THE REPRESENTATION OF THE FEMALE PROTAGONIST IN JOANNE HARRIS’S NOVEL “GENTLEMEN AND PLAYERS”

Antonina Bulyna

doi:10.23856/3904

Abstract

The paper zeroes in on the peculiarities of representing the main female character in a British novel “Gentlemen and Players” published in 2005. The crucial point that the research encompasses is a challenge to the status quo of gender imbalance which is portrayed, inter alia, through showing a certain playfulness of the main character. Notably, playfulness must be read here as a form of (social/cultural/political) subversion, which enables one to look beyond and deconstruct “arbitrary ranks/truths”. The carnivalesque nature of the female protagonist is manifested in connection with the changing status of women in contemporary societies. The image of a submissive woman fabricated by men still lingers in many cultures. This gives rise to a mutant woman, mirrored with the help of a subversive fictional female character who is a trickster. It is evinced that the fossilized patterns of perceiving a woman, and attitudes towards her in the male-dominated environment are likely to pose an impending threat, not only to men’s lives but also to the lives of children and other women. Affected by a number of factors, the female protagonist reveals her eclectic identity and we witness how she turns into a monstrous creature with overwhelming destructive power inside. Consequently, the authenticity of the woman suffers and we may talk about her symbolic death.

Highlights

There has been identified the carnivalesque nature of the main female character in the novel
Provided that Bakhtin’s concept of the carnivalesque-grotesque body is seen through the prism of the category of gender, “it is revealed that from the position of female individuals the liberatory effect of carnival is problematic” (Cajkova, 2004: 191). It is connected with the stereotypical division of the mind presented by men and the body presented by women, deeply rooted in social consciousness; woman was perceived in medieval society as signifying disorder, transgression and danger to authority...She was a constant presence of a carnivalesque element in the non-carnivalesque world and since her “everyday identity” and “carnivalesque identity” greatly overlapped she could not experience liberation from her social role as men did (Cajkova, 2004: 192)
The school as well as the family are traditionally considered the places where one can receive love, support, understanding, but what becomes clear while exploring the image of the female protagonist, these institutions are currently related to the rise of gender imbalance and alienation

Summary

Introduction

“Gentlemen and Players” by Joanne Harris is a novel written in the epoch featuring the aesthetics of metamodernism referred to as post-postmodernism. Michael Holquist underscores that Mikhail Bakhtin’s “Rabelais and His World” is about the subversive openness (Bakhtin, 1984: xvi) In this context Nicoline Timmer states that there is an apparent need to refer to aspects of subjectivity, aspects of the experience of being human [...] that have been repressed (Timmer, 2010: 20). The analysis of the interaction of the female protagonist with the other characters in the novel features alienation which is especially typical of the humanity in the 21st century because of a number of challenges Due to this “the carnival sense of the world” has been increasing. There has been identified the carnivalesque nature of the main female character in the novel In this respect Krystyna Pomorska writes as follows: The inherent features of carnival that Bakhtin underscores are its emphatic and purposeful “heteroglossia”. It must be underlined that it is for the first time that the image of the female protagonist in “Gentlemen and Players” is scrutinized

The game component in the novel

Explicating the titles of the novel chapters

Delineating the issue of gender imbalance

Conclusions