Marginality and Othering in Metalious’Peyton Place
Metalious’ best known novel, Peyton Place, was a bestseller and a media phenomenon in the mid-1950s and 1960s, creating a stir because of its depictions of teenage sexuality, incest, and illegal abortion. Surprisingly, however, few close examinations of the novel’s content and style have been published by literary critics. This essay provides a discussion of a key concern in the novel: racial, ethnic, geographical, and sexual marginality. Written to challenge the inscription of white, middle class, nuclear family life as the standard by which difference should be measured, Peyton Place features several characters who inhabit the metaphorical margins of American society, including Samuel Peyton, an escaped slave and the founder of the town; Tomoas Makris, a mysteriously handsome Greek school principal with several resemblances to George Metalious; and Selena Cross, a dark-skinned, beautiful young woman describes as a “gypsy,” whose life ties in to the incest and abortion subplots within the novel. I will provide a working definition of marginality and “othering” to begin this essay, followed by a discussion of Metalious’ social status as a French Canadian in New Hampshire, a description of the characterizations of Samuel Peyton and Selena Cross, and a final word on realism, reception, and the novel’s legacy.
Marginality and “othering” are terms that have a long history in literary and critical discourse of the 20th century. In cultural criticism of the last three decades, these terms have been used to describe differences in power among individuals, nations, and cultural forms. In Orientalism, for instance, Edward Said invokes this idea of marg...
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...ched understanding of the novel’s legacy. The unique and provocative treatments of marginality and othering in Peyton Place illustrate conflicts and anxieties that remain unresolved in 21st century American culture.
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Historically, Canada has held a world renowned reputation as nation with a magnanimous ideological approach to providing asylum to those individuals subjected to marginalization and persecution in their homeland – regardless of their nation of origin (Ismaili, 2011, p.89 & 92). Indeed, providing sanctuary to refugees who would otherwise experience significant hardships ranging from blatant discrimination and racism to torture and genocide, has very much become an institutionalized aspect of Canadian society. However, recent changes to Canada’s immigration policy delineated in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and Bill C-31 may have perhaps put this ideology in peril (Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, 2001).
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According to Raymond Williams, “In a class society, all beliefs are founded on class position, and the systems of belief of all classes …” (Rice and Waugh 122). His work titled, Marxism and Literature expounded on the conflict between social classes to bridge the political ideals of Marxism with the implicit comments rendered through the text of a novel. “For the practical links,” he states “between ‘ideas’ and ‘theories’ and the ‘production of real life’ are all in this material social process of signification itself” (133). Williams asserts that a Marxist approach to literature introduces a cross-cultural universality, ensuingly adding a timeless value to text by connecting creative and artistic processes with the material products that result. Like Williams, Don DeLillo calls attention to the economic and material relations behind universal abstractions such as aesthetics, love, and death. DeLillo’s White Noise brings modern-day capitalist societies’ incessant lifestyle disparity between active consumerists and those without the means to the forefront of the story’s plot. DeLillo’s setting uses a life altering man-made disaster in the suburban small-town of Blacksmith to shed light on the class conflict between the middle class (bourgeoisie) and the working poor (proletariat). After a tank car is punctured, an ominous cloud begins to loom over Jack Gladney and his family. No longer a feathery plume or a black billowing cloud, but the airborne toxic event—an event that even after its conclusion Jack cannot escape the prophecy of his encroaching death. Through a Marxist reading of the characterization of Jack Gladney, a middle-aged suburban college professor, it is clear that the overarching obsession with death operates as an...
Maggie and Jimmie, siblings whom Cranes uses as protagonists, live in deplorable and violent conditions. The setting is America West, during the industrialization era. The change from agricultural to industrial economy led to many casualties, including Maggie and Jimmie’s parents. They found themselves in periphery of economic edifice where poverty was rampant. Now alcoholics, they are incapable of offering parental care and support to their children. This leaves the children at the mercies of a violent, vain, and despondent society that shapes them to what they became in the end. Cranes’ ability to create and sustain characters that readers can empathize with is epic though critics like Eichhorst have lambasted his episodic style (23). This paper will demonstrate that in spite of its inadequacy, Cranes Novella caricatures American naturalism in a way hitherto unseen by illustrating the profound effect of social circumstances on his characters.
Bhabha, J., & Young, W. (1998) Through A Child's Eyes: Protecting the Most Vulnerable Asylum Seekers. Interpreter Releases 75 (21), pp. 757-791.
