Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 9-25-2017 10:00 AM Being Gender/Doing Gender, in Alice Munro and Pedro Almadovar Bahareh Nadimi Farrokh The Univesity of Western Ontario Supervisor Professor Christine Roulston The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Comparative Literature A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Bahareh Nadimi Farrokh 2017 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Comparative Literature Commons Recommended Citation Nadimi Farrokh, Bahareh, "Being Gender/Doing Gender, in Alice Munro and Pedro Almadovar" (2017). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 5000. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/5000 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract In this thesis, I compare the short stories, “Boys and Girls” and “The Albanian Virgin”, by Alice Munro, with two films, La Mala Educación and La Piel Que Habito, by Pedro Almodóvar. This comparison analyzes how these authors conceive gender as a doing and a performance, and as culturally constructed rather than biologically determined. My main theoretical framework is Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity as developed in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. In my first chapter, I compare “Boys and Girls” with La Mala Educación, and in the second chapter, I compare “The Albanian Virgin” with La Piel Que Habito, to illustrate the multiple ways in which gender is constructed according to Munro and Almodóvar. I argue that both Alice Munro and Pedro Almodóvar not only perceive gender as non-essential, but they also locate various possibilities of resistance through gender performance, drag, impersonation and masquerade. Keywords Alice Munro, Pedro Almodóvar, Judith Butler, Gender Performativity, Childhood Trauma, Gender Resistance, Drag, Masquerade i Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to my incredible supervisor Professor Chris Roulston for her great advice, patience, and meticulousness. I would also like to thank my teacher Professor Cristina Caracchini and Sylvia Kontra, our graduate assistant, who has been kind and supportive from the moment I started my studies at Western University. I am also extremely grateful of my parents’ support and love. I thank my friends Pari and Gaby for always being there for me. This thesis is dedicated to my awesome partner, Houshmand, and to my dogs, Johnny Depp and To-Be. ii Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iii List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... v Introduction ........................................................................................................................ vi Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................. 1 1. (Un)Becoming: Learning Gender in Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” and Pedro Almodóvar’s La Mala Educación .................................................................................. 1 1.1. Chests with Airholes: Becoming a Girl in Alice Munro’s Short Story, “Boys and Girls” ....................................................................................................................... 2 1.1.1. The Imposition of Gender Roles/Rules ................................................................................. 3 1.1.2. Gendered Spaces and gender Rituals ................................................................................... 7 1.1.3. Feminine Consciousness ....................................................................................................... 9 1.1.4. Preadolescences/ Gender Queerness ................................................................................. 10 1.1.5. Transgenderism/Imposed SRS ............................................................................................ 11 1.2. “It Is Me”: The Impossibility of Recognition in Pedro Almodóvar’s La Mala Educación .............................................................................................................. 14 1.2.1. The Impossibility of Recognition: Several Versions, Multiple Avatars ................................ 18 1.2.2. Trauma: The Catholic Church .............................................................................................. 21 1.2.3. Performativity and the (Im)possibility of Subjectivity ........................................................ 25 Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................... 35 2. Gender Performance / Gender Resistance in “The Albanian Virgin” and La Piel Que Habito ........................................................................................................................... 35 2.1. Let’s Make a Virgin: Gender in Process in Alice Munro’s “The Albanian Virgin”36 2.1.1. (Mis)communication ........................................................................................................... 37 2.1.2. Death and Rebirth ............................................................................................................... 39 2.1.3. Death and Religion .............................................................................................................. 41 2.1.4. Gender: A Cultural Construct .............................................................................................. 42 2.1.5. Drag and Gender Rituals ..................................................................................................... 45 iii 2.1.6. Albanian Virgin: a Third Gender .......................................................................................... 48 2.1.7. Drag and Gender Performance as Resistance ..................................................................... 51 2.2. Being and Becoming; Gender Representation in Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In ........................................................................................................................... 54 2.2.1. Inverted Transgenderism, Inverted Horror Genre .............................................................. 55 2.2.2. Multilayer of Human Identity and Narrative Elusiveness ................................................... 58 2.2.3. The Question of an Essence ................................................................................................ 63 2.2.4. Underlying Misogyny .......................................................................................................... 64 2.2.5. Gender as Performance ...................................................................................................... 67 2.2.6. The Question of Subversion ................................................................................................ 69 2.2.7. The Gothic, the Masquerade and the Monstrous .............................................................. 71 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 78 iv List of Figures Figure 1: Ignacio’s Split Face ....................................................................................................... 20 Figure 2: Ignacio’s Broken Subjectivity ....................................................................................... 21 Figure 3: Ignacio and Enrique in the Movies ................................................................................ 24 Figure 4: Zahara as Sara Montiel .................................................................................................. 26 Figure 5: Juan Studying a Drag Queen ......................................................................................... 27 Figure 6: Vincent/Vera After the Vaginoplasty ............................................................................ 57 Figure 7: Vera/Vincent’s New Skin .............................................................................................. 57 Figure 8: Vera/Vincent on Dr. Ledgard’s Big Screen .................................................................. 60 Figure 9: Gala’s Monstrosity ........................................................................................................ 62 Figure 10: Zeca in a Tiger Costume ............................................................................................. 66 Figure 11: Zeca’s Torn Costume Tail ........................................................................................... 66 v Introduction Simplicity and at the same time denial of that simplicity. Simplicity in order to talk about what is complex, about what happens in front of our eyes without us being able to appreciate at first glance what is extraordinary, bizarre, terrible, grotesque, and mysterious about it…Despite the