This article examines early concepts of intersectional and queer theory in terms of Audre Lorde's writing, particularly poems, suggesting that Lorde's poetry corresponds to her theory. Audre Lorde critiques and resists androcentric ideas of mainstream feminism and the civil rights movement by revealing her complex identity and subjectivity as a black lesbian feminist. Thus, the first section of this article sketches out the representation of Black women by the male-dominated civil rights movement as well as the silencing of their voices by heterosexual second-wave feminism in the 1960s and '70s in order to show that Lorde's tropes are rooted within her lived experience as a marginalized woman. The second section specifically analyzes Lorde's poem, “Who Said It Was Simple” in From a Land Where Other People Live (1973) to demonstrate how she poetically embodies a voice of intersectionality. The last section then offers a detailed analysis of how another of Lorde's important poems, “A Woman Speaks” in The Black Unicorn (1978), represents the historical, mythical voice and identity of Black women to express the potentiality of Black women's sexuality and sisterhood.

This essay examines shame in Jean Rhys's After Leaving Mr Mackenzie as a gendered and ambivalent emotion. Drawing upon feminist studies on shame, I first discuss the ways in which Julia, an impoverished and isolated Englishwoman in Paris, is socially sentenced to 'female shame' as a punishment for transgressing gender norms and being a 'bad' woman. Although Julia appears to be eternally shamed, humiliated, and isolated, feeling a strong desire towards 'covering the face' and self-effacement, she also wants to be heard and understood. This self-contradictory desire to cover herself, on the one hand, and to uncover her life, on the other, points to the very characteristic of shame―that is, ambivalence. Since Silvan Tomkins's account of shame as a primary negative affect that is activated by “the incomplete reduction of interest or joy,” shame has been understood as a highly ambivalent emotion. Not only does the ambivalent nature of shame characterize Julia's emotional life, but it is reflected in the novel's narrative stance that partly reveals Julia's emotion while denying readers full access to it. In conclusion, the gendered and ambivalent workings of shame in After Leaving Mr Mackenzie speaks to the social and relational nature of the seemingly personal feeling.

This article strives to bring critical attention to the relationships between memory, memory loss, and imminent adversity in Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) through examinations of often-overlooked scenes and “Self-Portrait” (1972). This work of prose that predates the play by eighteen years portrays memory as a contradictory “fact” and “fiction” and conveys a disinclination to write “a play 'about the trouble[s] in the North'” (39, 46). By examining Maggie's demonstration of sensory experiences that are “all in your mind” and Chris's collaborative and subjective recollections, this essay departs from existing studies that generally focus on Michael's recollections or Father Jack's memory loss (15). What Michael, Father Jack, Chris, and Maggie remembers or forgets highlights their anguish and isolation. The retroactive interference account of forgetting provides insight into whether learning the language and culture of Africa prevents the former missionary priest from recalling information related to his old life in Ireland; his memory loss, in turn, presents novel interpretations on the role of memory and its relationship with revelations on imminent losses caused by poverty, unemployment, and mechanization.

This paper examines Shakespeare's Sonnets in light of early modern discourses against cosmetics. Exploiting the two contradictory beauties that the fair youth and the Dark Lady represent, Shakespeare appears to value natural above artificial beauty. His attitude towards the Dark Lady, however, is ambivalent: her dark complexion is eulogized as natural beauty, but it is simultaneously degraded as a mark of her evil mind. Her questionable nature is partly in line with pervasive condemnation of face-painting in early modern England. Although face-painting was part of women's daily activities, it was regarded as whoredom. The Dark Lady's art of seduction that holds her male suitors in romantic thrall evokes a male fear of her sexuality, and hence her darkness is perceived as her moral degeneracy. Shakespeare criticizes both facial and verbal painting as unnatural and untruthful. The moral division between nature and art, however, poses an artistic dilemma that asks Shakespeare to put rhetorical painting on plain words to versify real beauty. I argue that Shakespeare suggests that nature and art are not contradictory, but these two realms are rather complementary.

Discussing The Warden, this essay explores the ways in which Anthony Trollope positions his protagonist as the one who is scandalized by chance, faces collective blistering criticism, and is forced to exhibit the real worth of his moral character. Focusing on Trollope's father character and his idea of desirable fatherhood, I define Mr. Harding's gendered character with the term “fathering masculinity.” Fathering masculinity indicates Trollope's view of what a man should be, that is tender, caring, responsible, and emotionally literate. These distinctively feminine features that could threaten Victorian father's gender character, in The Warden, are characterized rather to enhance father's moral integrity as well as his authority and influence in relation to his children. Additionally, I explore the ways in which Mr. Harding's claim of being a father contains complex usefulness in terms of the politics of fatherhood. I argue that Mr. Harding's performance of his fathering father is rhetorically clever in retracting himself from or entangling himself in the unresolved fight between the reformer's argument for public justice and Dr. Grantly's argument for individual rights on the basis of self-interest.