalistic.”538 The shift however occurred when the muscular body became associated with “working out” which Bordo describes as being a “glamorized and sexualised yuppie activity.”539

No longer signifying inferior status…the firm, developed body has become a symbol

of the correct attitude; it means that one “cares” about oneself and how one appears to

others, suggesting willpower, energy, control over infantile impulse, the ability to

“shape your life.”540

The muscular body is now favourable and associated with “yuppie” lifestyles. It symbolically suggests that a person has the strength and willpower to develop such a body. This remains relevant in our society today where the muscular body can be valued for the above reasons up to a point as long as the muscular woman also presents femininely enough. While the language of the scene where Tris described her body suggests that some level of femininity has been lost, the overall tone of the series positions Tris’ body as favourable and succeeding

535 Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 195. 536 Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 193. 537 Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 195. 538 Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 195. 539 Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 105. 540 Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 195.

221 when compared to a ‘failing’ body of a villain like Jeanine. Despite positioning a question that in the Divergent series Tris’ muscular body might not be “good”, Tris’ muscular body is absolutely read as good because the muscular (yet also feminine) body is good in our society and Roth seems unable to escape this normativity when creating her characters and fictional world.

Even in this reparative attempt to examine how Tris and Katniss jointly embody masculinity and femininity it has become a paranoid examination. It has looked for the fault and the hurtfulness in their representations of tough women as creating more unsustainable goals for women to constantly be trying to replicate. Part of this has to do with the female action hero figure being created and sustained through postfeminist and choice feminist rhetoric.

Elizabeth Hills in a paper examining action heroines makes a point that when examining these female action hero characters in film “some new mode of understanding has to be developed to take account of the new and changing representations of women in the action cinema.”541 She further elaborates that:

Female action heroes confound binaristic logic in a number of ways, for they access a

range of emotions, skills, and abilities that have traditionally been defined as either

“masculine” or “feminine.” …For these reasons I argue that action heroines cannot

easily be contained, or productively explained, within a theoretical model which

denies the possibility of female subjectivity as active or full.542

While Hills’ essay points to a desire for a new mode of understanding and reading these emerging female heroine character in cinema, this desire seems to be met by choice feminist and postfeminist rhetoric. This rhetoric, as explore earlier, assumes young women have

541 Elizabeth Hills, “From ‘Figurative Males’ to Action Heroines: Further Thoughts on Active Women in the Cinema,” Screen 40, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 39. 542 Hills, “Active Women,” 39.

222 agency and active subjectivity already. This is where it becomes hard to read these characters with a reparative lens. It suggests agency exists as a choice for women to make, they just need to make the right choices and these characters are modelling the “right” choices to replicate.

Katniss and Tris, and their respective series, not only offer an opportunity to analyse how femininity is constructed and performed but also offer a means to consider how masculinity is performed by women and the other gender potentials can be created. By reading these characters not as exceptional masculine women, but rather by reading all masculine women as unique, outside of patriarchal gender value systems, these characters are changing the concept of the gender binary. Unpacking these concepts requires a paranoid critique to be done alongside a reparative reading. Performing a reparative reading and finding a gender- neutral utopia without forcibly critiquing how gender is socially constructed and constructed in these narratives is not enough. These texts do not exist in a vacuum, they are influenced by real world contexts and approaches to gender and queerness. My attempt to revalue femininity is part of a feminist project and cannot be done without a paranoid reading of how masculinity and queerness are being used in these texts. The ultimate goal however is to be performing the reparative reading, to be looking for the hope, for the utopia, and for the potential for gender and identities that exist beyond a hierarchical binary. Much of this thesis has been paranoid in its reading of the Hunger Games series and Divergent series in an attempt to be reparative. Now that the forces of social control that dictate how masculinity and femininity are valued in a hierarchy has been revealed, it is time to hope and to imagine different potentials of identity and gender for the future, the future of YA literature but also for the future of the readers.

