Significance Of The Revealing Scene In Jackie Kay's Trumpet Analysis

Andrew Sullivan, author of, What is a Homosexual, portrays his experience growing up; trapped in his own identity. He paints a detailed portrait of the hardships caused by being homosexual. He explains the struggle of self-concealment, and how doing so is vital for social acceptation. The ability to hide one’s true feelings make it easier to be “invisible” as Sullivan puts it. “The experience of growing up profoundly different in emotional and psychological makeup inevitably alters a person’s self-perception.”(Sullivan)This statement marks one of the many reasons for this concealment. The main idea of this passage is to reflect on those hardships, and too understand true self-conscious difference. Being different can cause identity

This approach to queer subtext has been has always been a part of Western media as we as we explored in the film “The Celluloid Closet” (1995). Queer representation for many years was an continuous uncategorized personification that was vaguely acknowledged but to those who understood the subtext, it became an undercurrent of complex coded information that eventually paved the way for the integration of queer identification within the hetero film storylines. Doty speaks about this and also mentions that at some point in time representation of queer culture and sexuality

This speaker is derived from Essex Hemphill, given their shared skin color and sexual preference, but can be compared to the lives of many people. Specifically, this poem is about the speaker’s struggles of being a gay man. The feelings the speaker has in his situation can be related to countless other situations as well. In this society, past, present, and future, people will be judged, so many will hold themselves back to avoid judgment. Essex Hemphill constructed a speaker that summarizes a complicated situation. He is prompted to conceal himself, feel utterly miserable in his life, but still looks completely fine on the outside. Overall, the speaker feels the need to secrete himself in order to avoid the discrimination of his loved ones. In all of this the speaker becomes miserable, also hides this, and illustrates a satisfied

Yoshino argues that because of these pressures to suppress aspects of our identity, the act of covering is “a hidden assault on our civil rights” (553), one that impedes people’s pursuit of personality authenticity. Many stories just like that of my gay friend are more than likely similar to other people’s experiences, people from numerous ethnicities, orientations or identities, and are most definitely in line with Yoshino’s perspective on the matter of covering.

“The narrator's double-voiced discourse the ironic understatements, asides, hedges, and negations through which she asserts herself against the power of John's voice came for some critics to represent ‘women's language’ or the ‘language of the powerless’” (Lanser 418). Women were not able to freely express themselves and when they did it was seen as unintelligent. This all connects to the image of the woman trapped behind the paper. The woman’s mind is not freed until the end of the story after she has completely peeled the paper from the wall that was keeping the woman, and her soul,

The “mother-of-pearl buttons on the back” (7-8) of the dress can be seen as an unconscious “Freudian slip” which reveals Collin’s true sexual feelings toward his mother. He could have referred to the buttons as any color, but he chooses to use the term “mother-of-pearl” (7). Collins then says that he buttons are “so tiny and numerous that it takes forever before [his] hands can part the fabric” (9-10). He seems to be very methodical in his act of undressing Dickinson. He is the one doing the undressing, he is the one in charge, and it is he who is in control of every detail. The simile “like a swimmer dividing the water, and slip inside” (11-12) might refer to Collins slipping into his unconscious and thinking about his mother, forgetting about Dickinson.

Similarly, Plath’s poem ‘Edge’ illustrates how patriarchy seizes the identity of woman, leaving them to be nothing but sexual entities. ‘The woman has been perfected’, society has shaped her into being socially and sexually pleasing. She has been moulded, making her ‘perfect’ to the naked eye, a ‘flower’, a ‘rose’, a ‘Greek necessity’ with no identity. In the second stanza the speaker states that the ‘body wears the smile of accomplishment’ she is now socially accepted.

The cross-dresser was an oddity. He was odd but not yet pathologized per se. This story illustrates the transitional stage between a time when sexuality was less of a public preoccupation to one where it became central to one 's position and acceptability in society.

