Breaking Form and Crafting Monsters in Dept. of Speculation, Motherhood, and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
2023
Online
Hochschulschrift
In this paper, I look to A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf to frame the problem of women and fiction which Woolf leaves unsolved. Woolf opines about the conditions necessary to create art. She also encourages women to write but prophesizes they will be thought monstrous. Three contemporary writers, Jenny Offill, Sheila Heti, and Ocean Vuong explore the subjectivity of the writing self in their works, Dept. of Speculation, Motherhood, and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. The experimental, autofictional, and fragmentary literary works of Offill, Heti, and Vuong break with conventional structure, form, and language to write their own story, in their own voice. Following Woolf’s lead, they subvert and transgress cultural norms to convey their truth. The culture that they undermine identifies such transgressors as monstrous in accord with Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s monster theory outlined in “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” which delineates the monster as an embodiment of the culture that creates it. These writers and their works transpose the monster from threat to beacon, beckoning others to follow their example. The monster never dies but shapeshifts as it is reimagined anew relative to culture and world view. The monster is inverted by Offill, Heti and Vuong as the very patriarchy that created it as threat. Offill identifies the monster as an artefact of the patriarchy, the narcissistic art monster. Heti recognizes the monster as the patriarchal construct of woman as mother within the traditional family. Vuong deciphers the monster as toxic masculinity.
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Breaking Form and Crafting Monsters in Dept. of Speculation, Motherhood, and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Finnigan, Maureen |
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Veröffentlichung: | 2023 |
Medientyp: | Hochschulschrift |
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