{"title":"\"This Grisly Act of Love\": Monstrous Heterosexuality in Giovanni's Room","authors":"Meg Wesling","doi":"10.1353/mfs.2022.0040","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay examines James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room (1956) and argues for a feminist reading that highlights Baldwin's critique of heteronormativity as a political system whose coercive power distorts all the characters. The relations between men and women are depicted as monstrous, so that there seems little about them that could be described as natural. Compulsory heterosexuality is normative, but as Baldwin demonstrates, it is far from normal. Baldwin thus upends the binary that structures the debate about the etiology of sexual identity (natural or cultural) in ways that remain urgent for us today.","PeriodicalId":45576,"journal":{"name":"MFS-Modern Fiction Studies","volume":"83 1","pages":"434 - 459"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"MFS-Modern Fiction Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2022.0040","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:This essay examines James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room (1956) and argues for a feminist reading that highlights Baldwin's critique of heteronormativity as a political system whose coercive power distorts all the characters. The relations between men and women are depicted as monstrous, so that there seems little about them that could be described as natural. Compulsory heterosexuality is normative, but as Baldwin demonstrates, it is far from normal. Baldwin thus upends the binary that structures the debate about the etiology of sexual identity (natural or cultural) in ways that remain urgent for us today.
期刊介绍：
Modern Fiction Studies publishes engaging articles on prominent works of modern and contemporary fiction. Emphasizing historical, theoretical, and interdisciplinary approaches, the journal encourages a dialogue between fiction and theory, publishing work that offers new theoretical insights, clarity of style, and completeness of argument. Modern Fiction Studies alternates general issues dealing with a wide range of texts with special issues focused on single topics or individual writers.
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