In the Convent: A Rewriting of “Araby” by James Joyce

(Author’s note: this is another very old piece of my writing that will probably always be hard to place, even if I get a book deal someday. For Jared Green’s Creative Writing: Short Fiction class at Stonehill College in spring 2009, one assignment was to rewrite a story from another perspective. Joyce is in the public domain, so as fanfic I’m posting not for profit, this should present no issues. So, I wrote this when I was 19, weeks apart from my story “Categories,” which The Deaf Poets Society published in 2017. Also, one cannot plagiarize from oneself, so you might notice some passages reworked into my story “The Lost Year,” which I started for Jared in 2011 and published in Kaleidoscope in 2017.

Thanks for reading!— Grace Lapointe)

Fiction

In the Convent: A Rewriting of “Araby” by James Joyce

A sliver of light slanted in through the stained-glass window in the chapel. When the sky was cloudy, the interior of the chapel seemed dark and drab. But today, sunlight came in at just the right angle to create a pattern on the opposite wall. On even slightly sunny days like these, Siobhan couldn’t pay attention to the priest’s sermons or her schoolwork. She could hear the monotone of Father Cassidy’s voice, but didn’t focus on anything he was saying. His words were background noise, like the persistent drone of an insect. It was Lent, so he was probably preaching about the same old topics: repentance and abstinence. He told them to remember that Jesus had died for each and every one of their sins. That made Siobhan shudder, because it sounded like Jesus was still dying right now, and her actions were killing him. Father Cassidy always talked about the things they should give up, but she thought Jesus couldn’t possibly want them to give up everything.

Father Cassidy’s sermons were always boring, but Siobhan enjoyed the rare times when James, the seminarian, came to speak to them. In a few years, he would be Father Nolan, but for now he was just James. He was tall and slender, with green eyes and dark brown hair. In the beginning, he’d been shy and anxious about speaking in front of a crowd, even if it was just a chapel full of young girls. He sometimes used funny anecdotes to prove a point in his sermons, while Father Cassidy was always completely serious. She thought it was a little sad that James was going to become a priest and live his entire life without getting married. It’s such a waste! she thought vaguely, although she did not know exactly what he would be wasting. Just imagining him growing old without marrying anyone was like picturing fruit ripening and then rotting. Siobhan stopped, startled by her own thought. No, that wasn’t what she meant! She meant that he was a nice person, and that he’d probably be good to his wife and children.

During Lent, the air inside the chapel seemed heavy, almost suffocating. The pungent odor of incense irritated the back of her throat, and the hymns sounded like funeral dirges. Even the statues had been draped in black cloth, so it looked like they were in mourning or hiding their faces in shame.

Beautiful spring weather made the convent school seemed even more unbearable. All Siobhan could think about was how badly she wanted to go outside. She longed for an adventure in a distant land, where she would meet a mysterious, fascinating man. Or if she couldn’t have some epic romance, she at least wanted to get away from the school. But the nuns were constantly warning the girls about the many dangers of the world.

The nuns spoke about boys as if they were almost a separate species. If only they’d known that this made males seem exotic and therefore even more desirable. Boys were predatory creatures, the nuns told them, but they also had much less self-control than girls. At the same time, the girls were expected to become obedient wives and good mothers soon after they graduated from school. It didn’t make any sense, Siobhan thought. If boys were really so dangerous, what made them suddenly deserve complete respect and devotion as soon as they became husbands?

Maybe the sisters wanted them to be afraid of men because they had never gotten married themselves. After all, what did they know about men, or about life for that matter? They had probably entered the convent when they were only a few years older than Siobhan. The sisters tried to convince them that a religious vocation was even more sacred than marriage in its own way.

When she was a little younger, Siobhan had wanted to be a nun. At home, her little siblings were always running around their crowded apartment, annoying her when she wanted to read or daydream. So a life of solitude appealed to her. But she didn’t like the idea of wearing a habit that covered her long, chestnut-colored hair. With their faces partly covered, it was impossible to tell whether some of the nuns were eighteen or eighty. In one of her anthologies about the lives of the saints, she’d read about a girl who had paraded through the streets the day before she joined the convent, daring all the boys to have one last look at her. If Siobhan ever became a nun, she’d want to do something dramatic like that. She liked being alone, but when she walked out on her balcony at night, she saw that boys noticed her.

Yet there was something undeniably exciting about the idea of getting married. Her parents argued with one another constantly, usually over money, but she and her husband wouldn’t be like that. She would marry someone handsome, funny, and preferably wealthy, and he would be totally fascinated by her. On the other hand, she couldn’t see herself as anyone’s mother. Siobhan’s mother was only in her early thirties, but her face was already lined and haggard. Once everyone had been fed, she was often too exhausted to even talk to them. Just imagining the messiness and drudgery of raising children was enough to make Siobhan’s head hurt.

One day in the middle of Lent, the girls at school began buzzing about a bazaar called Araby that was coming to their neighborhood. Only one of Siobhan’s classmates, a girl named Margaret, had been there before. Margaret said it was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen. The bazaar was full of incredible oddities: foreign foods with ingredients too unfamiliar to name, fortune tellers and snake charmers, and men with turbans who had trained monkeys. Siobhan was captivated as Margaret regaled them with her stories. She couldn’t help being a little skeptical, though, since Margaret loved to exaggerate things. But Siobhan wanted it to be real. She imagined going to Araby and meeting someone handsome and charming, who would take her away to an exotic place. But that was just a daydream. It could probably never happen, Siobhan reasoned. Still, it would be thrilling enough to just get a glimpse of another world. So when Siobhan learned that the bazaar conflicted with a school retreat, she felt crushed.

That night, Siobhan was standing on her balcony, looking out over her crowded, ugly street. The buildings were dilapidated, and built so close together that they seemed to be staring into each other’s windows. Her convent school and the boys’ school that her younger brother attended were only a few blocks away from their tenement. One of her brother’s friends who lived in the next building over was looking out the window at her. He was a scrawny, pale child, and he was staring at her like he was mesmerized. Boys her brothers’ age were awkward children, barely growing into their ears and noses. For a moment she enjoyed the attention of someone, anyone, staring at her. But she barely knew this boy. Her brother’s classmates always called each other by their last names, so she didn’t even know his name.

