Androgyny versus Patriarchy: A Historicist‐Psychoanalytic Reading of Hemingway's The Garden of Eden and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White

This paper will examine how male and female character interactions in Ernest Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White expose the internalization, normalization, and perpetuation of current modes of patriarchy in terms of gender roles through their presentations of androgyny. This paper highlights the parallels of gender construction and the interaction within the social relations depicted in these two novels, which have not been compared previously. The premise, based on the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan and cultural materialism of Raymond Williams, is that fiction reflects historical and contemporary social relations. Lacanian and feminist interpretations have both been conducted on literature written by Collins and Hemingway; however, neither look at these particular novels as two examples for the same contemporary phenomenon of 21st century patriarchal interpellation. This paper most similarly follows the work of Slavoj Žižek who analyzes contemporary social relations through film (including classics such as Casablanca and works by Alfred Hitchcock) and other aspects of popular culture. This project’s contribution and uniqueness lie with the way it applies theory to these particular literary works, specifically concerning gender relations and the prevalence of androgyny in widely read works by well-known authors in two very different literary and historical eras. My interpretation of these two novels provides an evaluation of historical and contemporary patriarchal norms and a radical potentiality for subverting the idea of static gender roles that has remained prevalent throughout the three centuries of these texts’ existence.

Judy Collins with Jill Godmilow at Media conference

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Mary Jean Collins-Robeson at NOW conference, Philadelphia

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Pat Collins, CBS-TV afternoon program

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Mary Jean Collins-Robson at NOW conference, Houston

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Commentary on Tonson v. Collins (1762)

Significant case in which the arguments for and against the existence of copyright at common law were extensively debated for the first time before the Court of King's Bench. Both William Blackstone (author of Commentaries Upon the Laws of England, and one of the judges to hold in favour of the common law right in Donaldson v. Becket (uk_1774)) and Joseph Yates (who would later provide the dissenting opinion in Millar v. Taylor (uk_1769)) appeared on behalf of the plaintiff and the defendant respectively.