Polymorphous Domesticities

Download or read book Polymorphous Domesticities written by Juliana Schiesari and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book specifically maps out a "figural" play of gender, sexuality and alternative forms of domesticity in four modern European and American writers: Edith Wharton, Djuna Barnes, Colette, and J.R. Ackerley. What these four writers have in common is a defiance of the patriarchal paradigm in the lives they lead as well as in the literature that represents those lives. The alternative lifestyles they pursue and write about prominently involves animals of various kinds and in as many capacities. The rearrangement of the family life within these texts not only explores sexual alternatives but also explores how domestic life is refigured by the very presence of the animals who co-habit those spaces. The cultural, sexual and social experimentation that these authors write about in the pursuit of alternative lifestyles is in direct relation with the animals who they share their lives with them in the domestic world of "home.""--