Tiina Mäntymäki / Marinella Rodi-Risberg / Anna Foka (eds.) Deviant Women Cultural, Linguistic and Literary Approaches to Narratives of Femininity Tiina Mäntymäki / Marinella Rodi-Risberg / Anna Foka (eds.) Deviant Women This multidisciplinary collection of articles illuminates the ways in which the concept of female deviance is represented, appropriated, re-inscribed and refigured in a wide range of texts across time, cultures and genres. Such a choice of variety shows that representations of deviance accommodate meaning-making spaces and possibilities for resistance in different socio-cultural and literary contexts. The construct of the deviant woman is analysed from literary, sociolinguistic and historical-cultural perspectives, revealing insights about cultures and societies. Furthermore, the studies recognise and explain the significance of the concept of deviance in relation to gender that bespeaks a contemporary cultural concern about narratives of femininity. The Editors Tiina Mäntymäki holds a Ph.D. in Language and Culture from the University of Linköping (Sweden). Marinella Rodi-Risberg holds a Ph.D. in Literary and Cultural Studies (English) from the University of Vaasa (Finland). Anna Foka holds a Ph.D. in Classical Studies and Ancient History from the University of Liverpool (United Kingdom). www.peterlang.com Deviant Women Tiina Mäntymäki/Marinella Rodi-Risberg/Anna Foka (eds.) Deviant Women Cultural, Linguistic and Literary Approaches to Narratives of Feminity Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Deviant women : cultural, linguistic and literary approaches to narratives of fem- inity / Tiina Mäntymäki, Marinella Rodi-Risberg, Anna Foka (eds.). pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-3-631-64329-7 1. Femininity in literature. 2. Deviant behavior in literature. 3. Female offend- ers in literature. 4. Femininity. 5. Deviant behavior. 6. Female offenders. I. Mäntymäki, Tiina, 1960- II. Rodi-Risberg, Marinella. III. Foka, Anna, 1981- PN56.F4D49 2015 809'.933522--dc23 2014042547 Cover illustration: “Anygirl” © Solveig Jelena Candolin ISBN 978-3-631-64329-7 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-653-03319-9 (E-Book) DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-03319-9 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2015 All rights reserved. PL Academic Research is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com Acknowledgements The editors of this volume, Tiina Mäntymäki, Marinella Rodi-Risberg and Anna Foka would like to express their gratitude, first and foremost, to the University of Vaasa (Faculty of Philosophy and English Studies) as well as Umeå University (Umeå Centre for Gender Studies and HUMlab) for their ongoing scholarly and financial support. We recognise that this volume would not have been possible without the continuous mentoring and scholarly inspiration of Professors Jonas Lilliequist (School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå Univer- sity), Cecilia Lindhé (HUMlab, Umeå University) and Anna Croon Fors (UCGS & Informatics, Umeå University). We also feel the need to thank Ma- lin Isaksson (Senior Lecturer at the Department of Language Studies, Umeå University), Merja Koskela (Professor of Communication Studies, University of Vaasa), Päivi Lappalainen (Professor of Finnish Literature, University of Turku), Kukku Melkas (PhD, Senior Lecturer, Finnish Literature, University of Turku), Heidi Grönstrand (PhD, Researcher, Finnish Literature, University of Turku) and Gerald Porter (Professor Emeritus of English Literature and Culture, University of Vaasa), for supporting the publication by acting as external readers for individual contributions. In addition, our thanks go to Jukka Tiusanen (Uni- versity of Vaasa) for kindly commenting on one of the individual contributions. We would also like to extend out thanks to Kari Parrott for language editing the introduction and several of the individual chapters. We wish to thank the individual contributors of this volume for their excel- lent ideas, prompt timings and professionalism throughout the completion of the process. We wish to express our gratitude to Solveig Jelena Candolin for the cover photograph and Anna Foka and Fredrik Åman for designing the image of the cover. A fair share of gratefulness goes to our families and friends for the emotional support they provided us with throughout the completion of this volume, espe- cially Gunnar Gårdemar, Kenth Risberg and Viktor Arvidsson for their continu- ous love and support towards any deviant act we may have devised. 6 Acknowledgements Last, but certainly not least, we would like to thank each other for a wonder- ful friendship that started somewhere between Sao Leopoldo in Brazil, Umeå in Sweden and Vaasa in Finland and evolved throughout the completion of this book. We dedicate this book to Maia Arianna Saga Foka-Arvidsson. Table of Contents Tiina Mäntymäki, Marinella Rodi -Risberg, Anna Foka Introduction ..................................................................................................................9 I. Deviance: Historical and Cultural Perspectives .................................................27 Anna Foka Beyond Deviant: Theodora as the Other in Byzantine Imperial Historiography ............................................................................................29 Wang Lei Ghosts and Spirits as the objet a in Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from Make -Do Studio ..........................................................................49 Sanna Karkulehto and Ilmari Leppihalme Deviant Will to Knowledge: The Pandora Myth and Its Feminist Revisions .........................................................................................69 II. Contemporaneity, Deviance, Subjectivity and Violence .................................91 Tiina Mäntymäki Carnivalesque Masquerade. Lisbeth Salander and Her Trickster Agency .........................................................................................93 Marinella Rodi -Risberg Trauma and Contextual Factors in Ann -Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees: Incest, Race and Gendered Subjectivities .................................................................................. 113 Caroline Enberg ‘Baby Killer!’ – Media Constructions of a Culturally Congruent Identity for Casey Anthony as Mother and Female Offender .............................................................................................. 135 8 Table of Contents III. Deviance and/as (In)visibility ........................................................................ 151 Maj -Britt Höglund The Absent Female Rotarian in Finland: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Rotary Norden ................................................. 153 Anka Ryall A Deviant in the Arctic ........................................................................................... 171 Gerald Porter ‘Foremost in Violence and Ferocity’: Women Singing at Work in Britain ....................................................................... 191 Róisín Ní Ghallóglaigh and Sandra Joyce ‘Threshing in the Haggard to her Heart’s Delight’: Women and Erotic Expression in Irish Traditional Song ................................. 211 Contributors ............................................................................................................. 231 Index ......................................................................................................................... 235 Tiina Mäntymäki, Marinella Rodi -Risberg, Anna Foka Introduction You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Maya Angelou: I’ll Rise Deviant Women: Socio -Cultural Perspectives This collection of articles is about women who deviate from socially constructed norms of femininity. It is about actual or fictional women who, in their narrative portrayals, shake up their contemporary social order through their acts and life choices. The contributors to this volume show the insistence of these women, portrayed in sources from different times and cultures, to claim visibility and recognition in contexts where ‘woman’ denotes marginalisation and otherness. Thus, it is also about the production of knowledge beyond established and often male norms. This volume embraces a revisionist project in that the contributions included in it produce (re)readings of narratives of femininities that highlight women’s strategies for navigating the world by way of subtle negotiation or violent refusal to conform to social requirements. The authors of this volume trace the cultural and societal backgrounds of how women become defined as deviant through discussions of gender, power, ideology, context and tradition. In their chapters, they (re)construct both readings of seemingly conformist femininity as narra- tives of deviance and break down existing,