Side-Stepping Normativity in Selected Short Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner

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Rebecca K. Hahn. Side-Stepping Normativity in Selected Short Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner

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Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

1. Undoing Categories: The British Author Sylvia Townsend Warner

Reviews and Literary Criticism of Warner’s Work

The Queer Lolly Willowes Way: Drifting Away from Normativity

2. Homoerotic Desires

2.1 “The Shirt in Mexico”: Gender Disruption and Ambiguous Speech

Textiles as Intermediaries

Gifting and Regifting

2.2 The “Curious Quality” of “Bruno”

Politics, Deviant Desires, and Uncontained Bodies

Doing the Wrong Thing at the Wrong Time

The Walled Kitchen Garden

2.3 Seeking Meaning in “The Green Torso”

Erotic Allures

Mediums of Desire

“He Knew His Way About London”: Exploring the Unexplorable

2.4 Desire and Detachment

3. Cross-Species Relationships

3.1 Knowledge and Love in the Introduction to The Cat’s Cradle-Book

Cross-Species Desire

3.2 Decentering the Human in “The Traveller from the West and the Traveller from the East”

Cross-Species Relationship Told from a Human Perspective

Cross-Species Relationships Told From A Cat’s Perspective

3.3 Corporeality and Control in “The Wineshop Cat”

Indifference and Domination

Meat and Ingestion

3.4 Shifting the Species Line

4. Incestuous Longings

4.1 Secrets and Sibcest in “A Love Match”

The Literary Background of Sibling Incest

Roles and Secrecy

4.2 Mothers and Desires in “At a Monkey’s Breast”

The Act of Feeding

Cultural Markers

4.3 Expanded Experiences and Material Objects in “A Spirit Rises”

Intimate Spaces and Inattentive Father Figures

The Materiality of the Rocking Horse

4.4 Indifference to Conventions

5. Avenues of Escape

5.1 “At the Trafalgar Bakery” and Ex-Centric Spaces

Interpellation and Obstacles

At the Trafalgar Bakery

5.2 “But at the Stroke of Midnight” and Ex-Centric Modes of Being

Heteronormative Conventions

Routes of Escape

Movement and Transformations

Living on the Outskirts

5.3 “An Act of Reparation”: An Act of Emancipation

Different Runaways

Space and Control

The Witch’s Kitchen

5.4 Eluding Interpellation

6. Vanishing

6.1 Death and Disengagement in “‘Boors Carousing’”

Death and the “Female Drunkard”

Disengagement and Nonentities

6.2 Failure and Success in “A Work of Art”

Artistic Expression

The Work of Art

Eccentric Art

6.3 Textural Desires in “A Dressmaker”

Textural Pleasures

Experiencing Textiles

6.4 Nonbeing

7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin

Warner’s Realm of Fairy

The Human Perception of Elves

Humans Through the Eyes of Elves

Elves and Humans in “Foxcastle”

Mortal and Elfin changelings

Queer avant la lettre

8. Coda

Works Cited. Primary Literature

Secondary Literature

Fußnoten

2.1 “The Shirt in Mexico”: Gender Disruption and Ambiguous Speech

Erotic Allures

3. Cross-Species Relationships

3.1 Knowledge and Love in the Introduction to The Cat’s Cradle-Book

Cross-Species Relationships Told From A Cat’s Perspective

Meat and Ingestion

4. Incestuous Longings

4.1 Secrets and Sibcest in “A Love Match”

The Literary Background of Sibling Incest

Roles and Secrecy

The Act of Feeding

Intimate Spaces and Inattentive Father Figures

The Materiality of the Rocking Horse

5.1 “At the Trafalgar Bakery” and Ex-Centric Spaces

Routes of Escape

6.1 Death and Disengagement in “‘Boors Carousing’”

The Work of Art

7. Elfin Indifference: Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin

8. Coda

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Rebecca Hahn

Side-Stepping Normativity in Selected Short Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner

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Warner’s estrangement from the dominant ideology is crystallized in these narratives’ matter-of-fact crossings of borders that are generally assumed to be impassable: the incest taboo [“A Love Match”], the line between the human species and others animals [The Cat’s Cradle Book], the distinction between the material and the supernatural [Kingdoms of Elfin]. What all this crosswriting of borders does is to blur rather than to cross the lines between genders, sexualities and species: not just hierarchies but boundaries themselves are made ridiculous. (Lesbian Empire 45)

Wachman suggests that the literary works in question do not necessarily seek to reverse or deconstruct (hetero-) normative value systems and/or boundaries. Rather than contesting them, Warner’s stories subtly expose their absurdity.

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