THE DIARY FORM AND GENDER AS SUBVERSIVE CATEGORIES IN DJUNA BARNES'S THE LYDIA STEPTOE STORIES

Year 2023, , 455 - 473, 20.06.2023

Yeşim İpekçi

https://doi.org/10.33171/dtcfjournal.2023.63.1.19

Abstract

The American-English writer Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) has been an influential figure in the English modernist fiction. Her works challenge the conventional approaches to sex/gender categories through experimentation on the level of both context and form. Barnes’s tendency to uncover the fluidity of subjectivity and disrupt the Cartesian understanding of the stable Self particularly shows itself in her problematization of genre categories. In other words, she offers a radical critique of “naturalized” gender/sex categories in her works by re-formulating a wide range of genres. Reading her three short stories, written under the pseudonym Lydia Steptoe, this study aims to explore how she plays with the diary form and why she locates it within the genre of short story. It argues that Barnes’s “The Diary of a Dangerous Child” (1922), “The Diary of a Small Boy” (1923), and “Madame Grows Older: A Journal at the Dangerous Age” (1924) shed light on the feminist/poststructuralist notion of the subject-in-the-making through the re-appropriation of the diary form within the genre of short story. Her experimentation on the genre functions to lay bare the production and destabilisation of gender boundaries, and thus, presents diary writing as part of storytelling as a subversive act witnessing and/or contributing to the ontological becoming of subjects.

Keywords

Djuna Barnes, The Lydia Steptoe Stories, Diary, Genre, Performativity, Subjectivity

DJUNA BARNES'IN LYDIA STEPTOE ÖYKÜLERİ'NDE YIKICI KATEGORİLER OLARAK GÜNLÜK BİÇİMİ VE TOPLUMSAL CİNSİYET

Abstract

Amerikan-İngiliz yazar Djuna Barnes (1892-1982), İngiliz modernist yazınında önemli bir isim olmuştur. Çalışmalarında hem içerik hem de biçim düzeyinde denemelerde bulunarak cinsiyet ve toplumsal cinsiyet kategorilerine yönelik geleneksel yaklaşımlara meydan okumuştur. Barnes öznelliğin akışkanlığını savunma ve Kartezyen Benlik anlayışına karşı çıkma eğilimini, özellikle tür kategorilerini sorunsallaştırdığı yazınında ortaya koymuştur. Başka bir deyişle, Barnes’ın, eserlerinde geniş bir tür yelpazesini yeniden formüle edişi, “doğallaştırılmış” toplumsal cinsiyet/cinsiyet kategorilerinin radikal bir eleştirisini sunar. Bu bağlamda, Barnes’ın Lydia Steptoe mahlasıyla yazdığı üç kısa öyküsünü inceleyen bu çalışma, yazarın günlük yazma biçimiyle nasıl oynadığını ve bu türü neden öykü türü içinde konumladığını araştırmayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu çalışma, Barnes’ın “The Diary of a Dangerous Child” (“Tehlikeli Bir Çocuğun Günlüğü”), “The Diary of a Small Boy” (“Küçük Bir Çocuğun Günlüğü”) ve “Madame Grows Older: A Journal at the Dangerous Age” (“Hanımefendi Yaşlanırken: Tehlikeli Bir Yaşın Güncesi”) adlı öykülerinin, günlük biçimini yeniden ele alıp kısa öykü türü içerisine yerleştirerek feminist/yapısökümcü bir kavram olan oluşmakta-olan-özne kavramına ışık tuttuğunu savunmaktadır. Barnes’ın tür üzerindeki bu deneylemesi, toplumsal cinsiyet sınırlarının üretimini ve istikrarsızlaştırılmasını açıkça ortaya koyma işlevi görür ve böylece öykü anlatımının bir parçası olarak sunduğu günlük yazımını, öznelerin ontolojik oluşumuna tanık olan ve/veya buna katkıda bulunan yıkıcı bir eylem olarak sunar.

Keywords

Djuna Barnes, Lydia Steptoe Öyküleri, Günlük, Tür, Edimlilik, Öznellik

References

• References
• Barnes, Djuna. (2019). The Lydia Steptoe Stories. Gloucester: Faber & Faber.
• Besnault-Levita, Anne. (2007). Genre and the Short Story. Companion to the British Short Story. Andrew Maunder (Ed.). New York: Facts on File Inc.
• Bockting, Margaret. (1997). The Great War and Modern Gender Consciousness: The Subversive Tactics of Djuna Barnes. Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, (30)3, 21-38.
• Broe, Mary Lynn. (1991). Silence and Power: A Reevaluation of Djuna Barnes. Illinois: Illinois UP.
• Butler, Judith. (2001). “From Gender Trouble”. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Vincent B. Leitch (Ed.). W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
• Caselli, Daniela. (2022). ‘Tendency to Precocity’ and ‘Childish Uncertainties’ of a ‘Virago at Fourteen’: Djuna Barnes’s ‘The Diary of a Dangerous Child.’ The Yearbook of English Studies, 32, 186–204.
• Cixous, Helene. (1988). Extreme Fidelity. Writing Differences: Readings from the Seminar of Helene Cixous. Susan Sellers (Ed.). Open UP, 9-36.
• ---, Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen. (1976). The Laugh of the Medusa. Signs. 1(4), 875-893.
• Doane, Mary Ann. (1982). Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator. Screen, (23) 3-4, 74–88.
• Gamble, Sarah. (2022). Gender and Transgender Criticism. Introducing Criticism in the 21th century. Julian Wolfreys (Ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP.
• Herring, Phillip. (1996). Introduction. Collected Stories of Djuna Barnes. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 7–24.
• ---. (1995). The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes. New York: Viking.
• Huff, Cynthia. (1989). ‘That Profoundly Female, and Feminist Genre’: The Diary as Feminist Practice. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 17 (3/4), 6-14.
• Irigaray, Luce. (1990). This Sex Which Is Not One. Catherine Porter & Carolyn Burke (Trans.). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Jones, Ann Rosalind. (1981). Writing the Body: Toward an Understanding of ‘L’Ecriture Feminine’. Feminist Studies, 7(2), 247-263.
• Kannenstine, Louis F. (1977). The Art of Djuna Barnes: Duality and Damnation. New York: New York UP.
• Martins, Susana S. (1999). Gender Trouble and Lesbian Desire in Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 20(3), 108-126.
• Messerli, Douglas. (1975). Djuna Barnes: A Bibliography. David Lewis,16-18.
• Raoul, Valerie. (1989). Women and Diaries: Gender and Genre. Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, 22(3), 5765.
• Rich, Adrienne. (1979). On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. New York: Norton.
• Shin, Ery. (2014). Djuna Barnes, History’s Elsewhere, and the Transgender. Journal of Modern Literature, 37(2), 20-38.
• Ward, David C. “Hide/Seek” and Historian at the National Portrait Gallery (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47p7Gt5IHc8).
• Warren, Diane. (2008). Djuna Barnes’ Consuming Fictions. Burlington: Ashgate.
• ---. (2009). Review by Meryl Altman. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 28(1), 186-190.
• Wittig, Monique. (2013). One Is Not Born Woman (1981). Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. Carole McCann and Seung-kyung Kim (Eds.). New York: Routledge. ---. (1983). Point of View: Universal or Particular. Feminist Issues, 3(2), 63-69.
• Woolf, Virginia. (2012). A Writer’s Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf [1953]. Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books.
• Thorpe, Vanessa. (2009). “Banned sex play now a teenage hit.” https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/jan/31/spring-awakening-sex-theatre-stage