Abstract
Domestic Dynamics is a creative-critical PhD project that explores representations of stasis in domestic poetic narratives, focusing on uses of literary devices that both promote and frustrate a sense of movement. The critical component contains an analysis of three poetic narratives as well as an exegesis, in which I unpack the construction of the creative component, Ash. In the analyses, I examine the relationship between stasis, movement and literary devices in Rachel Zucker’s ‘Fables’ from The Pedestrians, Jenny Bornholdt’s The Rocky Shore and Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle’s Autobiography of a Marguerite. Drawing on affect, cultural and everyday theory, as well as medical literature, I demonstrate how all three authors use devices of repetition in their domestic narratives to depict – and reproduce in their readers – the sensation of stasis.
In ‘Fables’, Zucker uses narrative gaps and hazy references to fable to contribute to a sense of blocked agency. By invoking the fable genre, she encourages her reader to look for narrative movement that she ultimately withholds. She depicts domestic stasis as a slow accumulation by presenting a series of everyday disappointments, and at the end of her sequence she reveals this as a permanent closure. I show that this acknowledgement of sadness is a feminist act, where closure in fact produces openness.
Bornholdt’s The Rocky Shore portrays a sudden onset of stasis due to grief and illness. The text is a fine balance between narrative sprawl and the order of the couplet, and this balance can be understood through Christian Campbell’s concept of ‘loose containment’ as a feminine mode. I demonstrate that Bornholdt’s use of loose containment allows her to celebrate the vastness of domestic life.
In Autobiography of a Marguerite, Butcher-McGunnigle deploys several literary devices to disrupt narrative movement. I demonstrate how Butcher-McGunnigle’s use of footnotes and fragments generates a fractured mode through which she conveys a bodily experience of stasis.
Linking formalist and feminist approaches, I identify in the three texts a feminist aesthetic that connects stasis, movement and literary devices. Just as Viktor Shklovsky viewed the literary device as a means of estrangement, Lauren Elkin describes the feminist aesthetic as a ‘a way of feeling’ that ‘queers story, queers form, queers time’. Unlike Shklovsky, Elkin focuses on how different devices can come together to represent a female experience and convey what that experience feels like.
Ash uses several different literary devices to generate a feeling of excess, disrupt the narrative flow and contribute to a sense of domestic stasis. The protagonist of Ash is Thea, a rural vet and mother of two who is struggling to keep up with her domestic and professional demands. A volcanic event occurs nearby, and Thea and her community must find a way to navigate life through the resulting ash cloud. By combining a number of literary devices to generate multiple reading pathways, Ash transfers Thea’s sensation of overwhelm to the reader. The publication of Ash created further possibilities for movement through the reformatting process and market placement, as what was originally intended as a poetic narrative became a novel.
Domestic Dynamics suggests that a feminist aesthetic created by the estranging use of literary devices can assist in depicting a fuller sense of women’s experiences. Collectively, the critical and creative components of this thesis highlight the potential benefits of this approach. These benefits include opportunities for connection and community that might counteract the isolation of domestic stasis, whether on the page or in everyday life.