223 Conclusion

“There are so many ways to be brave in this world”543

This thesis initially set out to question why femininity and the feminine is seemingly oppositional to agency, autonomy, and strength, and if this dichotomy exists, or has existed, why is this and how can we then seek to revalue and reorient the feminine? How do we understand and value femininity, has it been reclaimed as per the contemporary feminist goal, and how is it positioned still in relation to masculinity? Sedgwick’s paranoid and reparative reading offered a theoretical framework with which to pose these questions and begin an interrogation Suzanne Collins’ the Hunger Games series and Veronica Roth’s Divergent series as examples of teen media that explore these ideas. With each paranoid chapter, picking apart the language of these books to decipher their intentions regarding messages of gender and identity, there has been an expectation that, no matter how far feminist theory and popular culture have come in representing multitudes of experiences and femininities, these books will reinforce outdated and patriarchal standards of gender. As Sedgewick poses, however, paranoia can only do so much. Reparative reading is equally necessary to conduct analysis and close reading. As Heather Love explains:

Yet, just as allowing for good surprises means risking bad surprises, practicing

reparative reading means leaving the door open to paranoid reading. There is risk in

love, including the risk of antagonism, aggression, irritation, contempt, anger – love

means trying to destroy the object as well as trying to repair it.544

These series must be read both with paranoia and through a reparative lens. While paranoia may expose how the postfeminist rhetoric of agency, choice, and “girl power” have disguised

543 Roth, Allegiant, 509. 544 Heather Love, “Truth and Consequences: On Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading,” Criticism 52, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 239.

224 patriarchal social structures, to read only with a paranoid lens would not serve to answer the initial question of whether there is a dichotomy between femininity and strength, and if so, how do we revalue and recuperate femininity. In order to repair the construction of femininity, first we must also destroy it and the conceptions of gender binaries that we have previously held.

Revaluing the feminine is a theoretical project of hope. As explored in this thesis through a historical examination of feminist theorical approaches, it is a project that requires major deconstruction and detangling of femininity, in both its theoretical and performative manifestations. Leaning heavily on Butler’s work of gender performativity and the ways the signs and symbols of gender are performed, encoded, and read in society, the way femininity has been used as a patriarchal mode of social control was explored, as was the feminist effort to reclaim and revalue it as a form of personal expression. As was revealed in this historical examination, the feminist movement has fallen stagnant and into traps of postfeminist and neoliberal discourse with choice feminism and the assumption that women and girls are all equally empowered (which has now become the popular cultural understanding of feminism).

The feminine has become something to either opt in or out of, it has become a de-politicised choice; yet it remains a very strong mode of patriarchal control. There is no consideration of greater social structures that organise, sustain, and enforce gender and normative identities, only a consideration of how the individual is affected.

Looking back at the original question from Teen Wolf in the introduction that prompted much of the thinking for this thesis, why can’t Alison Argent be both strong and still go to her prom? Why does she feel unable to have access to both masculinity, which is aligned with strength, and femininity, which is represented by the traditionally girly experience of going to

225 prom? The fact that Alison’s mother inherently does not value this form of femininity and instead encourages her to access a second-wave feminist form of agency by rejecting femininity is equally the problem. The concept of prom, again used to represent traditional femininity, is devalued here as it represents something less than masculinity as well as supposes a less agentic position. Similarly, the feminine implied in this formulation is one that fits into a patriarchal social mode that encourages young women to perform a particular form of socially accepted femininity. It is not necessarily the empowered or radical femininity that it is being presented as. Alison Argent cannot have both in any meaningful way. In lip service she can both be strong and go to prom, but going to prom being framed as frivolous is the key problem. It is framed as the antithesis to strength. This reaffirms the alignment of strength with masculinity and is positioned as the more favourable option.

Alison’s question does not really have an answer, because with choice feminism, she can have both — but having both is not the solution. This question, and the question of how to revalue the feminine, is one that is clouded in postfeminist and neoliberal rhetoric.

Challenging how this question came to be, what value system is at play to create this question and how femininity was framed in the 2010s and is framed into the 2020s that is the real problem.

