The art of resistance: Reappropriating community in American women's literature, 1898-1987

The dominance of the construction of individualism, and the association of that construction with the white patriarchy, creates a binary between individualism and community in the United States. Within this binary, community is established as alterior---or "other"---and all women and non-white men, denied access to the autonomy and freedom of movement associated with individualism, are, consequently, positioned within communal spaces. Sandra Zagarell posits that many nineteenth-century American women writers celebrated and preserved community in a genre that she terms "narrative of community." I argue, however, that the racist and sexist ideology that often underlies the construction of community complicates any blanket celebration and must be acknowledged. Indeed, in nineteenth-century women's writing, including narrative of community, there is evidence of resistance to the binary between individualism and community. Such resistance proves to be a tradition in American women's literature throughout the twentieth century.I begin with an exploration of how Ellen Glasgow and Jessie Redmon Fauset respond to the sense of resistance found in early narratives of community. In Phases of an Inferior Planet (1898) and in There Is Confusion (1924), both writers integrate the theme of artistic pursuit in order to illustrate the tension between individual and community for women of both races. Resistance to racial and sexual alterity, as well as the possibility of the reappropriation of community, is further explored in Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928). Larsen's Helga Crane strives to maintain an individual identity under the pressure of competing definitions of African-American womanhood in the black and the white communities. Her struggle reveals how community is employed not only as a political strategy on the part of patriarchal institutions, but also as a means of resistance against those institutions. I move on to outline a shift in the literature of black and white women, as well as a shift in the genre of narrative of community. Gloria Naylor and Marilynne Robinson reveal the impact of the political and social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s in their novels, The Women of Brewster Place (1982) and Housekeeping (1980). Naylor examines the impact of racial and sexual oppression on one African-American community through an exploration of constructions of power in intra-racial relationships. She considers the extent to which African-American women challenge traditional gender roles, as well as how they are forced to adapt those roles as a result of oppression. Robinson also challenges traditional female gender roles. In the end, female community in both novels destroys "home," challenging the alterity of women's position within the domestic sphere and moving on to reappropriate community by grounding it in individual identity.In resisting the binary between individualism and community, twentieth-century American women writers challenge community as a subordinate, alterior position for women, and community itself is redefined. I move beyond the black/white binary to explore the element of resistance that twentieth-century literature by women contributes to a multiracial, multicultural women's tradition. I employ Gloria Anzaldua's theory of "a new mestiza consciousness," which she discusses in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), to argue for the redefinition arid reappropriation of community and for a movement beyond the limitations of the binary. I suggest that the influence of narrative of community as a genre unifies disparate groups of writers and texts and thus contributes to a distinct women's tradition in American literature.