Sex Marginal Person In Carson Mccullers’works

Carson McCullers is known as one of the most important writers in American literature in the20th century. Though bitterness and disease had fed on her throughout her life, she has made numerous great works in her limited life span, and has long been regarded as one of the most outstanding writers of southern America. Therefore, the study of her works is of significance to deeply study this writer and the development of American literature through studying her works.Carson McCullers spent a lot of ink in "the other" individuals marginalized by the hegemony of the dominating ideology. Her characters are usually in one or several inferior positions in race, gender, class or sexuality. The author of this thesis chooses to study the characters in weak status in gender and sexual orientation, and analyze the subsistent state of the sex-marginal person under dual sex-perspective.The content of this thesis include three parts as follows. The first part is the introduction, which states the researching object and cards some important concepts, including the "marginal person""sex-marginal person""queer""queer theory" and "sexual performance". Then it further puts forward the way of thinking of this text research.In the second part, the author of this thesis firstly gives a fully analysis on three types of sex-marginal person:the hoyden (tomboy), the homosexual and the cross dresser, discussing how they violated their gender line and then trapped themselves at last. The contradiction between female body and inner masculinity of hoyden (tomboy) sets challenge against the dual sex-perspective. Faced with the pressure from the social convention on women and the family condition, the hoyden has no choice but to accept those. The homosexual, after the escape from being feminine, the attempt to hide themselves and the inevitable feminization, choose to break their segregation from "the other" by suicide. And the idea of Carson McCullers was demonstrated in dual sexual performances of the cross dresser: gender is only a unstable appearance, and there doesn’t exist any inborn sexual identity in the world.In the third part, by analyzing the social background, the personal experience and the psychological factors, the author elaborates the reason for Carson McCullers’ composition of the sex-marginal characters. The social environment that Carson McCullers lived in, the bisexual tendency of herself, the sense of inferiority and grotesque have brought her pay special attention to the gender and sexual identity of the vulnerable group. And all these are the motivation for her to create the sex-marginal characters.The novels of Carson McCullers show a new developing trend of the western society: the pursuit of total freedom of individual life and the resist against all convention, including the convention on sexuality. And the novels leave a warn goes like this:people should accept the diversity of gender and sexual identities, letting the gender and sex-marginal people lead their life with freedom and dignity like common people.