Gender-Bending in Shes Come Undone :: Shes Come Undone Essays

Gender-Bending in Shes take after Undone Is Wally Lamb, author of Shes Come Undone, qualified to salvage a first-person fibber in a female voice? After all, as a man, what does he know about womens issues? In this essay I exit discuss the issue of gender-bending writers and discuss Mr. Lambs use of such(prenominal) tool. The term gender-bender normally refers to a pop singer or a follower of a pop cult ...who deliberately affects an androgynous appearance by eating away sexually ambiguous clothing, make-up, etc. (Ayto and Simpson 81) While authors are not include in this specific definition, we must not overlook the possibility that writers stinker fall chthonic the category of being a gender-bender. Applying close to of the similar showcaseistics of the definition, I believe that an author can be a gender-bender by changing the voice of the writer in the novels. Wally Lamb would fall under this category, because as a male author, he is writing his main character in a fem ale voice. The concept of gender-bending authors is not completely distant to literature, while it may not be applied to the definition presented above. For example, in detective novels that are written by women, some of the characters take on different genders than their writers. In the following passage, taken from the essay Gender (De)Mystified electrical resistance and Recuperation in Hard-Boiled Female Detective Fiction, by herds grass Shuker-Haines and Martha M. Umphrey, discussion is made of detective author Sue Graftons ability to write in the male persona. Kinsey Millhones a female character in the book F Is for Fugitive persona is gendered substantially as masculine. A woman who has few friends and lives for her work, she is self-consciously, more or less parodically male-defined, as, for example, when she describes her tendency to amuse herself with the abridged California Penal code and textbooks on auto theft rather than engaging in the teatime have words of a Miss Marple. (Delamater and Prigozy 73) Gender-bending also refers to sex change operations. Such as the case with performance artist Kate Bornstein - a graduate of Brown University - who underwent such an operation thirteen years ago. In an article on the schools website, Ms. Bornstein discusses gender-bending and some of the issues she discusses can also apply to gender-bending in novels. The way I picture gender is a way to express yourself. ...Gender is just a doorway, and so is sexuality, race and age.