“Just Friends”: Queer Theory and Compulsory Heterosexuality in Nella Larsen’s Passing, Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone, and S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Chico In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in English by Charlotte Letellier Spring 2019 “Just Friends”: Queer Theory and Compulsory Heterosexuality in Nella Larsen’s Passing, Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone, and S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders A Thesis by Charlotte Letellier Spring 2019 APPROVED BY THE INTERIM DEAN OF GRADUATE STUDIES: Sharon Barrios, Ph.D. APPROVED BY THE GRADUATE ADVISORY COMMITTEE: Matthew D. Brown, Ph.D., Chair Tracy Butts, Ph.D. Acknowledgments I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to Dr. Matt Brown for all of his support, feedback, and advice. I simply can’t but how thankful I am into words, not only for his invaluable help as Committee Chair for this thesis, but also for his continuous guidance throughout my entire time in the English department at Chico State. I would like to thank Dr. Tracy Butts for serving on my thesis committee, despite her busy schedule. Her comments and advice have been incredibly helpful, and I am thankful for her support. I would also like to thank Dr. Erin Kelly, without whom I may never have applied to the master’s program to begin with. I feel fortunate to have had so many supportive and inspiring professors throughout my time here. I would also like to express my thanks to my friends, family, and classmates. I am grateful to have so many wonderful, caring people in my life. Lastly, though they can’t read and therefor won’t appreciate this, I’d like to thank my cats for sitting with me as I wrote. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Acknowledgments....................................................................................................... iii Abstract ....................................................................................................................... v CHAPTER I. Introduction ............................................................................................... 1 II. Sexual Passing: Irene, Clare, & Brian ...................................................... 7 III. Generations of Women and Female Connection: Compulsory Heterosexuality in Winter’s Bone ........................................ 23 IV. A Queer Reading of The Outsiders: Gallant Southern Gentlemen & Abandoned Churches ............................. 37 V. Works Cited .............................................................................................. 53 iv ABSTRACT “Just Friends”: Queer Theory and Compulsory Heterosexuality in Nella Larsen’s Passing, Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone, and S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders by Charlotte Letellier 2019 Master of Arts in English California State University, Chico Spring 2019 Representations of queer relationships in literature are often put in the subtext of works, rather than explicitly addressed. Using Passing by Nella Larsen, Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, and The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, I am examining queer subtext in non-explicitly queer American works. I am focusing on the strong and complex bonds the protagonists have with their same-sex friends. Using the essays of other scholars reading these texts and Adrienne Rich’s theory of compulsory heterosexuality, I am analyzing the romantic subtext in same-sex friendships in literature, especially as compared to the heterosexual relationships. In Passing, my focus is on the protagonist, Irene, and the comparison between her relationship with her husband and her friend. In Winter’s Bone, I discuss the network of female relationships in their culture, as well as the protagonist and her close childhood friend and the way that the heterosexual marriages function apart from the female relationships. In The Outsiders, it is the friendship between the protagonist, Ponyboy, and Johnny Cade, as well as the symbolic nature of setting. v CHAPTER I Introduction Framework: The literary canon as a whole has often been criticized for the tendency to focus on texts by and about straight white men in particular. Texts of marginalized groups are often dismissed or erased. In the world of queer theory, one of the methods of dealing with the erasure is by finding the queer themes and undertones in texts within the American canon. Queer readings of American texts are not particularly uncommon. The Great Gatsby, for example, is frequently studied with a queer lens. A fair amount has been written about the gender dynamics and the queer themes in The Great Gatsby. It serves as a useful frame for looking at how these same themes manifest in other pieces. In The Great Gatsby, the same-sex friendships are deeper and more meaningful than the heterosexual romantic relationships. Additionally, the same-sex friendships wind up sounding more romantic than the actual romantic