She started to feel a little unnerved that this strange child was staring at her without saying anything. So just to break the silence, she asked him, “Are you going to Araby?”

He seemed flustered and didn’t know how to answer. “Uhhh, yes — I mean, I dunno — what’s Araby?” he stammered, blushing.

“Oh, it’s a splendid bazaar. I’d love to go,” she said wistfully. “There are musicians, fortune-tellers and snake charmers!”

“That sounds wonderful,” he said. “And why can’t you go?”

“Oh, there’s a retreat in my convent that week,” she sighed. She was leaning slightly on the railing. She knew that if she tilted her head just a little, her long hair would fall down her shoulders. But since he was already so besotted, that would almost be cruel.

“It’s well for you,” Siobhan said. She thought it would be wonderful to go anywhere she wished: not just Araby but anywhere other than the convent.

“If I go, I’ll bring you something,” he told her earnestly. Siobhan turned away and walked back inside.

She wondered why he was so intent on getting her a present. Why would she want something from him if she barely knew him? A present was no replacement for going to Araby herself. In any case, there was probably nothing special at Araby. Margaret could be a terrible liar. Maybe it didn’t matter whether she went to Araby or not.

What if there was no dramatic escape in her future? Siobhan wondered. What if she would never see the distant regions of the world, and no one would ever sweep her off her feet? Maybe her only choices were becoming exhausted and overwhelmed, like her own mother, or going into the convent for good. But how could she give up the possibility of marriage without even knowing what she was missing? She wanted to be part of the world, not retreat from it. Did she have to stay in the same squalid, gloomy world where she had grown up? For now she could daydream, but soon she would have to make a decision about the rest of her life. Whether she chose to be a nun or someone’s wife, Siobhan thought that she would always dream about what might have been.

Grace Lapointe

WRITTEN BY

Grace Lapointe

I’m a published fiction and nonfiction writer in the Boston area. Disabled and proud! Interests include music, lit. https://gracelapointe.wordpress.com/

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A Note on When My Work was Written

First, thanks so much to everyone who’s ever read or shared my work. I’ve even seen the paper I wrote and presented on Ursula K. Le Guin when I was a college junior at Stonehill included on at least one college syllabus! I’m also grateful that the professor noted that I wrote it as an undergrad. As someone who went to college but not grad school, having my work taught in college was a dream I thought was almost impossible.

I’m also pleased that people think fiction and essays that I finished up to a decade ago in college still hold up. This is an attempt to give myself proper credit, but more importantly, put my work in its appropriate historical context. Many of us disabled writers finally started getting published within the past few years. Language and intersectional thinking around identities like disability and gender can evolve quickly, which is good. Our observations might anticipate future trends in art or politics but obviously cannot accurately predict them.

  • “Categories”: written spring 2009
  • “In the Convent: A Rewriting of ‘Araby’ by James Joyce”: written spring 2009
  • “‘Light is the Left Hand of Darkness’: Deconstructing Gender Binarisms”: written fall 2009; presented spring 2010
  • “Walking Under Ladders”: written fall 2010
  • “The Lost Year”: written mostly spring 2011; completed/edited 2013

  • “The Glaring Error in 50 Shades of Grey that No One Has Mentioned Yet:” written 2012; published on WordPress 2016, Medium 2017

  • “Does Infinite Jest See Disability as Grotesque?” written 2012; published 2017
  • “Why Cabaret is the Perfect Movie for Our Time,” written 2016, posted on WP June 2017; republished in Wordgathering December 2017

The Weirdness of Watergate as a Millennial

In the weeks leading up to Mueller’s delivery of his report on Trump on Friday afternoon, cable news has indulged in impeachment nostalgia. When I watch CNN with my parents, I see constant ads for the network’s documentary series on Nixon, Tricky Dick. It’s easy to overstate the parallels between Nixon and Trump, including their attempts to suppress the freedom of the press. The nostalgia arises from Nixon’s path to resignation or potential impeachment, which seems less complex than Trump’s in many ways. Although Nixon had much more experience in politics and law than Trump does, the Democratic Congress was willing to investigate—and if necessary, impeach—Nixon.

As a Millennial, one aspect of the Nixon story has always baffled me: Nixon’s over-reliance on technology. Of course, the wiretapping of the Democratic Party’s headquarters was a major aspect of the Watergate scandal. The Internet age didn’t invent the abuse of classified information, but it certainly facilitated it.

Nowadays, we’re used to all of our data being digitized and quantified in some way. In the 1970s, though, this was not the case. Today, many conversations take place across multiple digital platforms that would have occurred in person or over landlines in past decades—if they occurred at all. Short of wiretapping, these conversations would not have been traceable.

That’s what I find so ironic and fascinating about the Nixon White House tapes. Why create data where none existed before? Why create a record for posterity if you know that you and your associates are committing crimes or making racist or anti-Semitic comments? To me, Nixon’s desire to preserve his own conversations was a form of hubris, which created a completely avoidable problem for him. The irony of using analog technology to create the type of footprint that we all have online today is staggering.

If Nixon’s downfall came partly from abusing the technology of his day and failing to destroy evidence, Trump is guilty of the same mistakes, only on a much larger scale. Every day, Trump produces an unprecedented amount of data compared to presidents pre-Twitter. Sometimes, I think that he has a new scandal each day that would take down any other president—particularly one who isn’t a white man with a cult-like following. With Trump, there’s exponentially more data to sift through than with past administrations, but this means more evidence of any criminal and/or impeachable offenses. Tweets and emails aren’t trivial: they’re evidence of a pattern of ongoing, criminal, unconstitutional behavior.

The challenge lies in how Barr and Congress analyze the information and whether it’s released to the public. As Americans, I think that it’s our civic duty to read the full Mueller report and have opinions on it.

