Willa Cather's Voyeuristic Realism

Abstract:Recent work in the history of realism has marked a queer turn as queer scholarship has increasingly become interested in narratology. This essay builds on that work by exploring realism's relation to voyeurism and exhibitionism. In particular, I examine Willa Cather's "Coming, Aphrodite" (1920), her most sexually explicit story, which turns on the discovery of a peephole. I emplace this story within Cather's career, arguing that the figure of the peephole is prevalent throughout her early work and is foundational to her sense of realism. In doing so, I argue that Cather's models of voyeurism and exhibitionism diverge dramatically from that of contemporary sexologists