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Rereading HeterosexualityFeminism, Queer Theory and Contemporary Fiction

By Rachel Carroll

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£100.00

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About this book

Heterosexuality in contemporary novels, re-examined using the frameworks of feminism and queer theory

  • A timely exploration of the dynamic relationship between feminist and queer theory
  • Insightful close readings of acclaimed novels, including Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal, A. M. Homes' The End of Alice, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Alan Warner's Morvern Callar and Sarah Waters' Affinity
  • Topics range from spinsterhood and intergenerational sexuality to transgender and human cloning

Drawing on feminist and queer theories of sex, gender and sexuality, this study focuses on female identities at odds with heterosexual norms. In particular, it explores narratives in which the conventional equation between heterosexuality, reproductive sexuality and female identity is questioned.

Reviews

In Rereading Heterosexuality Rachel Carroll steps into provocative and challenging territory. She confronts one of feminisms most thorny dilemmas, namely how to comprehend female heterosexuality which is not simply non-normative but virtually unthinkable to the feminist canon. Written with skill and scholarship in equal measure, there are no easy answers but rather a productive unsettling of expectations.
Rachel Carroll makes us 'see' heterosexuality in new and different ways so that we can no longer take it as read. The novels chosen for discussion make interesting bedfellows and the analysis is distinctive and fresh: this will be essential reading for anyone working in contemporary fiction, gender and sexuality.
Rachel Carroll makes us 'see' heterosexuality in new and different ways so that we can no longer take it as read. The novels chosen for discussion make interesting bedfellows and the analysis is distinctive and fresh: this will be essential reading for anyone working in contemporary fiction, gender and sexuality.
Table of contents
Introduction: Feminism, Queer Theory and Heterosexuality; Part One: Revisiting the spinster; 1. 'Becoming my own ghost': spinsterhood and the 'invisibility' of heterosexuality in Sarah Waters's Affinity; 2. Telling tales out of school: spinsters, scandals and intergenerational heterosexuality in Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal; 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; 4. Unauthorised reproduction: class, pregnancy and transgressive female heterosexuality in Alan Warner's Morvern Callar; Part Three: Reproducing heterosexuality; 5. 'First one thing and then the other': rewriting the intersexed body in Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex; 6. Imitations of life: cloning, heterosexuality and the human in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go
About the author

Rachel Carroll

Rachel Carroll is Reader in English at Teesside University, UK. She is author of Rereading Heterosexuality: Feminism, Queer Theory and Contemporary Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2012) and editor of Adaptation in Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities (Continuum, 2009) and Litpop: Writing and Popular Music (with Adam Hansen, Ashgate, 2014). Her research has been published in journals including Adaptation, Contemporary Women’s Writing, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Textual Practice and Women: a cultural review.