Kerstin Fest Livres

Dorothy Richardson, Jean Rhys and Radclyffe Hall have long been considered minor figures within the larger context of Modernism. Also, very often their colourful biographies have received more attention than their literary works. This book offers a close reading of these authors’ major fictional works. The focus lies on the female heroines of the texts and their sense of identity. Drawing on the theoretical works of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Michel de Certeau, Kerstin Fest shows how identity can be perceived as performance. Although society’s norms and expectations influence these performances of identity, there is room for creative engagement from the subject’s side. The women in Richardson’s, Rhys’s and Hall’s oeuvres are very much aware of the discourses shaping society’s expectations of what it means to be a woman. Although in relatively powerless positions, they show a surprising degree of agency in carving out their roles to play. The results are highly individual and flexible versions of femininity that refuse to conform to a single mould.