Re-Conceptualizing Gender Through Narrative Play In
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RE-CONCEPTUALIZING GENDER THROUGH NARRATIVE PLAY IN FAIRY-TALE RETELLINGS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH DECEMBER 2012 By Christy Williams Dissertation Committee: Cristina Bacchilega, Chairperson Miriam Fuchs Joan Peters John Zuern Monisha Das Gupta i for my father, KD Lawson, who encouraged my addiction to stories ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my committee for their insightful criticism and encouragement, especially Cristina Bacchilega whose mentorship has been invaluable. I am fortunate to have been surrounded by helpful friends who read drafts, answered questions, and offered encouragement, sometimes without even being asked, and I would like to acknowledge specially Carmen Nolte, Angela Gili, Jennifer Orme, Micheline Soong, and Deborah Ross for their constant support and advice. I am grateful to Carolyn Paskel and Heather Willard for their encouragement and wisdom, to Phyllis Frus for her generous support at every stage, and to William Williams, who kept me sane and healthy throughout the entire process. The Stepmother analysis in Chapter 1 is a revision of “Who’s Wicked Now? The Stepmother as Fairy-Tale Heroine” published in Marvels & Tales 24.2 (Wayne State University Press, 2010). The Ever After analysis in Chapter 2 is a revision of “The Shoe Still Fits: Ever After and the Pursuit of a Feminist Cinderella” published in Fairy Tale Film and Cinematic Folklore: Visions of Ambiguity, edited by Pauline Greenhill and Sidney Eve Matrix (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2010). The discussion of Aquamarine in Chapter 2 is expanded from a section of “Mermaid Tales on Screen: Splash, The Little Mermaid, and Aquamarine” published in Beyond Adaptation: Essays on Radical Transformations of Original Works, edited by Phyllis Frus and Christy Williams (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010). iii ABSTRACT This dissertation contributes to scholarship on contemporary fairy-tale retellings by exploring how gender is conceptualized, or not, as an unstable construct through specific narrative strategies. The texts I analyze are primarily American literary fiction and films, aimed at adults and young adults, from the past twenty years. I argue that narrative strategies affect the way gender is conceptualized in retellings even if they do not directly engage with gender concepts on the level of story. I suggest that gender conceptualization and narrative structures can work in concert, in opposition, or by revealing alternate possibilities, and I focus on the complexity with which retellings re- envision traditional fairy tales—paying particular attention to plot, narration, and metafiction. My purpose is to show how gender ideologies and narrative structures interact, and I conclude that the more disruptive the narrative strategies are to fairy-tale patterns, the more enabled the retelling is to question gender as a concept. Contemporary retellings engage their intertexts in intricate and complex ways that reflect contemporary theoretical work with gender by theorists such as Judith Butler and Judith Halberstam, and the resulting degeneration of fairy-tale narrative patterns opens up fairy-tale fragments to be signified in new and multifaceted ways. In each chapter I engage in both narratological and interpretative analysis in order to demonstrate the varied relationships between discursive structuring and story in fairy- tale retellings. I show how disruptive and destabilizing narrative strategies can reinforce thematic arguments about the construction of the wicked witch character in Robert Coover’s Stepmother, Garth Nix’s “An Unwelcome Guest,” and Catherynne M. iv Valente’s “A Delicate Architecture.” I explore how reliance on plots from source tales undercuts thematic representations of gendered identity in three films, Ever After, Sydney White, and Aquamarine. I demonstrate how destabilizing narrative strategies, most notably lack of narrative closure, enable conceptualizations of gender not present in the source tales in Kelly Link’s “Swans,” “Magic for Beginners,” and “The Cinderella Game.” I analyze how Iserian narrative gaps and blanks produce a space for conceptualizing alternative gender configurations not present in the story in Robert Coover’s Briar Rose and Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS........................................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................... iii INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1 Fairy Tales and Contemporary Feminisms ................................................................... 4 The History of Fairy Tales and Gender Criticism ...................................................... 10 The Variety of Terminology in Analyzing Retellings ................................................ 15 Narratology in Fairy-Tale and Feminist Studies ......................................................... 19 Defining Terminology ................................................................................................ 24 The Chapters ............................................................................................................... 30 CHAPTER 1: WHO’S WICKED NOW? THE STEPMOTHER AS FAIRY-TALE HEROINE ............ 37 The Making of a Wicked Stepmother ......................................................................... 43 Coover’s Unmaking of the “Wicked” Stepmother ..................................................... 48 Who’s Wicked Now? .................................................................................................. 57 Understanding Wickedness ......................................................................................... 66 Garth Nix’ s “An Unwelcome Guest” (2009) ....................................................... 68 Catherynne M. Valente’s “A Delicate Architecture” (2009) ............................... 71 CHAPTER 2: THE SHOE STILL FITS: EVER AFTER AND THE PURSUIT OF A FEMINIST CINDERELLA ...................................................................................................................... 77 vi Framing Danielle’s Feminism..................................................................................... 82 Danielle’s Masque ...................................................................................................... 87 Girl Power to the Rescue ............................................................................................ 92 The Absence of Female Power ................................................................................... 98 The Obligatory Happily Ever After .......................................................................... 100 After Ever After......................................................................................................... 102 Sydney White (2007) ........................................................................................... 104 Aquamarine (2006) ............................................................................................. 112 CHAPTER 3: AMBIVALENCE AND AMBIGUITY IN THE FRAGMENTED FAIRY TALES OF KELLY LINK ................................................................................................................................ 120 Structured Gendering ................................................................................................ 126 “Swans” (2000) ......................................................................................................... 130 “Magic for Beginners” (2005) .................................................................................. 140 “The Cinderella Game” (2009) ................................................................................. 150 CHAPTER 4: GAPS IN THE BRIAR HEDGE: THE READER’S ROLE IN AWAKENING BRIAR ROSE ................................................................................................................................ 166 Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose (1992/2002)....................................................................... 173 Robert Coover’s Briar Rose (1996) .......................................................................... 191 NOTES .............................................................................................................................. 206 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................ 213 1 INTRODUCTION In his 1986 collection, Don’t Bet on the Prince, Jack Zipes argues, “The significance of the feminist fairy tales lies in their Utopian functions to criticize current shifts in psychic and social structures and to point the way toward new possibilities for individual development and social interaction” (Introduction 32). Utopian is a key word here as it suggests an ideal feminist fairy tale and a representation of a world in which gender disparity either has been resolved or does not exist. But if many feminist fairy tales in the late 1970s and early 1980s were utopian, it was because most of them promised a future where gender equity would be the norm. The less utopian tales of today, published some forty years since the explosion of feminist movements in the United States, offer no such promise.