Why I Won’t Watch Arrested Development Season 5

Content notice: discussion of jokes about ableism, sexual harassment, and incest

There’s a new season of Arrested Development on Netflix today, but I can’t watch it. I have vivid memories of watching the first season at my cousin Natalie’s house in 2003, when we were fourteen. We were exactly the right age for its ironic situations and absurd, risqué humor. I laughed uproariously at how out of touch with reality Lucille Bluth’s wealth made her: “It’s one banana, Michael. How much could it cost? Ten dollars?”

Even for its time, the humor was edgy and politically incorrect. The scene in which Lindsay visits her father in prison, and becomes disappointed when none of the male inmates harass her, would fall flat post-#MeToo. There are also ongoing jokes about incest (George Michael’s attraction to his cousin Maeby and the ensuing awkwardness). Even her name is a pun. He often introduces her to strangers as “This is my cousin…Maeby!” pausing as if to imply that maybe she’s not really his cousin.

In retrospect, the physical and intellectual ableism is shocking and prevalent. Buster is an amputee, and his oversized prosthetic hand is supposed to be comical and acts as a recurring gag.

The show also contains blatant intellectual ableism. Rita is a sophisticated, elegant blonde woman with whom Michael is infatuated. They briefly become engaged to each other. Rita has an intellectual disability, which serves as a recurring gag throughout her story arc. Other characters nickname her “MRF,” which stands for “mentally r******* female.” These scenes are shocking to watch today, as “the r-word” is an ableist slur that has been used to torment, dehumanize, and disenfranchise disabled people for generations.

The underlying joke here is that Americans will consider almost anything, no matter how ridiculous, sophisticated and intelligent if someone says it in an upper-class British accent. Like many instances of ableism, it makes disabled people collateral damage along the way. It’s ableist on more subtle levels, in addition to making fun of her intellectual disability more directly.

In retrospect, the original three seasons of Arrested Development show us how much cultural awareness of disability and other marginalized groups has improved over the past 15 years. Ironically, even as a disabled teenager myself watching the show, the ableism did not make me dislike it or stop watching. I observed that it was offensive and “politically incorrect,” but it didn’t bother me emotionally. Without connection to a broader disability community that creates and analyzes pop culture, I thought that I was overanalyzing, over-intellectualizing, and taking things too seriously just for noticing ableism. As someone who spent time with friends with various disabilities at physical therapy and most of my time with non-disabled friends and family, I compartmentalized ableism.

Ableism has typically been an easy target in edgy humor because we disabled people are not presumed to be a part of the audience. As a teenager with an ironic, irreverent sense of humor, I was part of the intended audience; as someone with cerebral palsy, I was definitely not. This is why we need to be involved in writing, production, and as discerning audiences and critics for all forms of media.

“Light is the Left Hand of Darkness”: Deconstructing Gender Binarisms

Grace Lapointe

(Note: as a tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin, I wanted to post the paper that I wrote about The Left Hand of Darkness at Stonehill as a junior in 2009 and presented at Stonehill and Bridgewater State’s Undergrad Literary Conference in 2010. Although I might use slightly different language to describe gender binaries today, I have not edited the original text and think it holds up well. Le Guin, however, was clearly decades ahead of her time.)

 

Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1969 science-fiction novel The Left Hand of Darkness depicts a planet called Gethen, meaning “winter” in the book’s fictitious language of Karhide, which is in a permanent ice age (Le Guin 1). Although the inhabitants of Gethen are not strictly intersex in the sense of simultaneously having both male and female genitalia, each person can become either male or female at various times in their lives. Gethenians exhibit physiologically male or female characteristics only during the last phase of their reproductive cycle, called “kemmer” (63). The kemmer process demonstrates Judith Butler’s idea that normative heterosexuality produces gender distinctions (Butler 231). Because each person has the potential to become either male or female, Gethenien society has not developed the concept of gender roles. The novel takes place in an alternate universe, but its protagonist, Genly Ai, is an envoy from an unnamed Earth-like planet. In contrast to the Gethenians, whose sexual characteristics can fluctuate, Ai is permanently biologically male. The Gethenians ostracize Ai because they consider anyone who is permanently male or female to be a sexual deviant. Their treatment of Ai mirrors Butler’s description of heterosexual society’s marginalization of “queer” individuals, who do not fit within the binary categories of masculinity and femininity (Butler 226). Through its depiction of an imaginary world where people’s physiological sex is changeable, The Left Hand of Darkness suggests that gender is an unstable social construct which functions independently of sexual activity.

The Left Hand of Darkness uses the science-fiction premise to metaphorically explore the discrepancy between biological sex and the social construct of gender. In an essay published in 1976 in the journal Novel, Donna Gerstenberger compares Le Guin’s novel with novels by other feminist writers from the 1960’s and ‘70’s, which examine the status of women in a male-dominated society.  The Left Hand of Darkness is the only science-fiction novel that Gerstenberger mentions in her essay, while the others are strictly realist. Gerstenberger argues that the science-fiction genre’s extensive use of metaphor makes it uniquely suited to exploring social issues. She writes that science-fiction facilitates “the exploration of conceptual limits and modes, an activity in which contemporary women writers have a great stake, yet one in which feminist writers, particularly American, have participated very little” (Gertsenberger 143). The essay views science-fiction as a vehicle for metaphorically exploring challenging concepts.

In The Left Hand of Darkness, the Gethenians’ unique reproductive cycle metaphorically represents Judith Butler’s idea that heterosexual norms produce gendered bodies. The inhabitants of the imaginary planet Gethen only exhibit sexual characteristics during the act of sexual intercourse. Gethenians have a reproductive cycle called kemmer, similar to estrus in certain mammals (Le Guin 64). Sexual characteristics remain latent until the end of the kemmer cycle, when intercourse occurs (63). A person can exhibit sexual characteristics only in response to hormonal signals from one’s partner: “the partner, triggered by the change, takes on the other sexual role” (63). If a Gethenian is in isolation, physiological sex cannot develop, suggesting that gender is created by external factors. In her book Gender Trouble, which helped to develop the field of queer theory, Judith Butler argues that gender is not a stable identity but is “instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts” (Leitch 2500-01). For Butler, gender is performative, or acted out, rather than an inherent part of a person’s identity (2497). Butler writes, “That the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality” (2497). For Butler, gender is not inherent, but is formed through a person’s actions and determined by external factors. On Gethen, physiological sexual distinctions are literally performed because they result from the repetition of heterosexual acts. The fact that Getheniens’ sexual characteristics must be recreated during each cycle suggests that the binary categories of male and female are tenuous.

