Tarrying with trauma while improvising gender in Alice Munro’s 1978 collection Who Do You Think You Are?
Tarrying with trauma while improvising gender in Alice Munro’s 1978 collection Who Do You Think You Are?
Author
Sorensen, Brianna
Robinson, Jack
Faculty Advisor
Date
2022
Keywords
gender , Alice Munro , literary criticism
Abstract (summary)
Alice Munro’s 1978 collection of linked stories, Who Do You Think You Are? enacts
what Lorraine York calls Munro’s theory of fiction as “tarrying with difficult emotions and
knowledges.” Judith Butler’s seminal 1988 theory of gender performativity postulated that
improvising gender incurs obvious and covert social punishments, but that performing gender
includes the possibility of innovation. Rose, the protagonist, succumbs to and contests norms
imposed on women in the southwestern Ontario township of Huron County during the 1940s to
1970s. This thesis explores Rose surviving punitive social conventions in her cultural context
which are contiguous with trauma. For Rose, failure to conform is what Jack Halberstam defines
as “queer failure”: it is a triumph of personal authenticity over gender essentialism and an
acceptance of human imperfection. In the journey towards self-knowledge, Rose’s surviving
trauma and defying gender scripts cause the “sticky affects” of shame and humiliation identified
by Amelia DeFalco; the feeling that women are not afforded hope; and, in stressful situations,
emotional dissociation and emotional economies, as identified by DeFalco and York. Rose’s
marriage fails because of a sadomasochistic power struggle. Rose tarries with disconnection
from others and from self; however, she innovates gender and subverts the intergenerational
cycle of victimvictimizer by achieving a sense of community and strengthening personal
authenticity, which Margaret Atwood says is, for “Munro’s women,” “an essential element, like
air.” Presentation notes.
Publication Information
DOI
Notes
Presented on April 21, 2022 at Student Research Day at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta.
Item Type
Student Presentation
Language
English
Rights
All Rights Reserved