relationships. A Separate Peace by John Knowles is another example of an American novel sometimes read as queer, with the plot centered around the protagonist’s fixation on his friend. Author David Levithan wrote in his afterword, “Looking Back, From a Greater Distance,” about the unintended queer elements: “[W]hen it comes to what the story means to me, so much of what Knowles writes gets to the heart of what it would have been like to be gay at that time—and what it can still be like to be gay now.” (207) Queer readings of texts can showcase how the canon reflects the queer experience, regardless of if the texts themselves are meant to be queer. I’ve chosen to examine three American texts in order to approach this: Passing by Nella Larsen, Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, and The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. I’m moving from Passing to Winter’s Bone to The Outsiders, in order to move through the connecting themes. 1 Passing and Winter’s Bone both have a focus on female relationships and the way that heterosexual relationships function for women. Passing focuses on an adult woman in a loveless heterosexual marriage that allows her to maintain status and safety in her culture, and Winter’s Bone follows a teenage girl navigating the network of women in her culture, while observing the way that heterosexual relationships are both necessary to connect the male and female worlds and hindering to many of the women’s lives. Moving from Winter’s Bone to The Outsiders, the connecting themes are coming of age, queer teenage friendship, and poverty. Both Ree and Ponyboy are teenagers living in poverty with a lack of parental guidance. Much of their respective experience is informed by the close bonds they have in their same-sex friendships. All three texts are connected both by their queer subtext, but also by themes of intersecting areas of marginalization. These themes include gender, class, race, and region. The queer subtext is heavily impacted by these other themes. The three respective protagonists within these works navigate the textual conflicts of marginalization, while also navigating the subtext of queer marginalization. Passing: Nella Larsen’s novel, Passing, is as much about sexual passing as it is about racial passing. The themes of queer sexuality and sexual passing are largely subtextual, indicating a kind of passing even to the readers of the novel. In her allusions and references, Larsen includes queer figures. Using Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth- Century America by Lillian Faderman, I’m grounding the text in the historical climate for queer people. In particular, the chapter in the book titled “Lesbian Chic: Experimentation and Repression in the 1920s” gives context for the world of the novel. The historical backdrop for the 2 novel allows for a kind of subtextual conversation, based on what contemporary readers and the characters in the novel might’ve been aware of. In this section, I am arguing that Passing is a queer text, shown through the relationship between Irene and Clare Kendry, Irene’s meaningful omissions throughout the text, and the role that Brian plays in the novel, as a character and in connection with Clare. In discussing Irene as an unreliable narrator, I’d like to argue that much of the evidence of her queer nature lies in the omissions she chooses to make and the ways in which she avoids stating certain things. I will examine how her passing as queer relies on her secrecy to the audience and her mentions of unnamable things. Finally, I’d like to address how Brian functions in the text, and how his connection with Clare Kendry works. Putting in conversation David L. Blackmore’s article “`That Unreasonable Restless Feeling': The Homosexual Subtexts of Nella Larsen's Passing,” I am arguing that Brian’s restlessness is due to his own sexual passing, and the strain of his relationship with Irene is related to her desire to stay hidden at odds with his lack of satisfaction in their relationship. In terms of his relationship with Clare, I am arguing that Irene’s concern is that they will recognize each other as queer and be drawn to one another, and in turn, Irene will be in danger of being discovered. I’d like to argue that Irene’s mention of an affair is related to her lack of reliability as a narrator and the lengths to which she’s going to pass as straight, even to the audience. In this, I am also looking at how previous scholars have read and addressed the queer undertones of Passing. Winter’s Bone: There has not been much scholarly attention on Winter’s Bone, and the existing theory written about it primarily focuses on issues of genre. Joseph J. Wydeven wrote an article titled 3 “Daniel Woodrell’s New American Adam: Myth and Country Noir in Winter’s Bone,” in which he discusses elements of genre. He briefly touches on themes of sexuality in the novel, though he does not focus on it. In my reading of Winter’s Bone, I am treating it as a queer text, through looking at the existing female relationships within the novel.