Although a Gethenian’s sexual characteristics are not permanent, people cannot choose their genders, suggesting that gender is compulsory. A Gethenian may become female during one cycle and male the next (Le Guin 64). Individuals cannot choose which gender they will become during kemmer (63). In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler writes that gender is constructed through a series of “compulsory performances” (Butler 238). While sexual roles are not permanent on Gethen, they are involuntary and therefore still compulsory. However, while Getheniens’ sexuality separates the idea of sex and gender, it also creates its own restrictions. A visitor from another planet observes in her field notes that on Gethen, homosexual pairs are “so rare as to be ignored” (65). Even though Gethenian sexuality is not accompanied by the social concept of gender, certain sexual actions are still prohibited.

Paradoxically, by saying that Getheniens’ mutable sexuality eliminates gender binaries, the novel reinforces the idea that biological sex validates gender differences between men and women on other planets.  Because Getheniens’ sexual characteristics are latent for four-fifths of each month, Gethenian society has not developed a concept of gender (65).  In one chapter, an unnamed explorer from another planet observes in her field notes that on Gethen “there is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive” (Le Guin 65). However, by mentioning these binaries, she reinforces their validity in a society where everyone is either permanently male or female. The explorer warns future visitors to Gethen that they may be unnerved by Gethenians’ inability to acknowledge gender: “A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated [ . . .] On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience” (66). By juxtaposing male “virility” with “femininity,” the narrator suggests that these qualities are opposed to one another and are also integral to each person’s identity. If people construe gender as essential to their identity, it becomes “appalling” to be regarded only as a human being. In contrast, Butler writes that gender is produced through social norms, and each person “never quite inhabits the ideals s/he is compelled to approximate” (Butler 231). Butler views gender not as integral part of a person’s identity but as a role which can never fully be performed. The Getheniens’ lack of fixed gender makes them fear and misunderstand Ai, the permanently male envoy from an Earth-like planet.

On Gethen, people who have a permanent gender are marginalized as deviant, which corresponds to the marginalization of queer individuals in a heterosexual society. The novel’s protagonist, Genly Ai, is an envoy from an unspecified Earth-like planet where people have fixed genders. Because Ai is permanently male, and Gethenians only exhibit sexual characteristics when they are aroused, the Gethenian leaders label him as a “pervert” (Le Guin 24). In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler uses the word “queer” to refer to “overlapping divisions” of people who cannot be categorized into heterosexual norms (Butler 228). She writes that “the term ‘queer’ has operated as one linguistic practice whose purpose has been [ . . .] the producing of a subject through that shaming interpellation” (226). Butler uses the term “interpellation” in the Althusserian sense, meaning that an ideology creates subjects by addressing particular individuals (225). Although Ai is not considered sexually deviant on his home planet, on Gethen he is interpellated as a “pervert” because the Gethenian authorities consider him abnormal. This demonstrates that subjects do not precede interpellation but are created through interpellation.

Because Ai is only considered abnormal in relation to the Gethenians, this suggests that the marginalization of queer individuals is arbitrary and determined by the heterosexual majority. Butler writes that the term “‘queer’ derives its force precisely through the repeated invocation by which it has become linked to accusation, pathologization, insult” (Butler 226). For Gethenians, being permanently male or female carries a social stigma. By calling Ai a “pervert,” the Getheniens tacitly accuse him of a deviant behavior: being permanently aroused. When Ai attempts to explain his people’s biological makeup to the king of Gethen, the king concludes that because they have permanent genders, they must be “a society of perverts” (Le Guin 25). However, Ai is only considered a “pervert” in contrast to the Gethenians. Ai’s masculinity is not considered shameful on his own planet, but on Gethen it is “pathologized,” or characterized as abnormal, because it deviates from the Gethenian norm. Because an individual can only be considered a “pervert” in relation to the societal norm, this would make an entire “society of perverts” impossible. Ai’s biological differences alienate him from the Gethenians and make it difficult for him to form relationships with them.

Through Genly Ai’s relationship with the former Gethenien prime minister, Estraven, The Left Hand of Darkness shows that all human beings possess characteristics that can be polarized as either masculine or feminine. Because sex is not a permanent part of Getheniens’ identity, they cannot see any human qualities as related to sexual characteristics. Ai struggles to define the Gethenian concept of shifgrethor: “prestige, face, place, the pride-relationship” (Le Guin 10). Ai later compares shifgrethor with his own “masculine self-respect” because he cannot imagine human qualities that are not gendered (153). When Ai first meets Estraven, he distrusts him because he finds Estraven’s behavior “womanly, all charm and tact and lack of substance, specious and adroit” (8). Although Estraven is biologically neither male nor female, Ai characterizes him as feminine because he has attributes which are considered feminine in Ai’s culture. This suggests that gender is largely socially constructed rather than biologically inherent. When Butler describes the performative nature of drag, she writes that drag calls attention to the “hyperbolic,” or overstated, nature of heterosexual roles (Butler 237). Ai’s perception of Estraven as “womanly” demonstrates that gender distinctions can be created socially even when they are not supported by a person’s biology.

Although Estraven and Ai never have a sexual relationship, their close friendship troubles Ai because it challenges his culture’s prohibition on same-sex intimacy. As prime minister, Estraven cedes a disputed territory to a neighboring country and is exiled as a traitor. If he returns to his native country, he will be killed. Estraven and Ai spend the rest of the novel journeying together across the frozen deserts of Gethen. Their friendship gains a new level of emotional intimacy when Ai teaches Estraven “mindspeak,” a form of telepathy (Le Guin 174). Estraven observes that mindspeak is uniquely intimate because it makes lying to the other person impossible (177). When Estraven enters kemmer and Ai sees him in his female form, Ai admits, “And I saw then again, and for good, what I had always been afraid to see, and had pretended not to see in him: that he was a woman as well as a man” (173). Butler writes that in a heterosexual society, homosexuality is “constituted by a set of disavowed attachments or identifications that constitute a different domain of the ‘unperformable’” (Butler 236). People deny or disavow their identification with homosexual desires because they are considered impossible within the norm of heterosexual reproduction. However, Ai fears his attachment to Estraven for the opposite reason: Estraven becomes female during kemmer, which would enable them to have heterosexual intercourse. Although Estraven and Ai’s friendship cannot technically be considered homosexual, Ai fears being attracted to a person who is even partially male.

