Table Of ContentRaChel CaRRoll
ReReading
Heterosexuality
Feminism, QueeR TheoRy and
ConTempoRaRy FiCTion
Rereading Heterosexuality
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Rereading Heterosexuality
Feminism, Queer Theory and Contemporary
Fiction
Rachel Carroll
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© Rachel Carroll, 2012
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in 10.5/13 pt Sabon
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3955 7 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 4908 2 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 0 7486 4928 0 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7486 4927 3 (Amazon)
The right of Rachel Carroll
to be identifi ed as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: feminism, queer theory and heterosexuality 1
Part One: Revisiting the spinster
1. ‘Becoming my own ghost’: spinsterhood and the ‘invisibility’
of heterosexuality in Sarah Waters’ Affi nity 25
2. Telling tales out of school: spinsters, scandals and
intergenerational heterosexuality in Zoë Heller’s Notes on a
Scandal 45
Part Two: Transgressive female heterosexuality
3. Queering Alice, killing Lolita: feminism, queer theory and the
politics of child sexuality in A. M. Homes’s The End of Alice 67
4. Unauthorised reproduction: class, pregnancy and
transgressive female heterosexuality in Alan Warner’s
Morvern Callar 91
Part Three: Reproducing heterosexuality
5. ‘First one thing and then the other’: rewriting the intersexed
body in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex 111
6. Imitations of life: cloning, heterosexuality and the human in
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go 131
Bibliography 149
Index 157
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Acknowledgements
Some of the material contained in this book has been published previ-
ously; I would like to thank the publishers for permission to reproduce
work from the following publications:
• ‘ “Becoming my own ghost”: spinsterhood, heterosexuality and
Sarah Waters’s Affi nity’, Genders (Spring 2007), n.p.
• ‘Imitations of life: cloning, heterosexuality and the human in
Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go’, Journal of Gender Studies, 19: 1
(2010), pp. 59–71.
• ‘Retrospective sex: rewriting intersexuality in Jeffrey Eugenides’s
Middlesex’, Journal of American Studies, 44: 1 (2010), pp. 187–201.
I am very grateful to my friends Heike Salzer and Ingi Jensson for allow-
ing me to use a still image from their work for the cover of this book.
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Introduction: feminism, queer theory
and heterosexuality
The ‘invisibility’ of heterosexuality as a normative category of identity
is a recurring motif in recent work on heterosexuality; its ‘ “unmarked”
and “naturalised” ’1 status is understood as serving to perpetuate its
power as an identity which tends to be taken for granted and to pass
unquestioned. Indeed, as Linda Schlossberg puts it, ‘heterosexual culture
continually passes itself off as being merely natural, the undisputed
and unmarked norm [emphasis added].’2 Rereading Heterosexuality:
Feminism, Queer Theory and Contemporary Fiction aims to contrib-
ute to what Richard Johnson has described as the ‘impetus to render
heterosexuality visible to critical scrutiny’.3 Heterosexuality as an insti-
tution continues to have immense normative power; while this power
impacts most explicitly on non-heterosexual identities it also extends
to heterosexual identities which do not conform to familial, marital or
reproductive norms – norms which have a particular impact on female
identities, the principal concern of this book. Drawing on feminist and
queer theories of sex, gender and sexuality, Rereading Heterosexuality
takes as its distinctive focus the representation of female identities at
odds with heterosexual norms; more specifi cally, it explores representa-
tions which serve to question the conventional equation between hetero-
sexuality, reproductive sexuality and female identity. In this context, it
will offer close readings of six novels published by British and American
authors between 1995 and 2005: Morvern Callar by Alan Warner
(1995), The End of Alice by A. M. Homes (1996), Affi nity by Sarah
Waters (1999), Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002), Notes on a
Scandal by Zoë Heller (2003) and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
(2005). The diverse subject matter of these novels refl ects contemporary
concerns and anxieties about the future of sex, gender and sexuality;
some address topics which have been the focus of media attention and
social policy debate, including child sexual abuse, human cloning and
transgender identity, while others turn to historical periods which have
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