Transgressive triangles : desire, gender, and the text in five American novels 1852-1905

Love triangles are a common plot device, driving the narratives of many famous works of literature. Our eyes are usually trained, however, to notice only heterosexual triangles. This dissertation points out and explores the existence of "transgressive triangles," those which contain both heterosexual and homosexual desire, in five significant American novels from the period 1852-1905. In addition to simply detailing the presence of the triangles, the study focuses on how their existence destabilizes gender and causes a disruption in the structure of the text or in the reader's response to the text. Chapter 1 offers an introduction to the study, including an overview of the principal work that has been done on triangles in fiction. Chapter 2, on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance, explores Miles Coverdale's confrontation with his own bisexuality and how a failure to come to terms with his sexuality fractures the narrative he is engaged in telling. Henry James' The Bostonians, discussed in Chapter 3, focuses on how Olive Chancellor's presence in the text exposes gender and heterosexuality as constructs, which in turn causes explosive readings of the text. Chapter 4 deals with two novels, Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, and examines two secondary characters, Mademoiselle Reisz and Gerty Parish. Usually regarded as sexless women, as examples of women who have traded passion for independence, the two characters' desire is not erased but breaks into the narrative as they become involved in triangles with the protagonists of the novels and the protagonists' male lovers. Gertrude Stein's Q.E.D. provides the material for Chapter 5. A text in which all three participants in the triangle are of the same gender, Q.E.D. provides a detailed examination of the destructiveness of triangular desire, no matter what the gender of the persons Involved, as well as offering an example of a narrative that Is fractured by desire.