Two Serious Ladies: Erotics in the Short
Fiction of Jane Bowles
Dr.
Susan Rochette-Crawley
The
University of Northern Iowa
Jane
Bowles is most widely known as the author of her cult classic” novel, Two Serious Ladies. She is also the author of a slender body of
equally intriguing short stories, all collected in The Complete Works of Jane Bowles.
This paper will extrapolate from
work that has been done on Bowles’ fiction--particularly on the erotics of
narrative found in Two Serious Ladies--as
it is collected in A Tawdry Place of
Salvation: The Art of Jane Bowles, ed. Jennie Skerl, to examine Bowles’
short stories in light of her use of gender and religion as expressing the
erotic and its narrative properties.
The paper will also evaluate the number of ways that Bowles’ use of
short fictive forms to express erotic content reflects both an historical and a
narrative tendency to “keep it short” when exploring so-called “marginal”
experience.
“The Lady with the Pet Dog:’ Erotics in Anton Chekov’s Short Fiction”
Olga
Cherchesova
The
University of Northern Iowa
Anton Cekov is probably one of the most popular Russian writers in the West; many ideas about Russian and Russian culture were shaped under the impression made by his stories, which are brilliant and fine replicas of the Russian world and lifestyle. In Russia, the Orthodox church was one of the most powerful institutions until the twentieth century. The Russian Orthodox religious sensibility has always been connected to a deep sense of ‘guilt.” The characters in he most “spiritual” and moral Russian literature have always felt guilty—for wanting, wishing, even for feeling happy. To be spiritual and moral in much Russian literature means to be unhappy. Erotics and sensuality as the sources of pleasure and happiness were never encouraged the Russian Church.
This
paper will concentrate on Chekov’s most famous story in the West, “The Lady
with the Pet Dogs, 1899. Chekov often
recreated the unhappiness of Russian women who explored their sexuality and
questioned their unhappiness. A very
strong patriarchal system, which began to be shaken under the pressure of many
Victorian “hysterical” and rebellious women, remained in place into the
twentieth century. This patriarchal
system has been fortified and supported by the Russian Orthodox Church and its
attitude toward sexuality. This paper
will discuss both male and female approaches toward the erotic and sensual as
they are represented in Chekov’s story at the end of the nineteenth century.
Howells's
"Editha": A Reevaluation
Julie Goodspeed
Ball State University
jegoodspeed@yahoo.com
Meager scholarship
exists on "Editha" and recent
scholarship is even
more sparse. Perhaps this lack of
critical attention is
due to the fact that "Editha" is
a heavily
anthologized short story and it seems to be
explicit and straight
forward in its approach to its
themes. Thus, many
critics and teachers assume that
"Editha" is
a relatively simple short story when it is
instead a complex
treatment of gender constructions
and sexual politics. Of course, Howells's
reputation
as a father of
American literary realism influences
the way the story is
understood and written about.
Traditionally
"Editha" has been treated as a realist
story, but the roles
Editha and George exemplify point
towards naturalism
since both characters are
unconscious of the
social forces that propel them to
the major crisises in
the story. This paper examines
the sexual politics
of "Editha" and engages in a
reevaluation of it
within the concerns of realism and
naturalism.