The Female Face of Shame

Description

Exploring the gendered experience of shame

The female body, with its history as an object of social control, expectation, and manipulation, is central to understanding the gendered construction of shame. Through the study of 20th-century literary texts, The Female Face of Shame explores the nexus of femininity, female sexuality, the female body, and shame. It demonstrates how shame structures relationships and shapes women's identities. Examining works by women authors from around the world, these essays provide an interdisciplinary and transnational perspective on the representations, theories, and powerful articulations of women's shame.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1. Bodies of Shame
1. The Other Woman: Xenophobia and Shame \ Jocelyn Eighan
2. Rape, Trauma, and Shame in Samira Bellil's Dans l'enfer des tournantes \ Nicole Fayard
3. A Bloody Shame: Angela Carter's Shameless Postmodern Fairy Tales \ Suzette A. Henke
4. "Ecrire pour ne plus avoir honte": Christine Angot's and Annie Ernaux's Shameless Bodies \ Natalie Edwards
5. Interactions of Disability Pride and Shame \ Eliza Chandler

Part 2. Families of Shame
6. Colonial Shame in Michelle Cliff's Abeng \ Erica L. Johnson
7. Ancestors and Aliens: Queer Transformations and Affective Estrangement in Octavia Butler's Fiction \ Frann Michel
8. Daughters of the House of Shame \ Sinead McDermott
9. "Bound and Gagged with Thread": Shame, Female Development, and the Künstlerroman Tradition in Cora Sandel's The Alberta Trilogy \ Patricia Moran
10. Girl World and Bullying: Intersubjective Shame in Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye \ Laura Martocci
11. Affliction in Jean Rhys and Simone Weil \ Tamar Heller

Part 3. Nations of Shame
12. Coping with National Shames through Chinese Women's Bodies: Glorified or Mortified? \ Peiling Zhao
13. Shamed Bodies: Partition Violence and Women \ Namrata Mitra
14. Interrogating the Place of Lajja (Shame) in Contemporary Mauritius \ Karen Lindo
15. Shame and Belonging in Postcolonial Algeria \ Anna Rocca

Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Women Authors
• Feminist
• Literary Criticism
• Women's studies
• Feminism
• Gender studies

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 16 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 4
• EAN13: 9780253008732
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE FEMALE FACE OF SHAME
EDITED BY ERICA L. JOHNSON AND PATRICIA MORAN
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
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© 2013 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The female face of shame / edited by Erica L. Johnson and Patricia Moran.
    pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00863-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-00855-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-00873-2 (e-book) 1. Women in literature. 2. Shame in literature. 3. Human body in literature. I. Johnson, Erica L., [date]- editor of compilation. II. Moran, Patricia (Patricia L.) editor of compilation.
PN56.5.W64F456 2013
809'.93352042—dc23
2013003157
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13
 
 
“What does it feel like?” he asked—and his mothers, seeing his bewilderment, essayed explanations. “Your face gets hot,” said Bunny-the-youngest, “but your heart starts shivering.”
“It makes women feel like to cry and die,” said Chhunni-ma, “but men, it makes them go wild.”
—Shame , Salman Rushdie
Contents
Acknowledgments
 
 
 
Introduction
Part 1. Bodies of Shame
1 The Other Woman: Xenophobia and Shame · Jocelyn Eighan
2 Rape, Trauma, and Shame in Samira Bellil's Dans l'enfer des tournantes · Nicole Fayard
3 A Bloody Shame: Angela Carter's Shameless Postmodern Fairy Tales · Suzette A. Henke
4 “Ecrire pour ne plus avoir honte”: Christine Angot's and Annie Ernaux's Shameless Bodies · Natalie Edwards
5 Interactions of Disability Pride and Shame · Eliza Chandler
Part 2. Families of Shame
6 Colonial Shame in Michelle Cliff's Abeng · Erica L. Johnson
7 Ancestors and Aliens: Queer Transformations and Affective Estrangement in Octavia Butler's Fiction · Frann Michel
8 Daughters of the House of Shame · Sinead McDermott
9 “Bound and Gagged with Thread”: Shame, Female Development, and the Künstlerroman Tradition in Cora Sandel's The Alberta Trilogy · Patricia Moran
10 Girl World and Bullying: Intersubjective Shame in Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye · Laura Martocci
11 Affliction in Jean Rhys and Simone Weil · Tamar Heller
Part 3. Nations of Shame
12 Coping with National Shames through Chinese Women's Bodies: Glorified or Mortified? · Peiling Zhao
13 Shamed Bodies: Partition Violence and Women · Namrata Mitra
14 Interrogating the Place of Lajja (Shame) in Contemporary Mauritius · Karen Lindo
15 Shame and Belonging in Postcolonial Algeria · Anna Rocca
 