Revaluing femininity is something still being striven for. No feminist ‘wave’ has accomplished this goal and in attempting to achieve it now we must look backwards. Any movement forwards without readdressing past understandings of gender binary hierarchies and inequalities will result in further perpetuating these post-feminist, ‘empty’ platitudes, using the “synthetic vocabulary” of choice and empowerment.545 Choice feminism demonstrates how this assumption of agency and illusion of freedom of choice does not

545 Kinser, “Negotiating Spaces,” 142.

226 revalue the feminine. Instead, like the makeover trope used in both series, it produces the same normative identity and offers no real challenge to previous understandings of gender and identity. Examining the language of choice feminism and how choice is constructed in these books directly calls into question the unspoken value system at play between choosing masculinity or femininity. It is not about reallocating power to the feminine and to femininity, it is requires a reconfiguration of how we understand binaries, hold them in hierarchal relationships, and value them.

There needs to be a re-addressing from the start, of how the One came to be and the Other, the feminine, found itself defined “as lack, deficiency, or as imitation and negative image of the subject.”546 It is this binary, around which other binaries are constructed, that is flawed and must be reconsidered. There must be a destabilisation of the power held by the One and how strength is thus aligned with masculinity and excluded from femininity. As Irigaray described when considering the power of discourse in creating the feminine:

In other words, the issue is not one of elaborating a new theory of which woman

would be the subject or the object, but of jamming the theoretical machinery itself, of

suspending its pretension to the production of the truth and of a meaning that are

exclusively univocal.547

For femininity to have strength, to be an empowered position, there must be a reconsideration of how we understand and allocate power, and to decouple it from a gendered binary. This is the start to which we should return, as these goals have not been achieved.

There cannot be blank slate from this point in time, saying that all behaviours and external dressings of gender are equal and as humans we are able to choose them equally, because that

546 Irigaray, Sex Which Is Not One, 78. 547 Irigaray, Sex Which Is Not One, 78.

227 is simply untrue. This is what postfeminist and neoliberal discourse wants us to believe of contemporary life though, that from this point in history we can simply keep moving forward as all empowered individuals. We are not a jumble of traits, some good and some bad, and only defined by which traits we choose as casually commented by Whitney Elaine Jones.548

All of these traits are socially valued differently because the gender binary still exists in a hierarchy. By suggesting that we have moved beyond this argument and that feminist theory continues to move forward has done none of the actual recuperation work, it only leans further into this postfeminist rhetoric of choice. To move forward there must be a reconsideration of the past; we must deconstruct to reconstruct, destroy what we love in order to repair it.

Chapters three and four of this thesis further looked at how the material signifiers of gender were used in the Hunger Games and Divergent series to solidify gender and concepts of identity and how these identities were valued in their narratives and reflected real world social structures. Katniss and Tris both embody different approaches to identity formation and their responses to feminine clothing, signifiers, and behaviours illuminated the way the authors understand a valuing of the feminine. The Hunger Games and Divergent series have the same problem in that they cannot in any meaningful way occupy the space of both valuing masculinity and femininity because we do not exist in a society that does. The characters can reveal the way they respond to femininity and how femininity is positioned and valued in their world, however the narrative worlds themselves do not challenge gender binaries, instead they reflect and recreate it. Rather than solely focussing on the material signifiers of gender, chapter five turned to look at how behaviours are gendered, and how rebellion in a dystopic narrative is a crucial part of a feminine search for identity. It is

548 Jones, “Her Boys,” 79.

228 through considering these liminal spaces in dystopic fiction where change must occur and a new future can be theorised and striven towards. It is through dismantling the past and given expectations of adulthood and gendered identities that a new world and future can be created and explored.

Chapter six posed a reparative examination of how masculinity is embodied, performed, and valued by these characters and their narratives. As part of the theoretical argument of this chapter and of this thesis, it asked how perhaps a way to revalue the feminine is through de- centering the gender binary entirely as a way of valuing behaviours. As was shown however, occupying both the masculine and the feminine is a fraught position, as they are not equal positions to occupy. One cannot blindly seek to enjoy both masculine traits and feminine traits and believe them equal — they still remain in a binary hierarchy where the feminine is positioned as lesser. Engaging in “supergirlhood” or being a “tough girl” is not a solution as both are inherently gendered positions. We need a new language to describe these women and this language, which does not implicate the gender binary and a hierarchy of gender, does not exist yet.