Near the end of the novel, Ai’s repressed emotions over Estraven’s death illustrate Butler’s idea that heterosexuals must disavow the possibility of homosexual attachments. After Estraven and Ai have spent months journeying across the frozen tundra together, Estraven skis directly into the path of two armed border guards, who are waiting for him. Estraven’s death can be interpreted as a suicide, which is taboo on Gethen. Ai holds Estraven as he dies, although the guards try to stop him: “They shot to kill him. He was dying when I got to him, sprawled and twisted away from his skis that stuck up out of the snow, his chest half shot away. I took his head in my arms and spoke to him, but he never answered me [ . . .] I held him, crouching there in the snow, while he died. They let me do that” (Le Guin 198). When Estraven is dying, Ai tries to tell him that he loves him, but finds that he is unable to do so. By saying, “They let me do that,” Ai indicates that the guards have attempted to prevent him from grieving. Similarly, Butler writes that the heterosexual majority attempts to repress homosexuals from expressing loss. In Bodies That Matter, Butler writes, “Insofar as grief remains unspeakable, the rage over the loss can redouble by virtue of remaining unavowed” (Butler 236). According to Butler, by failing to acknowledge the validity of homosexual relationships, heterosexual authorities also deny homosexuals the right to grieve openly. However, the guards do not repress Ai’s grief because of sexual orientation, but because Estraven is considered a traitor. This passage demonstrates that authorities deny individuals’ grief in an attempt to repress taboo relationships. It also shows that Ai has repressed his love for Estraven because his feelings are not strictly heterosexual.

In her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin invents an alternate universe where people’s sexual characteristics exist only during the act of sexual intercourse. A person may develop female sexual characteristics during one monthly cycle and male attributes the next (Le Guin 64). As a result, people do not identify themselves as male or female, only as human beings (65). The Gethenians’ lack of a fixed sexual identity illustrates Judith Butler’s idea that gender is predicated by socially determined roles (Butler 231). On Gethen, human qualities cannot be considered “masculine” or “feminine,” which emphasizes the artificial, socially constructed nature of gender. This supports Butler’s idea that gender is created through repeated “compulsory performances” (Butler 238). On Gethen, sexual characteristics are temporary and can change throughout a person’s lifetime, suggesting that the categories of masculinity and femininity are unstable.

Although Gethenians do not identify themselves as either male or female, their sexual activity still reinforces heterosexual norms. Because sex only exists for the purpose of reproduction, homosexual actions are “so rare as to be ignored” (Le Guin 65). During sexual intercourse, one partner almost always becomes temporarily physiologically male, while the other becomes physiologically female. Although the Gethenians partly deconstruct the male/female gender binary, certain same-sex actions are still forbidden.

The Gethenians’ lack of a permanent gender creates its own sexual norms because it causes them to marginalize individuals who are permanently male or female. Because Gethenians only exhibit sexual characteristics when they are sexually aroused, the Gethenians marginalize Genly Ai as a “pervert” for being permanently male. Their condemnation of Ai parallels Butler’s idea that the heterosexual majority marginalizes queer individuals because they do not fit into the normative heterosexual categories (Butler 226). In comparison to the Gethenians’ biology, Ai’s permanent maleness is considered deviant, but on his own planet, he is considered normal. This suggests that sexual norms are arbitrary and determined by the majority. The Left Hand of Darkness re-imagines sexual normality and depicts a world where sexual characteristics are not a fixed part of a person’s identity, suggesting that gender is not an integral part of human identity but an artificial distinction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works cited

Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge, 1993.

 

Gerstenberger, Donna. “Conceptions Literary and Otherwise: Women Writers and the Modern Imagination.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction. Vol. 9, No. 2, (Winter, 1976): 141-150.

 

Leitch, Vincent B. (ed.) The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2001.

 

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.

Rejection “Horror Stories”: Ableism is Scary!

For any new readers finding this blog: I’m a published fiction and nonfiction writer who considers my disability an integral part of my identity and work. This has always been my perspective, but even as recently as a few years ago, many mainstream publishers did not yet recognize disability as an identity category. I began submitting stories to literary journals in college and received many encouraging rejections along the way. Some, however, were baffling or unintentionally backhanded. Stories that I wrote in college in 2009 or ‘10 were finally accepted within the past year or two. This is partly because literary journals by and for disabled artists are flourishing.

In 2009, I received the following rejection for “Categories,” eventually published in The Deaf Poets Society in January 2017. The 2009 journal’s name has been redacted: “Now now Grace, Categories was good – some strong moments – but to us, the ending seemed too abrupt, with also a need for some tightening. Although we decided not to use it, we would love to see more from you. Good luck in finding a market for this piece.” This rejection is complimentary, but I find the mechanical errors hilarious. By repeating the word “now,” they accidentally sound condescending. My creative writing mentor, who has a sanguine sense of humor, kept jokingly saying, “Now, now, Grace!” after I received this.

Below is a rejection from another journal for a story that has not yet been accepted for publication. Like “Categories,” it features disabled characters: “Thanks for sending ‘(Title)’ for (Journal)’s consideration. Although we’re gong (sic) to pass on the story, it’s a very compelling and intelligent read with nice characterization and I liked how it addresses how the characters’ physical afflictions affect their psyches during their awkward teen years. It seemed perhaps incomplete, as if there was more to the story than how it concluded. I think you could successfully adapt this into a longer piece.

We hope the story finds a good home soon and invite you to submit again.”

