George Eliot's 'The Lifted Veil' (1859), and Daphne du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel (1951) portray the patriarchal society and its prejudiced gaze directed toward women. The first-person male narrator-protagonists in each novel, due to their male anxieties and their fear of female sexuality and power, regard women as veiled beings whose disguised sexuality evokes enchantment as well as fear. In 'The Lifted Veil', Latimer's lack of masculinity and his inferior social position as the younger son lead him to view Bertha, his wife, as a veiled woman whose sexuality makes her attractive and fearsome. Latimer ultimately becomes so fearful of Bertha's mysterious sexuality behind her (metaphorical) veil―a threat to his patriarchal position― that he announces Bertha as a femme fatale who tries to poison him, thus justifying her dismission. Phillip Ashley in My Cousin Rachel, who is raised by Ambrose Ashley, his misogynistic cousin, is prejudiced against and is ignorant about women because his life is confined to a Cornish estate where women are banished. So Phillip considers Rachel, the widow of Ambrose who always wears a black veil, a femme fatale going after men's property by seducing and poisoning them. Consequently, Phillip, as Ambrose's heir and successor, leads Rachel to her demise, retrieving all the Ashleys' inheritance and estate.

This essay asks how Langston Hughes's travel writing can provide a point of entry to a critical understanding of race and black transnationalism. While critics have traditionally approached Hughes's I Wonder as I Wander as an embodiment of his conflicted ideas about black nationalism and a more universal sense of class struggle in the 1930s, recent scholarship attends to the global dimensions of the text and its impact on decolonial knowledge production across cultural borders. Building on Shu Mei-Shi's notion of “comparative racialization,” this essay examines how Hughes's travel narrative enables us to apprehend the meaning of race and its influence on racial others and the poor on a global scale. By juxtaposing Hughes's transatlantic and transpacific experiences in I Wonder as I Wander, I argue that Hughes employs transnational solidarity as a new cultural form that envisions critical utopianism and global networks against racism. Finally, this essay shows that his travel writing has shaped and continues to shape the idea of race and black diaspora as a set of contradictory and evolving practices for building more just futures that value racial and social equality.

This paper explores the correlation between desire and power in the use of affects as a means to control feminine bodies to find subversive possibilities in the performance of certain affects in Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other. Sara Ahmed's concept of “promise of happiness” and the concept of “cruel optimism” by Lauren Berlant, illustrates that while there are systems that oppress through negative affects, there are also positive affects, those that stem from the desire to be loved, accepted, and successful, that can be used to control and manipulate. The girl, woman, and others depicted in the novel are constantly exposed to violence and this vulnerability is taken advantage of, many times through the transmission of certain affects. This paper examines the use of what is generally thought of as positive affects, through the relationship between Nzinga and her environment, and her romantic relationship with Dominique. While the novel does not deny that the systems of affective manipulation in place are too large for one character to overcome, I assert through an analysis of the two central characters Amma and Carole, inspired by Judith Butler's and Jose Esteban Munoz's theories on performance, that there are limited possibilities of moving up within the dehumanizing system through performance.