 
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
I HAVE BEEN BLESSED with many good friends who have given generously of their time and support during the writing and editing of this book. Sandra King has proved a friend indeed: there to help with dogs, textiles, and the search for Sheelas; my life in Ireland would not have been the same without her. I also thank her husband, Bobby, for aiding and abetting us and for outings to Linnane's. David Coughlan was my first friend at the University of Limerick and remains one of the best ever: thanks for all your support. Sinead McDermott and Yianna Liatsos have been exemplary colleagues, making my first years in Ireland and the University of Limerick enjoyable as well as productive. Breeda Kennedy has been that transformative student who has become a treasured friend: thanks for all your help. Suzette Henke and Mark Hussey have been helpful and supportive throughout. The friends in California who were there all along include Andrea Cohen, Joanne Feit Diehl, Cindy Debrunner, Gayle Danelius, and Jack LaPointe; I make special mention here of Maj-Britt Mobrand, who has taught me so much more than weaving. Judy Law deserves mention for her professionalism and for giving meaning to the phrase “grace under pressure.” Cindy Crampsey and Frann Michel have stood by me for decades: thanks for your unwavering support and for believing I could pull off what seemed impossible. It has been a privilege to work with my co-editor, Erica, whose intelligence, insight, and empathy have been much needed and much appreciated; this book would not exist without her. Finally, I thank my son, Patrick Higgins, whose courage, cheer, and optimism provide color to life's daily gray: you have been an inspiration all along.
Patricia Moran

M ANY PEOPLE HAVE given me their ears and support during the process of writing and editing this volume. First, I thank my co-editor, Patricia Moran, for showing me how important it is to understand the workings of shame, for her friendship, and for being as fearless as she is. Thanks to Liz Constable for her inspiration, support, and exquisite work on the topic of shame. Thanks to Natalie Edwards, Christopher Hogarth, and Johanna Rossi Wagner for providing not only moral support but venues, in the forms of conference panels and book chapters, through which I explored the topic of shame. I am grateful to New York University for its Faculty Resource Network and the tremendous access it granted me to important resources as I wrote and edited. At Wagner, I thank my splendid department of Anne Schotter, Ann Hurley, Peter Sharpe, Susan Bernardo, Steve Thomas, and Eloise Brezault as well as my dear colleague Patricia Moynagh, whose insight, good cheer, and friendship are integral to everything I do there. Thanks to Wendy Nielsen for always listening and for her wisdom and unconditional support. Thanks to my parents, Lew and Enid Cocke, for sharing with me a love of books and curiosity about the world. Thanks to my sister Meagan Schipanski for always, always being on the other end of the phone when I call and for talking through anything and everything with me. And, as always, thanks to my amazing husband and son, Patrick and Max Johnson: this, as everything I do, is dedicated to you.
Erica L. Johnson
Introduction
M AXINE H ONG K INGSTON opens her now classic The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts with the harrowing account of how her aunt, her father's sister, committed suicide after suffering the villagers' punishing assault upon her family home on the night she gave birth to an illegitimate child. Related to Kingston by her mother, the story functions as a disciplinary, cautionary tale: “Don't let your father know that I told you,” Brave Orchid warns Kingston. “He denies her. Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don't humiliate us. You wouldn't like to be forgotten as if you had never been born. The villagers are watchful” (Kingston, 5). Not content with her mother's bare-bones factual account and cognizant of her own need to find personal meaning in the story—”Unless I see her life branching into mine, she gives me no ancestral help,” Kingston comments (8)—Kingston fleshes out her mother's skeletal narrative, speculating about the motives and desires that might have impelled her aunt to transgress “boundaries not delineated in space” (8), thereby incurring the wrath of the villagers for daring to imagine her life as separate from that of the community: “The frightened villagers, who depended on one another to maintain the real, went to my aunt to show her a personal, physical representation of the break she had made in the ‘roundness.' Misallying couples snapped off the future, which was to be embodied in true offspring. The villagers punished her for acting as if she could have a private life, secret and apart from them” (12–13). Nor is the villagers' punishment her aunt's only trial: while the family actively encourages wanderlust in men, they “expected her alone to keep the traditional ways, which her brothers, now among the barbarians, could fumble without detection. The heavy, deep-rooted women were to maintain the past against the flood, safe for returning” (8). Hence in choosing forbidden desire, Kingston's aunt “gave up family” (8). In memorializing her aunt Kingston not only repairs the broken ancestral branch between herself and her “forerunner,” she breaks the family taboo on naming her aunt and thus defies her family's even more draconian punishment of sentencing the aunt to an eternity of exile: “The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family