Chapter 7 Gender Studies
 Gender studies began as feminism and eventually
became as well gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender
studies.
 It studies the canon of male writers for how women
have been represented in it.
 According to feminist anthropologists such as Gayle
Rubin, the subordination of women to men originated
in early societies in which women were used as tokens
of exchange between clans.
 Moreover, the pressure of what Adrienne Rich
calls “compulsory heterosexuality” ensures that
women have no other options than to more
economically powerful men.
 Whatever its origin – nature or society – this
situation of gender inequality is sustained by
culture.
 Images of strong, publicly competent women who are
still hard to come by in film culture, while images of
women who are evil because they possess too much
power are fairly easy to find.
 The French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray argues
that images of frighteningly powerful, castrating
women appear so frequently in male dominated culture
because man’s first relationship in the world is with his
mother.
 That many women freely accede to such
subordination is a sign of how successful
cultural conditioning can be even when it works
against one’s interests.
 American feminist scholars Sandra Gilbert and
Susan Gubar add important detail to this
argument in The Madwoman in the Attic.
 In so doing, it essentially kills them, since they are
rendered immobile and inanimate and deprived of
autonomy.
 Gender studies also includes gay and lesbian studies, as
well as the study of sexuality in general.
 Oscar Wilde is the most famous example, but writers
like Elizabeth Bishop and Henry James, who remained
“in the closet” for most of their lives, were more
common.
 Gay critics interrogate the very notion of gender
identity and question the logic of gender categorization.
 The normative alignment in mainstream gender culture
of male and female with heterosexual masculinity or
femininity must therefore be seen as a political rather
than a biological fact.
 The variability of sexuality and of gender identity is
quelled by the dominant discourse regarding gender,
which enforces what it describes.
 This plurality is subsumed to the binary heterosexual
norm in mainstream culture, but its reality is evident
throughout society.
 If normative reproductive sexuality and the identities
that accompany it are one among many possible modes
and vectors of sexuality, then supposedly marginal
forms of sexuality, rather than being perverse
deviations from a norm, may be manifestations of the
basic multiplicity of sexuality.
 There is no norm; there is only a variety of possibilities
both for gender identity and for sexual practice.
 These theories focus attention on the role of culture in
establishing and maintaining gender norms.
 We assume cultural accouterments are expressions of a
gender nature or ontology, but these theorists contend
that the repetitive imitation of normative gender
standards in fact generates a sense in humans of having
a coherent gender identity that does not include deviant
possibilities.
 Why are the ruling heterosexual gender groups
so interested in making sure their norms are
enforced?
 If one looks at the numerous homemade trailers
for the film Brokeback Mountain, especially the
TopGun parody, this point becomes quite clear.
 The panic at the heart of heterosexual culture is
most palpable in its fear objects.
 But if women can be men and men women, that
becomes a vexed and flawed undertaking.
 What these insights suggest is that homosexuality is
not an identity apart from and completely outside
another identity called heterosexuality.
 Sexual transitivity is stilled for the sake of species
reproduction, but in the realms of cultural play, the
excess of desire and identification over norm and rule
testify to more plural possibilities.
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(1)
 King Lear was written at a time when
homosexuality – or “sodomy” – was outlawed,
yet it was also a time when James I, the new
king of England, was making it increasingly
clear to his subjects that he was a practicing
homosexual.
 On the king’s court on St. Stephen’s Night,
1606, a festival that might be counted an
occasion for “debaucheries”.
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(2)
 Bray notes that the London theater was, like James’s
court, a locus of the homosexual subculture of early
seventeenth- century England.
 Homosexuality is worked into the play both as
innuendo and as a fairly explicit, if necessarily oblique,
theme.
 The play begins on a homosocial note that very quickly
veers into an at least jokingly homosexual
suggestiveness.
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(3)
 One might even say that by evoking it in this
opening dialogue, which is played out of view
of the more public events that follow,
Shakespeare is noting the closeted quality of
life in the homosexual subculture to which he,
as member of the theater, probably belonged.
 But why make a coy homosexual reference at
the opening of a tragedy about a father’s
betrayal by his daughters?