Within modern-day America, there are certain societal standards based on sexual relationships. Within the poem, the narrator, a young woman, questions why she has to “wear the brand of shame; /whilst he amid the gay and proud/still bears an honored name” (Harper 26-28). Within her poem, Harper exposes the hypocrisy of the

Irene’s queer personality lives repressed in her id and the attraction can be noticed through many too detailed descriptions of Clare body parts and personality. “Her lips, painted a brilliant geranium red, were sweet and sensitive and a little obstinate. A tempting mouth” (45). It is impressive to see how this supposedly straight woman describes Clare’s mouth as tempting, yet she does not stop there, because Irene also describes her voice, “What was it about Clare's voice that was so appealing, so very seductive?” (52). The utilization of these adjectives is questionable because even when Irene talks about her husband Brian, she never uses adjectives that could express desire or even love. Irene is aware that her marriage is an arrangement where according to Brian sex is a just grand joke (60).

He argues that psychologists as early as Freud have determined the importance of a person’s sexual identity in defining a person’s psychological make-up and then points out that it is impossible for a reader to divorce their sexuality from a reading of any text, that a reader brings to a text the entirety of his experiences and identity and therefore, he brings his sexual identity to the reading of a text also. I use the male pronoun at this point in this paper because the author of the article examined the homosexual male reader, which is separate from either the heterosexual identity and also separate from a lesbian identity because "the homosexual male, in spite of his ‘difference’ is still a biological man, and very importantly, he is a socially constructed man, with all that this implies for phallocentrism and patriarchy" (73). Therefore, it can be seen, a reader can neither divorce their sexual identity nor their gender identity from a reading of a text; in fact, because these factors play a major role in a reader’s psychological make-up, they also play a major role in a

The narrator’s feelings of inferiority and powerlessness parallels the female figure she sees trapped behind the pattern in the wall-paper adorning her room. She gradually withdraws from both John and reality by locking herself in the room and ultimately merging with the figure. Through the changing image of the pattern from a “fait figure” (Gilman 46) to a “woman stooping” (Gilman 46) behind the paper and “shaking the bars” (Gilman 46) as if she wanted “to get out” (Gilman 46), we can see her becoming one with the figure: “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.”(51) Her collapse into madness as reflected in her behavior with the “bedstead [that] is fairly gnawed” (Gilman 51) and her “creeping all around” (Gilman 50) is a direct result of her passive submissiveness to John’s control of her life.

For queer theorists, identity has been constructed through performativity, which is based on the opinion of Judith Butler. Butler (1990, p.25) believed that “ there is no gender identity behind the expression of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.” In other words, there is not any factor to produce the identity, but identity creates itself through performativity. One should imitate and repeat the gender expression again and again according to norms, then the identity will be constituted, which also shows that identity is fluid and constructed. Moreover, Jenkins (2000,2004) stated that a dynamic social process generates identity, so identity is not static but fluid and dynamic.

“He starts a rumor going round to the effect that he has become a eunuch; …wives, he trusts, will be intrigued” (2288). Horner’s conclusion is logical and clever, considering the fact that masks “were a widespread item of Restoration fashion[;]…they were worn both by ‘virtuous’ women and by prostitutes, with the tantalizing effect of rendering those two human categories not quite distinguishable from one another” (2288). From this social climate, he discerns that if he wears a metaphorical mask, or a unique social label, this mask might have a similar “tantalizing effect” on women; it might make discerning female wits want to discover whether the man behind the mask is truly asexual or erotic.

The novel demonstrates both popular and familiar gender roles in the 19th century. Catherine Earnshaw, breaks through the stereotypes, and has a mesh of both feminine and masculine qualities. In the Victorian Era, men are seemed as superior to women. Her gender roles are beyond the social norm, as well as her husband Edgar, who is portrayed as more feminine. Catherine holds many masculine qualities such as being adventurous, extroverted, and determined.