Striving towards this non-binary non-hierarchised understanding of gender and how it can be valued is idealistic, and relies on a theoretical position where behaviours, signs and signifiers just exist and are equally optional to all people. It is a project that requires more than just feminist theorising and is in many ways more easily said than done. Troublingly the actual language and discourse of choice feminism and neoliberalism is exactly this: pitching all things as attainable to all genders, namely women. One only has to do it, or take it, or buy it, to be it. The onus is again on the individual, when the issue is one of social deconstruction.

This is where the main frustration comes from: why can’t I have both? To have both, in a

229 genuinely equal way, is an ongoing project because the dichotomy of femininity and strength must remain questioned and challenged.

The texts chosen for this thesis have offered much to inform this investigation of how femininity is constructed and valued and will continue to do so. As previously noted, while writing this thesis, Suzanne Collins announced and published a prequal book to the Hunger

Games series. Initially there was paranoia, assuming it would make many of the arguments of this thesis invalid but if anything it has made them more prominent. An excerpt of The

Ballard of Songbird and Snakes has been posted online by Scholastic and the story focuses around Coriolanus Snow as an 18-year old student, who has been otherwise referred to as

President Snow, in the initial Hunger Games trilogy and in this thesis.549 President Snow is the tyrannical leader of Panem and orchestrator of the Games, a man whose bloodthirstiness is heavily implied in the text by his mouth always smelling of blood.550 Snow is also the one who puts a visible face to the threat facing Katniss as he orchestrates the Games and directly threatens her and others on several notable occasions. He is the key villain of the series and is in this prequel framed as the protagonist. In considering how important reflection is in order to move forward, what Collins has done in writing this book, is to reflect not on the potential that existed in the Hunger Games series as it was, but instead reflected on the harsh history of

Panem and sought to explore how the Hunger Games came to be as we know them. Without having read the novel, as it was published within weeks of this thesis’ completion, I can assume that it is perhaps helpful to know how the structures that created and sustained the

Hunger Games came to be, however I can also suggest that perhaps it is not as important as knowing how Katniss and the others of the rebellion came to dismantle it.

549 Alison Flood, “Extract from Hunger Games Prequel Sparks Anger among Fans,” The Guardian, January 22, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/22/extract-from-hunger-games-prequel-sparks-anger-among-fans. 550 Collins, Mockingjay, 201.

230 From the excerpt freely available online, it is interesting to note how it does not use first person narration, instead keeping the reader at arm length. Where Katniss invited a shared trust through her first-person narration, the language used here does not share that intimacy.

While the original Hunger Games trilogy offered a new perspective on navigating a dystopic world as a teenage girl who favoured masculinity, this prequel is focussing on the eventual totalitarian leader of the Panem, a rich privileged young man, and by doing this Collins has in many ways angered readers.551 Initially with the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins produced a body of work that asked readers to envision the power of the people who were trapped in a dystopia, to imagine the power of a symbol, and ask what it would mean to rise up against injustice and a corrupt government. In writing Katniss she gave audiences a unique voice to understand this horrifying world. She offered hope in Katniss’ capacity to do what was necessary to bring about a new future full of potential. To then ask the same audience to sympathise with the character who had been the villain in this narrative is a bad surprise.

The first chapter of this thesis cited Barthes’ “Death of the Author” to suggest that it is not the author who is most important, it is the reader and what they do with the text that matters.

These YA texts have a wealth of untapped potential and it is up to both authors and readers to engage in this emerging nexus of what Jenkins calls participatory culture to look to the future.552 Media is not passive; it imposes on us and we impose ourselves on it. What these books can offer is to operate as vehicles through which this nexus can occur. It is not the responsibility of the books alone to challenge social structures meaningfully; they are just books. They are, however, instructive books (now popular with wide reaching franchises) and they are full of spaces to explore the representation and creation of gender and identities.

Creating texts that offer diverse experiences of gender, identity, autonomy, and strength can

551 Flood, “Extract.” 552 Jenkins, Convergence Culture.

231 only be achieved through a collaborative space. It requires critical readers, readers open to the good and bad surprises but who also anticipate the hurt, to accept what potential these books can offer. The non-binary future theorised as an idealist goal by this thesis is a position full of hope. These characters, particularly Katniss and Tris but also the host of characters in both series, alone cannot demonstrate how to revalue the feminine, or reconsider how gender binaries and hierarchies dictate human behaviour and external dressings. Katniss and Tris can perhaps be transgressive, but the worlds they inhabit are not. It requires conceiving of a social organisation beyond hierarchical gender binaries to create and support these characters and these identities and vice versa as these characters are then able to create and conceive of such a world to support them.