This rejection letter is strangely encouraging, with concrete suggestions. However, the typos and run-on sentences seem unprofessional. When I received it, I was stunned by the editor’s use of the word “afflictions” to refer to physical disabilities. Like many others in the disability community, I consider terms like handicapped or differently abled offensive. However, I’d never heard the word “affliction” instead of disability. It’s such a flagrant dismissal of another person’s experience. When I say that some mainstream publishers didn’t respect disability as an identity until recently, this is exactly what I mean. Can you imagine an editor calling a character’s race or gender inherently negative, or an individual issue, rather than part of a community?

Ironically, now that disability literature is garnering more attention, we sometimes have the opposite problem. Some people consider entire identities and lived experiences “trendy.” Minorities have always been here, whether mainstream culture pays attention to us or not.

Fortunately, receiving bizarre rejections like these helped me to persevere and stop taking rejection personally. They also sharpened my sense of humor. I originally wrote this essay in response to a call for “rejection horror stories.” To paraphrase the meta-rejection email itself: the irony of this is not lost on me!

I’m relieved that we disabled writers are carving out a space in the literary community. Some rejections reveal far more about the editors’ or their society’s tastes and prejudices than about the work being declined. Especially as we try to shift these cultural paradigms, ableism can be scary!

“How Endless Sequels, Franchises, and Reboots Help Perpetuate Disability Stereotypes”

Many critics have observed that the Na’vi, the race of blue extraterrestrials in Avatar, fit certain stereotypes of Native Americans, especially their peaceful, sustainable coexistence with nature. When foreigners seeking resources use technological prowess to invade their idyllic planet, and a foreign man falls in love with a native woman, the plot parallels movies like Dances with Wolves and Pocahontas. Comparisons like these are facile and problematic in themselves, as is always the case when non-human races supposedly symbolize human groups.
However, when I watched Avatar in 2010, my perspective as a woman with a disability provided a different angle on the story. Jake, the protagonist, is a disabled Marine veteran. He finds life as a non-human avatar preferable to life as paraplegic human. By choosing to stay on Pandora with a female Na’vi at the end of the movie, he makes his choice permanent. The implicit message is that he has nothing to lose (or at least, much less than the non-disabled characters) by giving up life as a human.
Several movies take this message—that a disabled person’s life is effectively over—even more literally. Disability rights activists like Dominick Evans have drawn attention to the danger of this “better dead than disabled” trope. The Sea Inside, Million Dollar Baby, and Me Before You all feature protagonists who choose suicide as a result of becoming disabled. Because people with disabilities are so under-represented in fiction, this is not merely coincidental but reinforces a harmful stereotype devaluing disabled lives. Even fictional characters do not make choices in a vacuum. Before it had even been released, I read reviews comparing Me Before You to Love Story and The Fault in Our Stars. Of course, those two movies contain terminally ill, not merely permanently disabled, characters. The review draws a false comparison between characters with non-fatal disabilities and terminal illness, implying that disability is tragic, with early death as a foregone conclusion. This might have been unintentional on the reviewer’s part but shows how these ideas are ingrained in our society.
I’ve always been sentimentally attached to the songs from Stephen Schwartz’s Broadway musical Wicked, loosely based on Gregory Maguire’s novel. It premiered in 2003, when I was a high school freshman, and friends would later consider “For Good” our unofficial graduation song. We even sang “As Long as You’re Mine” in our chorus class!
When I finally saw the show on Broadway in 2016, my friend and I were both disappointed by the characterization of Nessarose, Elphaba’s physically disabled sister, who uses a wheelchair. She’s a static character who exists only as a plot device to compel Elphaba’s actions. The girls’ father resents Elphaba, only allowing her to attend boarding school so she can look after Nessarose. At school, a Munckin named Boq asks Nessarose out only to impress the more popular Galinda but stays with Nessarose out of pity. Nessarose eventually becomes obsessive and controlling towards him, refusing to let him go. When she becomes the Mayor of Munchkinland, she actually oppresses the Munchkins even more to try to make him more dependent on her. While leaving Nessarose’s personality underdeveloped, her character embodies stereotypes of disabled people as undesirable, pathetic, and helpless. In particular, it suggests, bafflingly, that non-disabled people only date disabled people out of pity.
Coincidentally, another prequel to The Wizard of Oz, the movie Oz the Great and Powerful, contains surprisingly antiquated attitudes towards disability. In the beginning of the movie, the protagonist, Oscar “Oz” Diggs, works as a magician and a con artist. A little girl who uses a wheelchair believes that his act is genuine and begs him to cure her. As in the original movie, each character in black-and-white Kansas later has an equivalent in the Emerald City. The girl reappears in the Emerald City as a delicate, timid porcelain doll. I was shocked to see these ableist stereotypes—of a disabled character begging to be “cured” and then literally depicted as a breakable doll—in a movie from 2013. I thought that both of these stories objectified disabled people as the Other: desperate, deserving pity, and lacking agency. They also used disability as a metaphor for vulnerability. All of these attitudes are offensive clichés, but some writers apparently rely on them without examining their implications. Today, most people would consider using a person’s gender, sexual orientation, or race to symbolize negative qualities as inherently offensive. This is a sign of progress, but writers should apply the same sensitivity to all identity categories, including disability.
That’s why I’m disheartened to hear that a sequel to Avatar is slated for 2018, with a Hollywood adaptation of Wicked expected in 2019. There’s even a rumored, upcoming sequel to Oz the Great and Powerful. Classic stories like The Wizard of Oz, traditional fairy tales and myths, and the works of Shakespeare, to name a few, have inspired countless retellings. As part of the public domain, they’ll probably always have a place in our culture. I also understand that it can take years for new stories to be written or adapted into screenplays. However, by relying on prequels, sequels, and other reiterations, Hollywood unintentionally perpetuates attitudes towards diversity that seem outdated by decades or centuries. The fact that scifi and fantasy are not realistic genres should not excuse them from scrutiny because of their tendency to use physical characteristics symbolically.
Disability must be a part of the current demand for more diversity and inclusion in popular culture. Cultural attitudes sometimes progress at a glacial pace, but our entertainment can both reflect and reinforce these attitudes. Unless we begin publishing more books and optioning more movies written by disabled people, screenwriters will rely on hackneyed, ignorant portrayals of disability, with nothing to counteract them.

