Study of three North American women novelists combining the standpoints of gender studies and narratology.

Study of three North American women novelists combining the standpoints of gender studies and narratology.

By analyzing the works of Thomas, Marlatt, and Erdrich through the lenses of subjectivity, gender studies, and narratology, Caroline Rosenthal brings to light new perspectives on their writings. Although all three authors write metafictions that challenge literary realism and dominant views of gender, the forms of their counter-narratives vary. In her novelIntertidal Life, Thomas traces the disintegration of an identity through narrative devices that unearth ruptures and contradictions in stories of gender. In contrast, Marlatt, inAna Historic, challenges the regulatory fiction of heterosexuality. She offers her protagonist a way out into a new order that breaks with the law of the father, creating a "monstrous" text that explores the possibilities of a lesbian identity. In her tetralogy of novels made up ofLove Medicine, Tracks, The Beet Queen, andThe Bingo Palace, Erdrichresists definite readings of femininity altogether. By drawing on trickster narratives, she creates an open system of gendered identities that is dynamic and unfinalizable, positing the most fragmented worldview as the most enduring. By applying gender and narrative theory to nuanced analysis of the texts, Rosenthal's study elucidates the correlation between gender identity formation and narrative.

Caroline Rosenthal is Professor and Chair of American Literature at the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, Germany. Her bookNarrative Deconstructions of Gender was published by Camden House in 2003.

Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
Framing Theories
"Alice Hoyle: 1,000 Interlocking Pieces": Identity Deconstructions in Audrey Thomas'sIntertidal LifeIntertidal Life
"You Can't Even Imagine?": Monstrous Possibilities of Female Identity in Daphne Marlatt'sAna Historic
"Her Laugh an Ace": Narrative Tricksterism in Louise Erdrich's Tetralogy
Conclusion
Works Consulted
Index