Masculinities without Men? Female Masculinity in Twentieth Century Fictions

In this groundbreaking study, Jean Bobby Nobel maps historical similarities in fictional, cultural, and representational practices between the periods of modernism and postmodernism -- from 1918 to 1999. Noble looks at nineteenth-century sexology, drama, and trial transcripts, and at late twenthieth-century counter-cultural texts, popular film and documentaries, and theoretical texts. Arguing that the masculine female figure that appears in the late twentieth-century culture and fiction has much in common with that of the late nineteenth century, she illustrates the ways in which both are represented through the same types of narratives, structures, and thematic techniques. Among the twentieth-century fictions Noble analyzes most closely are texts that have been the focus of lesbian, queer, and feminist analysis: Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928), Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues (1993), and the film Boys Don't Cry (1999). In addition, her study includes an analysis of Rose Tremain's Sacred Country, a text that has never before been studies with the context of female masculinity. Of interest to scholars and students with an interest in sexuality and gender studies, this book also makes a vital contribution to both literary criticism and cultural studies.