Speaking (in) the Silences: Gender and Anti-Narrative in Carole Maso’s Defiance

Robin Silbergleid, Michigan State University
Vol. 29, No. 2 (Fall 2010), 331-349

This essay treats Carole Maso’s novel Defiance as an instance of feminist “anti-narrative.” Toward this end, it considers the novel’s use of direct address, its formal and thematic silences, and its parody of narrative convention. It reflects on the lack of scholarship on the novel and situates it in the context of Maso’s nonfiction to argue that it might be understood as a piece of feminist narratology.

Mary Wollstonecraft Sojourner Truth Margaret Atwood Abigail Adams Amy Tan H.D. Simone de Beauvoir Zora Neale Hurston Frances Burney Virginia Woolf

"The white saxifrage with the indented leafe is moste commended for the breakinge of the Stone."

— Turner, Herbal, III, 68 [1568]