This has caused a decrease in refugees since 2009 (textbook). This impacts the practice of social work with refugees, because social workers cannot help refugees if they are discouraged from being admitted into Canada, and if the refugee does make it to Canada, political and social barriers exist from the very start that alienate refugees from the larger Canadian society. Furthermore, another political and social form of oppression is that some members of the Canadian public, specifically politicians and the media, have represented some refugees as “safer” to the Canadian public. Specifically, that refugees who come to Canada straight away out of fear, are inferior and abuse Canada’s refugee system (textbook). This is a form of social oppression that alienates refugees from mainstream Canadian society, and labels them as “bad”. This is another oppressive factor surrounding refugee’s access to claim refuge in Canada, because certain refugees are deemed “acceptable” while others are not, all based on how they seek refuge and leave dangerous
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“Choosing My Name” by Puanani Burgress is a poem that reflects Burgess idea of her identity and how it is related with her different names. Despite having three different names Chirstabella , Yoshie and Puanani, she particularly likes identifying herself as Puanani although it is not her “official name”. Strange as it sounds, I aslo have three different names: Basanta, Kancho, Xxxxxx. My third name Xxxxxx is my cultural name that I cannot disclose thus I have decided to write it Xxxxxx as it is made up of six letters. Xxxxxx is my favorite and preferred name because it connects me to my family, my culture and my land.
According to the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugee is a term applied to anyone who is outside his/her own country and cannot return due to the fear of being persecuted on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership of a group or political opinion. Many “refugees” that the media and the general public refer to today are known as internally displaced persons, which are people forced to flee their homes to avoid things such as armed conflict, generalized violations of human rights or natural and non-natural disasters. These two groups are distinctly different but fall ...
Fisher, Jerilyn, and Ellen S. Silber. Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of Gender. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2003. Print.
Ward, Susan. "Morag Gunn in Fictional Context: The Career Woman Theme in The Diviners." New Perspectives on Margaret Laurence: Poetic Narrative, Multiculturalism, and Feminism. Ed. Greta M. K. McCormick Coger. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996. 179-184.
There are many similarities between The Namesake and “Interpreter of Maladies.” In both of these, an identity crisis is faced. In The Namesake, Gogol faces identity crises by rejecting his unusual name. “The family looked Indian but dressed as foreigners did, the children in stiff, brightly colored clothing and caps with translucent visors.”(Lahiri44) In “Interpreter of Maladies” the family faced an identity crisis trying to merge their American identity with their Indian identity. Even though they could have dressed like Indians in India, they didn’t. They dressed as they would in America and stood out. Both “Interpreter of Maldies” and The Namesake are related to the second generation Indian-Americans, along with Jhumpa Lahiri herself.
Anthropology is concerned with studying human beings, both in the past and present. From another perspective, Anthropology is the study of the “Other” or of populations whose culture is different from one’s own. The questioning of these differences in prior centuries led to theories of inherent biological distinctions between Westerners and non-Westerners as well as divisions in evolutionary characteristics of their cultures. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, in a chapter of his book entitled “Anthropology and the Savage Slot: The Poetics and Politics of Otherness”, argues that Anthropology as an academic discipline acquired these theoretical outlooks before its emergence as an actual discipline. As a result, “Anthropology fills a pre-established compartment within a wider symbolic field, the ‘Savage’ slot” (Trouillot 2003:9). By utilizing the resource of Trouillot as well as Moberg, Perry, and Moore, I will illustrate that the Savage Slot and the “Savage” or “Other” are theoretical concepts fashioned with the creation of the West and consequently the field of Anthropology.
Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson, eds. The Bedford Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 1190-1203. Print.
The developing world has been overwhelmed by major refugee crises in the past few decades, and a rapidly changing world has altered the dynamics of refugee flows and their root causes. For this reason, the authors of Escape From Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World, attempt to provide a more realistic theoretical framework of refugee trends in order to prescribe ways in which the developed world can help alleviate the problem. The book attempts to clarify why there have been so many refugees emerging recently from the developing world, why they leave in varying volumes, where they end up, and why they go back or not. The findings indicate that patterns of refugee flows and conflict are affected by various economic and political factors within originating countries as well as the global setting itself, with different kinds of conflict producing different kinds of refugee patterns. This suggests the complexity of the causes of refugee issues, which include many examples of external influence and intervention.