Siobhan Somerville’s essay Passing through the Closet in Pauline E. Hop

Siobhan Somervilles essay Passing through the cupboard in Pauline E. Hopkinss Contending ForcesIn Siobhan Somervilles essay, Passing through the Closet in Pauline E. Hopkinss Contending Forces, the tacit allusion to homosexuality within Hopkins story is argued to be a resource used to question the dominance or unuttered strength of heterosexuality in the African-American community over discolour women. While I do reckon Hopkins may have think for the novel to raise questions about the institution of marriage in proportion to the African-American female, I do not believe the argument is as polarized as a difference among homosexual and heterosexual drawing card in relation to politics between the sexes. Ins afternoon tead, I would argue that the real ambiguity of sexuality within the text serves to comment on a larger issue of what makes a woman female and the importance of hint bonds between women in society.The most important piece of textual evidence in Somervilles argum ent is the attic depiction between Dora and Sappho. In this scene Sappho begs Dora to spend the morning with her after a snowstorm from the previous(prenominal) night makes it impossible for her to go to work. The two lock themselves away in Sapphos attic apartment and commence to have a tea party and play company like the children (Hopkins 117). In her essay, Somerville describes this as a highly sexualized scene, in which the intimacy between the two women hints at a possible homosexual attraction between the two, given the homoerotic exposition of their affection towards one another (Somerville 149-152). While I do believe the scene does have a certain element of homoerotic tension, I would not go so far as to polarize the scene as clearly homosexual as a pot... ...al Economy of Sex. Toward an Anthropology of Women. Ed. Rayna R. Reiter. bran-new York periodical Review Press, 1975. 157-210.Hopkins, Pauline E. Contending Forces A Romance Illustrative of Negro action North an d South. New York Oxford University Press, 1988.Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Ed. Rodney Needham. Trans. James Harls Bell and John Richard von Sturmer. capital of Massachusetts Beacon Press, 1969.Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men English Literature and Homosocial Desire. New York Columbia University Press, 1985.Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. The Female World of Love and Ritual Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America. Signs, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1975). 25 Oct. 2005 .Somerville, Siobhan. Passing through the Closet in Pauline E. Hopkinss Contending Forces American Literature, Vol 69, No 1, (1997). 19 Oct. 2005