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(4)
 Lear’s mad fantasies are explicitly linked to theatrical
exhibition, and one conclusion we might draw is that
Shakespeare, by depicting a play within a play at a
moment charged with homosexual references, is
referring to the homosexual subculture of the London
theater itself.
 The play portrays compulsory heterosexuality as
successfully healing itself and reattaining its dominant
status and place after a fall into psychological
fragmentation.
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(5)
 Edgar most explicitly articulates the play’s critique of
heterosexuality when as Tom he speaks of having
“served the lust of my mistress’ heart,” which equates
heterosexuality itself with demonic possession by the
“foul fiend.”
 Heterosexuality is dangerous because it contains an
instability: while it would seem to assure a man’s
identity as a masculine male, it leaves the man
dependent on women for certification.
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(6)
 Which is to say, given the slang meaning of nothing, he
is a woman.
 If women are the soft spot of the heterosexual regime,
its point of proof as well as of vulnerability, it is
because the exchange relationship that establishes that
system is reversible.
 I say this because those left to rule at the end of the
play- Kent and Edgar- are men who apparently love
men not women.
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(7)
 The dangerous and destructive feminization of men
occurs when women assume traditionally masculine
powers, when they, as it were, become men.
 That Lear cannot ultimately survive the experience and
must pass on power to Edgar suggests just how deadly
feminization is conceived as being within the early
seventeenth-century cultural gender codes.
 Within the Renaissance bodily code, Lear’s loss of
temper and rash actions based on momentary emotions
are coded as female.
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(8)
 The price he pays for behaving like a woman is to
become a woman.
 When his Fool speaks of him as “nothing,” he adds a
sexual spin to Lear’s loss of power: “Thou hast pared
the wit o’ both sides and left nothing i’ the middle.
Here comes one o’ the parings.”
 He can now be had from behind by his phallic daughter.
 Earlier, the Fool had compared the division of Lear’s
kingdom to the breaking of an egg into two ends or
crowns: “why, after I have cut the egg i’ the middle
and eat up the meat, the two crowns of the egg.”
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(9)
 And he is described as suffering an “eyeless rage.”
 In contrast, one important feature of the new masculine
figure who takes Lear’s place as ruler is his detachment
from women.
 I will have such revenges on you both /That all the
world shall- I will do such things-/What they are yet I
know not.
 Edgar and Kent, the two characters most capable of
restorative violence, are also those most associated
with homosocial relationships.
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(10)
 This ideal of isomale relations is not only homosocial,
but also homosexual.
 It is permitted in relations between men.
 Undercover homosexuality is a parallel social structure
to compulsory heterosexuality in early seventeenthcentury England.
 In isomale relations, the feminized heterosexual male
can be repositioned in a dominant masculine posture if
he receives service from another male.
 With Kent, the Fool is a figure of homosocial healing
who is also suggestive of homosexuality.
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(11)
 Cordelia is called fool because in some respects she is
the Fool.
 What these cross-gender confusions suggest is that the
sites of retraction- hovel and cage- are curative because
they are outside the exchange system of compulsory
heterosexuality.
 We witness that turn in the mad scenes on the heath.
 Edgar is the character who is most capable of enacting
the new masculinity the play demands after
compulsory heterosexuality has been shown to be both
deficient and dangerous.
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(12)
 When Lear sheds his clothes and joins Edgar in
nakedness, the visual display evokes homosexuality,
and so as well does Edgar’s vocabulary of possession,
which at the time was associated with sodomy.
 Edgar undergoes with Lear the experience of
liquefaction that is effeminization.
 If Edgar is teacher, he also refers to himself as a
“childe” or young knight about to be initiated, since his
encounter with Lear prepares him for his assumption of
the king’s place.
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(13)
 The scene of “Greek” tutelage between the learned
Theban and Lear prepares the substitution of younger
ruler for older king, and constitutes an endorsement of
homosexuality as a reparative alternative to
heterosexuality.
 The play’s ending is noteworthy for its emotionality.
 The play is at its most gender-radical when it seem to
suggest that those traits are contingent rather than
ontological or natural.
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(14)
 But it is also that of the homosexual man who must
live out the form of compulsory heterosexuality while
yet experiencing feelings that must remain silent.
 Now consider the play from a feminist perspective.
