SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Marginal Forms and Marginalized Subjectivities: The Hybrid Modernisms of Barnes, Woolf, Stein, and H.D. A Dissertation Presented by Meghan C. Fox to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Stony Brook University August 2014 Copyright by Meghan C. Fox 2014 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Meghan C. Fox We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Celia Marshik, Associate Professor of English Dissertation Advisor Eric Haralson, Associate Professor of English Chairperson of Defense Lisa Diedrich, Associate Professor of Cultural Analysis and Theory Madelyn Detloff, Associate Professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Miami University This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Marginal Forms and Marginalized Subjectivities: The Hybrid Modernisms of Barnes, Woolf, Stein, and H.D. by Meghan C. Fox Doctor of Philosophy in English Stony Brook University 2014 This dissertation examines the relationship between literary modernism’s mixed-genre forms and its representations of marginalized characters through a study of works by Djuna Barnes, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and H.D. I argue that these authors borrow from various established genres to create new hybrid forms capable of granting fuller expression to the female and queer subjects of the early twentieth century. Though scholars took up hybridity as a way to theorize postcolonial identities and forms of resistance in the 1990s, this project reveals that the aforementioned modernist authors began to strategically deploy forms of hybrid subjectivity decades earlier. Marked by radical social change engendered by the suffrage movement, the Harlem Renaissance, and the consolidation of identity categories based on sexual acts, the turn of the twentieth century ushered in a range of new, emergent subjectivities. The works discussed herein reflect social and cultural understandings of these new subjects as fundamentally hybrid, as embodying a form of personhood that is intrinsically other. Expressions of hybrid subjectivity in the literature of this period take the form of hyphenated identities, such as African-American; denigrating homophobic epithets, such as “half-man”; or dehumanizing metaphors, such as monstrous feminine. Yet, the works of Barnes, Woolf, Stein, and H.D., I argue, do more than mirror sociocultural assessments of hybrid subjects; they challenge these troubling representations and deploy new counterhegemonic conceptions of hybrid subjectivity. Through an analysis of works by these queer modernist authors, this project demonstrates how representations of hybrid forms and subjectivities can be used to enact a critique of oppressive social and literary constructs. I conclude with a brief study of Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home as an example of a hybrid “metamodernist” text that extends and reanimates the aesthetic and sociopolitical imperatives found in the works of Barnes, Woolf, Stein, and H.D. My scholarship adds to feminist and queer studies of modernist literature by revealing both the prevalence and the potential utility of hybridity as an expression of modern iii marginalized subjectivities. Furthermore, this dissertation offers a thorough study of the under- theorized generic particularities of hybrid texts that strive toward these ends. iv For Margaret Wise Fox (1913-2007) v Table of Contents List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. viii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ ix Introduction: Modernist Representations of Hybridity: “an Image of the ‘Interstices’” ...................................... 1 Unseemly Mixtures: Hybridity and Its Etymology ............................................................. 9 “No Experiment, Even of the Wildest—is Forbidden”: Modernism’s Hybrid Forms ..... 15 Chapter Overviews ............................................................................................................ 19 Chapter 1: Improper Forms and Improper Subjects: Generic Hybridity and the Image in Barnes ................ 24 “Dropping Crooked into Rhyme”: Hybridity and Sexual Difference in The Book of Repulsive Women .............................................................................................................. 28 Ladies Almanack: Queering the “Condition of Woman” ................................................. 51 Nightwood and “the Space Between” ............................................................................... 60 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 73 Chapter 2: “History Is Too Much About Wars; Biography Too Much About Great Men”: Temporality, Counternarrative, and Genre in Late Woolf ................................................................................. 75 Feminine Time and Space in The Waves .......................................................................... 81 “What’s Her Game? To Disrupt?”: Restaging History & Reimagining the Present Moment in Between the Acts ............................................................................................. 96 Orlando: Destabilizing “the Indelible Footprints of Truth” ........................................... 111 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 125 Chapter 3: “Act So That There Is No Use in a Centre”: Hybridity and Queer Reproduction in Stein’s Tender Buttons and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas .................................................................... 127 Tender Buttons: “The Difference is Spreading” ............................................................. 131 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas: “A Source of Endless Pleasure” ....................... 149 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 173 Chapter 4: H.D.’s Borderline Genres and States of Consciousness: the Romans à Clef of the 1930s ......... 177 Modernism’s Borderline: H.D., Paul Robeson, and the Harlem Renaissance ............... 184 “Mask on Contrasting Mask”: the Failure of Static Symbols in “Two Americans” ...... 194 “The Old Mould Does Not Fit”: Alternative Configurations of Gender and Sexuality in Nights .............................................................................................................................. 207 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 225 vi Conclusion: Modernism’s Hybrid Legacy in the Contemporary .................................................................... 228 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 242 vii List of Figures Figure 1. The Flâneuse ................................................................................................................. 35 Figure 2. Becoming-Animal ......................................................................................................... 36 Figure 3. The Orgy ........................................................................................................................ 37 Figure 4. The Dancer .................................................................................................................... 38 Figure 5. Woman with Chinese Lantern ....................................................................................... 39 Figure 6. Monstrous Minotaur and Attentive Parent .................................................................. 235 Figure 7: A Proustian Parallel ..................................................................................................... 236 viii Acknowledgments First and foremost, I wish to thank Celia Marshik for her mentorship, guidance, and support over the last seven years. She has been an ideal advisor and a model of the type of scholar and teacher I hope to become. Her meticulous and incisive feedback was invaluable to the development and completion of my dissertation. She forced me to contend with difficult questions that have strengthened the quality of my work and I am certain that her approach to literary modernism and academic scholarship will continue to inspire me long after my time at Stony Brook. I am also grateful to Lisa Diedrich for her kindness, encouragement, and advice over the years. The feminist and queer theory I studied in her classes not only informed this dissertation but also helped shape me as a feminist scholar. I am thankful for her extensive feedback on my work and her suggestions for developing this project further. Thank you to Eric Haralson for chairing my defense and for helping me to cultivate patience and