In creating the prequel novel, Collins is quoted as having said:

With this book, I wanted to explore the state of nature, who we are, and what we

perceive is required for our survival. The reconstruction period ten years after the war,

commonly referred to as the Dark Days—as the country of Panem struggles back to

its feet—provides fertile ground for characters to grapple with these questions and

thereby define their views of humanity.553

In perhaps what can be described as our own contemporary Dark Days, in the middle of the

COVID-19 pandemic, kept inside under government advice, socially distant from those we love, it feels timely that this book, which seeks to invite characters to question their identity and humanity, exists. However, by re-writing the past of Snow, when we know the outcome, does not invite hope. To now present a novel to justify what Snow and others did in those

Dark Days that they felt was necessary for their survival is irrelevant. The narrative has

553 Scholastic Media Room, “Scholastic Announces Title and Cover for New Novel in the Worldwide Bestselling Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins,” press release, October 4, 2019. http://mediaroom.scholastic.com/press-release/scholastic-announces-title-and-cover-new- novel-worldwide-bestselling-hunger-games-seri.

232 moved on and gone beyond that history and the original trilogy encouraged readers and audiences to question their governments and societies and get involved.

What was precious about the Hunger Games series was Katniss’ survival, Peeta’s survival, the survival of many of those impoverished districts throughout years of subjugation and watching their children be sacrificed as tributes. It is less important to consider how the

Hunger Games came to be, when by the end of the trilogy we see how they came to be stopped. It was important instead, that in Mockingjay we see Katniss recognise President

Coin’s ambition to create a similarly oppressive society, and directly intervene at that stage.

It is about the interveners. It is not enough to show the rulers and how they came to be and have power, but instead it is key to show the rebels and the way they responded to the world they live in. It is through their survival, through Katniss, her story and intervention, that brought about a new world, and a new society. Similarly, in the Divergent series it was through the sacrifice Tris makes that a new world could exist, and it is in this new world that gives us hope. Tris, as the transgressive heroine, was not able to survive in the world full of secrets and government plots, she instead had to die to create a new future for the others. It is series about how she, Four/Tobias, and the other key players of the rebellion stood up to the rulers of their city, asked questions of their authority, of the class inequality of the factions, and constantly demanded the truth.

Again, in writing this conclusion the world moves quickly around us and there have been weeks of protests in the United States (and around the world) against racism and police brutality, against a system of oppression that that unjustly uses violence against its citizens.

While this conclusion encourages looking backwards to move forward, in this case sometimes you just need to keep moving forward. The Hunger Games series and the

233 Divergent series reflect the now, they show the revolution, and in these fictional narratives they were able to move forward from a static liminality; they were forcibly moved into a new future. This is what we should be reading them for, for the future they helped us realise.

Revaluing the feminine is an on-going project for which there is no clear answer. What this thesis has done is examine how two popular texts embody and reflect this contemporary feminist question. It also poses more questions to ask of future texts and future understandings of gender and identity. Much like the queer and feminist texts that inspire this thesis’ writing, there is no conclusion. There is instead an invitation to remain critical, to remain hopeful, remain reparative, and remain thoughtful in all approaches to gender. The reparative hope offered by these texts is the way they expose the mechanises through which gender is created, performed, hierarchised. By revealing how these mechanisms and systems work the readers and audiences are able to recognise them in their own lives and work to change and challenge them. Revaluing the feminine hasn’t actually happened; it’s been suspended into a new space, out of reach. These books show that there are many ways to be brave, to be strong, we just need to be open to seeing these ways and find new ways for ourselves. In the end perhaps it can be said that authors who inspired us also disappoint, the femininity that empowers can also hide patriarchal modes of control, and the deconstruction of hierarchical gender binaries is more than just simply saying we are humans making choices about traits. The work is yet to be done. The future we can imagine is not here yet, but it can be.

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