Remember the time Mad Men went too far? (Spoilers and trigger warnings galore!)

(Note: I wrote this reaction in 2012. I probably wouldn’t watch this episode today. TW: sexual assault.)

Wow. I’ve been watching the Mad Men reruns religiously on my DVR, but the episode “The Other Woman” has probably convinced me to stop watching the show. It was the most harrowing, shocking, and perversely fascinating hour of TV I’ve ever seen. The title refers to the agency’s proposed campaign for Jaguar. Don tries to turn the unreliability of the Jaguar into an asset. He compares the car to a mistress: impractical, but a beautiful status symbol. It’s a completely amoral idea that makes the longstanding tradition of objectifying women and sexualizing cars much more overt.

While the SCDP partners are schmoozing a sleazy Jaguar dealership owner named Herb Rennet, he bluntly says that he wants to get to “know” Joan (obviously in the Biblical sense). “Is she one of those free spirits?” he asks crudely. Then he insists that he spend a night with her if they want the contract with Jaguar.

Instead of being thoroughly repulsed by Rennet, Pete actually approaches Joan with this proposition! Pete has always been my least favorite character, but he’s at his most despicable here. His penchant for rationalization is absolutely odious. “Would you consider Cleopatra a prostitute?” he asks glibly. “She was a queen!” Joan seems so livid that she can barely dignify his request with a response. “I just hope I haven’t offended you,” he adds. In typical Pete fashion, this is clearly the exact opposite of his real meaning. If he cared about her at all, he would never have made this proposal.

After Joan rebuffs him, he broaches the same idea to the partners in a closed meeting! All of them seem uncomfortable with the idea, but in an ineffectual way. Only Don has the guts to walk out of the meeting in disgust. Bert offers a wishy-washy answer: “Let her know she can still say no.” Even Roger (the father of Joan’s child!) merely says that he won’t pay to bribe her. Pete lies and says it was “practically her idea.” The agency has fallen on hard times financially and is desperate to land Jaguar as a client, but that doesn’t explain plotting to prostitute a colleague. At this point, I was wondering: in what universe would this happen? Mad Men has never been an accurate portrayal of the ‘60’s, and often seems surreal. But I couldn’t believe what I was watching.

The partners (minus Don, of course) initially want to offer Joan $50,000 to have sex with Rennet. Lane ups the ante by giving her a chance to be the agency’s first female partner, which includes a 5% share in the company. He may think he’s giving her a better alternative, but he’s actually just increasing the coercion by making it harder for her to refuse. A decent human being would consider another person’s sexuality priceless; he merely thinks that it can be bought for a greater amount. Joan has had a very difficult life: she’s a single mom who recently divorced her rapist husband. Lane’s offer would support her and her child for life. Although she’s a smart, capable woman, it’s easy to see why she feels constrained. She might also want to infiltrate the good old boys’ club by becoming a partner. My English professors sometimes talked about the idea of sex as capital and would probably call Joan’s decision a “patriarchal bargain.”

Though he hates to visit coworkers, Don actually comes to Joan’s house to beg her not to sleep with Rennet. “You don’t have to go through with it,” he says. She’s just gotten out of the shower and replies wearily: “You’re a good one! I was told everyone was on board with it.” Next, we see Joan in a stunning black dress, arriving at Rennet’s house. I felt queasy throughout this scene. I couldn’t believe that she actually agreed to do this. I empathized with Joan way too much in this scene, trying to imagine how awful it would feel to have sex under duress with a man you despise. What is that if not rape? Paradoxically, she chose this, at least partially. Her night with repulsive Rennet is cross-cut with shots of Don’s sales pitch, which describes Jaguars as if they are voluptuous but unattainable women. The dramatic irony and storytelling technique are masterful. Finally, we see Don arriving at Joan’s house after she gets out of the shower, and the exact same conversation replays itself. This moment of nonlinear déjà vu shows that Don arrived after Joan had already slept with Rennet. His objections were too little and too late. Don is still a cad; he just looks decent in comparison with his coworkers.

I thought this episode was riveting and surreal, but so distasteful that I’m turned off from the entire show. I now hate all the characters so much that I can no longer stand to watch them. Yes, I understand that Mad Men is deeply satirical and that the writers are not endorsing what happened to Joan in any way. The show has always made points about women being subjugated, albeit in a much subtler way. It even used business transactions and sex as metaphors for one another, but this was literal coercion and prostitution. The symbolism is so blatant that this episode seems like it was written to be analyzed in an English or gender studies course. I would have been less disgusted if Rennet had propositioned Joan directly or even if she’d approached him in order to increase her status. Watching the rest of the office negotiate for her, I felt like Memoirs of a Geisha had been transplanted to 1960’s Madison Avenue. I had a very interesting experience watching this show, and don’t regret a minute. But I’m done now. It’s an easy decision because Peggy, my favorite character, quit during this episode.

“Why Cabaret is the Perfect Movie for Our Time”

“Why Cabaret is the Perfect Movie for Our Time”

Since November 2015, when Donald Trump first said that he’d be open to the idea of a national Muslim registry, I’ve re-watched Cabaret, Bob Fosse’s adaptation of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Broadway musical, several times. Set in Berlin on the eve of Hitler’s rise to power, it focuses on Sally Bowles, an American expatriate singer in the Kit Kat Klub who dreams of wider stardom. Sally is gregarious, and her adventures are exhilarating. It’s easy to relate to her artistic ambitions or get fascinated by her love triangle with Brian, a bisexual, British academic, and Maximilian, a German baron. But she’s often self-absorbed and oblivious in the face of growing bigotry. Perhaps she only seems callous to us viewers in retrospect because we know that the Holocaust is imminent.