 How does the depiction of women reproduce
traditional stereotypes regarding women?
 How do these stereotypes appear in the opening scene?
 After the opening scene, Goneril and Regan change
dramatically.
Exercise 7.1
William Shakespeare, King Lear(15)
 Goneril and Regan become viler and viler as
the play proceeds.
 Is the play about female power and the danger
it poses for men?
 What might that be?
 Is there a symbolic connection of some kind
between that fact and fate of patriarchy in the
play?
Exercise 7.2(1)
 The one of the three expressly lesbian poems
that Elizabeth Bishop wrote- “Exchanging
Hats”- had to go unpublished (while one of the
others- “The Shampoo”- was refused
publication by Bishop’s usual outlet, the New
Yorker, because of its sexual allusions says
something about the problems faced by gay
writers in the recent past.
Exercise 7.2(2)
 What colors are used and why?
 Why does she call their cries traditional?
 Bishop eventually begins to lend thematic significance
to the roosters.
 She mocks their combativeness and seems to relish
their deflation and death.
 Peter was told by Christ that he would betray him by
the time the cock had crowed three times.
 Why does Bishop turn to this story?
 How is this morning different?
Exercise 7.2(3)
 “In the Waiting Room” is a remarkable and debatable
poem.
 When the poem was written, lesbians could not live
openly.
 Quite literally, a man would have the right to poke
around in one of your essential cavities, and you would
have to grin and bear it.
 The girl in the poem reads National Geographic while
her Aunt Consuelo is inside with the dentist.
Exercise 7.2(4)
 What she describes, in other words, may be her
own reactions to things as much as the things
themselves.
 Why would she carefully study the photographs?
 What do you make of that image?
 Can you tell which is male and which female?
 Why the repetition here?
 What do you make of the word horrifying
applied to the girl’s sense of their naked breasts?
Exercise 7.2(5)
 Notice that she implies that she wanted to stop to look
longer, but she was “too shy to do so”
 She seems to seek even more reassurance in the lines
that follow.
 In space and time, she wants to fix a boundary between
herself and the feelings now safely “inside ”the
magazine.
 All of this makes the next line striking and interesting“Suddenly, from inside.”
 Compulsory heterosexual sex is pain for a lesbian.
Exercise 7.2(6)
 What follows suggests that things are not clear-cut for
the girl.
 Where do you think the stress falls?
 Does that seem like a plausible reading?
 If so, what do you make of her confusion of herself
with the aunt?
 That would seem to make a certain sense.
 Or does she mean that she did not think she was her
foolish aunt?
 Read the reat of the poem on your own.
Exercise 7.2(7)
 Notice as well the odd configuration of inside
and outside in that stanza, and think about how
that might bear on this reading.
 You might take the trouble to look up
“anandrous ”and “avernal” and ask why she uses
these words.
Exercise7.3(1)
 The narrator of The Aspern Papers clearly
adores Jeffrey Aspern, but does he love him?
 Consider how Aspern’s relations with women
are characterized in the first chapter.
 Why does he seem so bent on diminishing the
significance of Aspern’s relations with women?
 Do you get any sense of the narrator’s sexuality
in this chapter?
Exercise7.3(2)
 To not come means to not ejaculate, and that
might also be a symbolic signal of sexual
detachment.
 Are there other ways in which sexuality seems
implied in the setting, action, and
characterizations in the story?
 Drawers is an old slang term for women’s
underwear.
Exercise7.3(3)
 What do you think the tale is about then- a man
with sexual yearnings toward a maternal figure,
or a man with negative feelings for women who
clearly prefers other men?
 Psychoanalytic theorists describe masochism as
a process that converts pain into pleasure.
 One of the more homoerotic moments in the
text occurs in this chapter.
Exercise7.3(4)
 He idealizes and idolizes the paternal figure as an
alternative, and idolizes the paternal figure as an
alternative, and he has strongly charged negative
feelings toward the mother, some of which are erotic in
character.
 He imagines himself pelting her door with flowers, and
the door would have to yield.
 What does Aspern represent?
 The relationship with Tina is tinged by expediency.
 Do you detect signs of bad faith, of reasoning that
excuses what should not be excused?
Exercise7.3(5)
 What do you make of his intense feeling of
shame upon