Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

5-1993

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

English

Major Professor

Dorothy M. Scura

Committee Members

B.J. Leggett, Mary E. Papke, James C. Cobb

Abstract

This dissertation is the first extended analysis of the fiction of contemporary Southern writer Ellen Gilchrist, author of five volumes of short fiction, three novels, two collections of poetry, and a book of journal entries. Following a chapter which provides a summary of the critical reception to Gilchrist's work and an introduction to the organic story cycle made up of her entire canon, the approach to Gilchrist's fiction is intertextual; her stories and novels are examined next to works by Ernest Hemingway, Katherine Anne Porter, William Faulkner, and Kate Chopin. In the traditions of Hemingway and Porter, Gilchrist has created a composite personality for her extended story cycle, the manifestations of which can be found throughout her collections of short fiction-In the Land of Dreamy Dreams (1981), Victory Over Japan (1984), Drunk with Love (1986), Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle (1989), I Cannot Get You Close Enough (1990)—and in her third novel, Net of Jewels (1992). In the tradition of Faulkner, who developed a character type from its manifestation as Quentin Compson to its manifestation as Gavin Stevens, Gilchrist's composite personality develops significantly when it is manifested as the heroines of her other two novels: The Annunciation (1983) and The Anna Papers (1988). The Annunciation, furthermore, provides Faulkner's Caddy Compson a voice and transforms her into a more positive figure named Amanda McCamey. The Anna Papers picks up where Chopin leaves Edna Pontellier, allowing no ambiguity about the triumph of the suicide of Gilchrist's Anna Hand. The final chapter then argues that Gilchrist's works since The Anna Papers are less often engaged in dialogues with works by her precursors; rather, they speak back to her own earlier works, revising the vision of the potential of her prototype to rise above her oppression. An intertextual reading of Gilchrist's work reveals the traditions out of which this contemporary writer is emerging and illuminates her own contributions to the American literary traditions of the short story. Southern literature, and women's literature. Within her canon, Gilchrist engages in various dialogues with these literary traditions as they are represented by these four writers. As she has developed her craft, Gilchrist has transformed the American patriarchal short story tradition, as it is epitomized in Hemingway's books, and the Southern patriarchal literary tradition, as it is epitomized in Faulkner's. Developing her craft within these traditions, Gilchrist joins other women writers—Katherine Anne Porter and Kate Chopin—who have also subverted the patriarchy. However, she also transforms these women's techniques, characters, and themes, at times allowing for more positive development of the characters, reflecting a lessening of female oppression in the more recent South, while at other times revealing the continuing, if not increasing, oppression of women in a patriarchal society.

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