Abstract
This article examines We So Seldom Look on Love, a short story collection by the Canadian author Barbara Gowdy who displays a strong interest in extreme forms of physical and mental deviance in relation to the act of looking. Discursive forms are analyzed that revolve around the tyranny of the normative gaze and the fear of deviance, the bounded bodily ideal as opposed to the body in pieces. Kaja Silverman's psychoanalytic theory of the field of vision in relation to deviant bodies throws light on these recurring issues in Gowdy's short stories. Additionally, contemporary theories of the grotesque inform the analysis of the Gothic‐Carnivalesque, a subversive strategy with which the author provokes our perception and classification of humans, identities, and sexes. The collection will be shown to culminate in the final story that contains a scene in which a female protagonist bestows “the productive look” (Silverman) upon her transsexual husband.
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