Sexualizing power in naturalism

Irene Gammel

How is sexuality put to work in the social network of power? Why is power so obsessively inscribed on the sexualized female body? These questions are at the heart of naturalism's preoccupation with female sexuality. Presenting a revisionary reading of such crucial German, Canadian, and American texts as Fanny Essler, Settlers of the Marsh, and Sister Carrie, Irene Gammel reveals that naturalism is frequently implicated in the very power structures it critiques. A predominantly male genre, naturalism appropriated a disruptive female sexuality not so much to "liberate" it from the shackles of Victorian repression as to contain it within the male boundaries of naturalism. Reading European and North American naturalism through the lens of feminist and Foucauldian theories of power, Gammel argues that twentieth-century naturalism increasingly exposes the genre's internal ideological contradictions.