Interior revolutions: doing domesticity, advocating feminism in contemporary American fiction

254 Pages·2016·0.65 MB·English

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LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School
2006
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Kalene Westmoreland
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
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Westmoreland, Kalene, "Interior revolutions: doing domesticity, advocating feminism in contemporary
American fiction" (2006). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2665.
https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2665
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INTERIOR REVOLUTIONS:
DOING DOMESTICITY, ADVOCATING FEMINISM
IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FICTION

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

in

The Department of English

by
Kalene Westmoreland
B.A., Tarleton State University, 1995
M.A., Tarleton State University, 1998
May 2006
©Copyright
Kathi Kalene Westmoreland
All Rights Reserved
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For Brett,

Shauna, Brendan, Maya,

and Momma.

iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Rick Moreland for his guidance, support,
encouragement, and understanding throughout this project. Rick, without you, I would still be
hunkered down in a chair, feeling overcome. I would also like to acknowledge my committee
members for their support and invaluable instruction: Dr. Jack May, Dr. Sharon Weltman, Dr.
Kevin Bongiorni, and of course, Dr. Robin Roberts.
I would also like to thank my mentors from Tarleton State University, Dr. Mallory Young
and Tom Pilkington. Dr. Young, you inspired me from the very first day of my college
experience thirteen years ago; your teaching, support, and friendship have guided me through the
difficulties and joys of both academia and life, even when we could not greet one another with
“bonjour” every day. Dr. Pilkington, your support during my graduate career, first as my thesis
director and then as my friend, has been immeasurable; you have never failed to encourage me
and guide me, even when I felt defeated.
Thank you to all my students who have encouraged me and made me a better teacher.
Thank you to all the constants in my life, my friends and family. Kris, I have cherished
every conversation we have ever had, and without your expertise (medical, intellectual, and
personal) and advocacy, I would not have been able to finish this project. I am grateful for your
presence in my life. Donna and Jesse Riley welcomed me into their hearts and family; thank you
for embracing me and encouraging me. Teresa, you were there with me when this incredible
journey in education began; you helped me realize a dream I never knew I could have, and for
that, I owe my “Keeter” a debt of gratitude always. Dennis, thank you just for being you, for
always keeping me in check, and for making me laugh. Daddy, thank you for your constant
encouragement and pride in your middle child. Without the influence and constant support of
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my momma, Pat, I would not be the woman that I am today. Momma, you are the kindest,
strongest, and smartest woman I know, and you and I share the kind of sisterhood that inspired
my dissertation. Thank you for making sure that I was not simply as “smart as a whip” but that I
ended up doing something about it.
Kids--Maya, B.J., and Shauna--thank you for being in my life, for loving me, and for
letting me love you. I wish I could make you know how much I have enjoyed my journey as
your stepmother and how much I look forward to every day I have the privilege of spending with
you.
Brett: you know. You have loved me constantly, bolstered me when I was down, and
guided me when I was confused. You are my best friend, my inspiration, my creative co-
conspirator, and always, my tag team partner. Thank you.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication……………………………………………………………………………...…………iii
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………….…iv
Abstract……………………………………………………….………………………………….vii
Introduction……………………………………………………………………….……………….1
Chapter
1 Home-Sick: Personal Anxiety and Political Oppression in
The Feminine Mystique and The Stepford Wives……………………………….….…….30

2 Sewing Subjectivity, Cooking Communities:
Sisterhood and Domestic Resistance.............................................................................…57
Survival, Subjectivity, and Sisterhood in The Color Purple…………………….64
Cooking and Cross-Generational Sisterhoods in Fried Green Tomatoes….…....93

3 So Far From Sisterhood: Domesticity as Feminist Pedagogy……………..…………...112
Isolation, Sacrifice, and Unification in So Far From God……………………..120
Isolation, Sisterhood, and Disorder in The Joy Luck Club……………………..130

4 Revising Domesticity, Restructuring the Ideal: The Myth of Family.……………..…..149
(Dis)“satisfying” Stories and Sisterhoods in A Thousand Acres….……………157
Subversive Sentimentality in We Were the Mulvaneys…………………………182