Then as now, Cabaret is ambiguous and polarizing, frequently misinterpreted as glamorizing Nazism. In 1972, Roger Ebert wrote that the film promotes “the general idea that the rise of the Nazi party in Germany was accompanied by a rise in bisexuality, homosexuality, sadomasochism, and assorted other activities.”  This falsely conflates the earlier, more permissive Weimar Republic with the Third Reich, which actively suppressed “decadent” entertainment and targeted LGBT people, among many other minorities. Not every movie about the Nazis needs to take us into the horror of the concentration camps. Far from soft-pedaling Nazism, Cabaret depicts its rise when it was still preventable.

Cabaret illustrates how insidiously prejudice can creep up among ordinary people, especially when minorities are scapegoated. “If all the Jews are bankers, then how could they be communist, too?” one non-Jewish woman asks. Another version of this prejudice could be the belief that immigrants are paradoxically “lazy” and “stealing our jobs.”

The Kit Kat Klub’s unnamed Master of Ceremonies, played by Joel Grey, is a mysterious but unforgettable character. His musical acts often provide a wry, subtle mockery of the Nazis, while indulging in the hedonistic attitude of the era. In some recent stage productions, in the final scene, he wears a concentration camp uniform with a yellow star and a pink triangle, denoting him as both Jewish and gay. However, in the movie, which stops well before the camps, he is far more ambiguous.

When The Atlantic posted footage of Richard Spencer’s white supremacist rally, I immediately thought of the song “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” The scene begins with Maximilian telling Brian that the Nazis might be useful, insofar as they’d stop Communists. A member of the Hitler Youth spontaneously leads the crowd in a nationalist song, a paean to a mythical past of Aryan superiority. The crowd joins in because they feel included in this vision, at the exclusion of Jews, LGBT people, disabled people, and all other minorities. The M. C. appears at the end of this scene, smiling knowingly. This is the only scene in which we see him outside of the cabaret, blurring the distinction between the escapist entertainment inside and the political upheaval outside. Is he smiling because he approves of the Nazis, or simply pointing silently to future events?

One of the most ironic subplots is the romance between Fritz and Natalia. Fritz is Jewish but pretends to be Protestant for his own protection. Ironically, he falls in love with Natalia, an openly Jewish heiress who worries that he’d be unsafe if he married her. Fritz and Natalia eventually have a Jewish wedding ceremony, but it’s brilliantly framed by the M. C.’s number “If You Could See Her.” He brings a gorilla onstage, explains that he’s fallen in love with her, and laments that society misunderstands them. Then, he delivers the song’s brutal punchline: “If you could see her through my eyes . . . she wouldn’t look Jewish at all!” This is probably the most ambiguous, controversial example of the M. C.’s humor. Is he literally comparing inter-religious relationships to bestiality, agreeing with the Nazis that Jews are subhuman? Or is he mocking the Nazis for that idea? A third option is that he’s noncommittal, using controversy for shock value, as many comedians do.

Through its masterful editing, Cabaret juxtaposes musical numbers with events in characters’ lives. Anti-Semitic hate crimes escalate, and Natalia’s dog is murdered by attackers repeatedly shouting, “Juden! (Jew!)” At the moment that she discovers her dog’s body, the film intercuts to Kit Kat Klub dancers, goose-stepping and playfully imitating the Nazis. Of course, there are many differences between Weimar Germany and Trump’s America, but it’s chilling to think that racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Muslim sentiments and hate crimes are on the rise.

Cabaret premiered on Broadway in 1966, 21 years after World War II ended, with the movie in 1972. So, I can understand why many people, including Roger Ebert, found it a distasteful subject for a musical. However, the unease might be even deeper because of what Cabaret reveals about our own culture. When faced with growing xenophobia and nationalism, we often feel helpless. Or we fail to see the mounting threats, trying to keep our lives as normal as possible. Sally performs in the club until the moment that the Nazis enter to arrest everyone. The characters’ ambitions and obsession with entertainment desensitize them to the changes around them. With constant entertainment available online, we can now distract ourselves more easily than ever before.

Satire can be a powerful tool, but by its nature, it’s often misunderstood. Some viewers originally accused Kander and Ebb of antisemitism before learning that both were Jewish themselves. It can also trivialize threats, even unintentionally, by making them seem harmless. At the beginning of Trump’s campaign, I was terrified by the prospect of his presidency. Eventually, satire like Alec Baldwin’s impressions on SNL convinced me that Trump was too absurd to be elected or even taken seriously.

Each time a new Trump cabinet member is confirmed, I think of Brian’s words to Maximilian after the crowd begins singing a Nazi anthem: “You still think you can control them?”

“The Glaring Error in 50 Shades of Grey that No One Has Mentioned Yet”

I’ll admit it: I read 50 Shades of Grey when it came out, just out of curiosity. (Maybe I stumbled on it when it was still unpublished fanfiction.) Many others have pointed out that it romanticizes a controlling, abusive relationship with a huge power imbalance and misrepresents S & M. I agree, but I also have huge issues with the writing itself. For the most part, it’s the same combination of overwrought “purple prose” and porn found in many romance novels. However, one technique is particularly absurd. Much of Ana’s narration consists of an internal debate between what she calls her “subconscious” and her “inner goddess.” This leads to some unintentionally hilarious metaphors, including: “My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves.” In contrast, here’s the other voice in her head: “Up and down like a whore’s drawers, my subconscious remarks bitterly.”

In all the criticism of this book that I’ve read, no one else has pointed out the literary error apparent in this use of the word “subconscious.” The author seems to have no idea what the word “subconscious” means. By its very definition, Ana’s SUBCONSCIOUS mind cannot articulate itself in consciously formed sentences. I can’t possibly be the only person who notices that, can I?! Just by applying Freudian terms to this book, I’m lending it much more literary merit than it deserves. However, it’s still worth noting that James has the subconscious totally confused with its opposite, the superego. In Freud’s terminology, the id contains subconscious, unacceptable instincts and desires, the superego is essentially the conscience, and the ego is the middle ground between these two extremes. Ana’s rational, nagging “subconscious” sounds exactly like Freud’s superego, which would make her pleasure-driven “inner goddess” the id or subconscious. Predictably, this popular series has the whole schemata totally ass-backwards. This is actually a perfect example of the way pop culture muddles psychology.