5 Imperfect Arrangements: Contractual Domesticity and
Comparative Mothering....…………………………………………………………...…199
Subversive Surrogacy in The Nanny Diaries……………………………….…..206
Imperfect Domesticities in A Perfect Arrangement……………………..……...218

Coda…………………………………………………………………………………………….232

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………239

Vita……………………………………………………………………………….…………….245

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ABSTRACT

Domesticity has endured as a facet of everyday life in the late twentieth century and
beyond, despite cultural acceptance of feminist beliefs and ideals which encourage women’s
movement away from the private sphere of the home. A tumultuous and remarkable cultural
transformation has marked the four decades since the publication of Betty Friedan’s The
Feminine Mystique, a key text of early second-wave feminism. Equality and choice seem viable
and attainable, yet many women today feel overwhelmed by responsibilities and the pressure to
live up to the idealization of motherhood. Domesticity can be used as a tool of oppression,
against which feminisms may provide useful forms of resistance; but feminisms and domesticity
can also function in concert, which can strengthen their potential to transform individual
women’s lives and cultural attitudes about women. Interior Revolutions: Doing Domesticity,
Advocating Feminism in Contemporary American Fiction examines how various late twentieth
century writers represent this complex relationship and reveals domesticity’s potential as a site of
transformative feminist discourse and praxis.
Through a third-wave, feminist poststructuralist lens I analyze nine contemporary works
of fiction from a variety of genres and one key feminist text, The Feminine Mystique, in order to
reconsider the scope of American domestic fiction. Interior Revolutions illustrates how
“advocating feminism” is a useful means of personal and political transformation for characters,
readers, and American women. Representations of domesticity convey ways that our culture
perceives women and their relationship to domestic space; such representations may in turn
influence how women see their own relationship to domestic spaces and responsibilities.
Engaging with these representations can spur women to reconsider and revise their conceptions
of the ways that feminism and domesticity function in their own lives, potentially prompting
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them to advocate feminism. Interior Revolutions examines texts and discourses about
feminisms, domesticity, and the meaningful connections between these concepts.

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INTRODUCTION

“The personal is political” (Robin Morgan, qtd in No Turning Back: The History
of Feminism and the Future of Women)

“For our generation, feminism is like fluoride. We scarcely notice we have it--it’s
simply in the water” (Baumgardener and Richards qtd in Not My Mother’s Sister:
Generational Conflict and Third Wave Feminism).

According to postfeminism, women now have a choice between feminism and
antifeminism, and they just naturally and happily choose the latter. And the most
powerful way that postfeminism worked to try to redomesticate women was
through the new momism. Here’s the progression: Feminism won; you can have
it all; of course you want children; mothers are better at raising children than
fathers; of course your children come first, of course you come last; today’s
children need constant attention, cultivation, and adoration, or they’ll become
failures and hate you forever; you don’t want to fail at that; it’s easier for mothers
to abandon their work and their dreams than for their fathers; you don’t want it all
anymore (which is good because you can’t have it all); who cares about equality,
you’re too tired; and whoops--here we are in 1954. (Susan Douglas and Meredith
Michaels, The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Has
Undermined Women)

Domesticity can be used as a tool of oppression, against which feminisms may provide
useful forms of resistance, but feminisms and domesticity are not always and not necessarily
opposed to each other. Feminisms and domesticity can also function in concert, which can
strengthen their potential to transform individual women’s lives and cultural attitudes about
women. Feminisms and domesticity are complex, fluid political and personal concepts that are
widely undervalued and misunderstood by both men and women. Feminisms and domesticity
are also interdependent, ebbing and flowing together and against one another politically; the
seeming fixity which is culturally assigned to these complex terms in fact bolsters the political
importance of both terms and their relationship to each other. Studying how various late
twentieth-century writers represent this complex relationship reveals domesticity’s potential as a
site of transformative feminist discourse and praxis.
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