Compulsion and Identity

Judith Butler said “gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts” (140). Alison’s well-furnished Victorian house seems like it is another manifestation of such “an exterior space” with “repetition of acts”. Alison describes her home as “an artist’s colony”, where all the family members were “absorbed in our separate pursuits” which consisted of “compulsion” (134).
Alison’s compulsion shows how people willingly start to police themselves. First, it seems like they became a dictator of autonomy. Tedious rules are all set by themselves. As her father was ‘autodidact’, ‘autocrat’, and ‘autocide’ caught up in compulsive furnishing, Alison learns the fantasy of autonomy from ‘autobiography’ his father gave her in which she writes “I think” obsessively (140-141). As what the phrase says, Alison delves into herself just like what his father and other family members did.
However, the phrase “I think” was a deception. By attaching the phrase on every sentences, it scales down all the perceptions and ideas into mere murmuring that has no chance of empathy and approval. The autobiography which was first expected to be a space ruled by herself, now became a display of pretense that ruled out her real feelings and thoughts. But the compulsion cannot be stopped and the repetition of practice consolidates such façade.
The counterparts of façade that conceals what is real are Alison’s autobiography, the father’s Victorian style house, the mother’s play and also the gender identity according to Judith Butler. Therefore, various compulsions of Alison’s and her father’s are not just symptoms of anxiety of disapproval, but actually symbolizes the identification of their gender. Doubts about her father’s house thus well corresponds to the question of authenticity of her self-identity.

The Power of Transgression

If gender binary and sexual normativity are social constructs that oppresses other forms of existences, do I have to struggle to deny and dismantle such constructs? Misfits in the novels, and arguments about queerness convinced me the myth of gender binary is out of date. However, I could not imagine the actual practice of queerness that could replace the old frame. The quest of queerness was just enough for me to doubt my body, language and desire in my routine life, but failed to give me evidence what to do after the doubts.
Tyler in Cereus Blooms at Night suggests us to transgress gender binary, rather than dismantling it. He wears female nurse’s uniform in front of Mala. He even puts on makeup. He turns into a perfect, stereotypical woman figure, which must have been suffocating for many women. The moment he wears stockings on his thigh, he recognizes it is a confinement but find the feeling of hairs tightened joyful. It shows conflicting desire regarding gender binary. There is yearning to be free of any oppression, but at the same time there is a masochistic desire to be willingly confine oneself.
Bell hooks said in Teaching to Transgress that she chooses to speak black vernacular when she feels it would be more effective to deliver what she wants to speak up. She is transgressing the terrains of white and black languages freely. From her flipping choices of languages comes the real liberation from dominant power. As for gender binary, too, daring transgression over borders between male and female would give people self-governance. Instead of ignoring or refusing pervasive existence of gender norms, acknowledgement, appreciation and appropriation of the norms would make a success in creating alternative space.

Intentional Obscurity

Autobiography of Red is inventive in a sense that it makes familiar things unfamiliar, by intentional discrepancy and absence. It claims to be an old Greek myth. However, it is a contemporary queer love story where Hercules who used to be a hero historically is a heartbreaker while Geryon, a red monster, is the one readers might cheer for and love. It also claims to be an autobiography, but it is rather a biography of Geryon writing an autobiography. The interview of the author, inserted at the last pages of the book, does not possess any answer or guide about interpreting the book.
The difference between what it is expected to be and what actually it is points out contradictions and oppressions of the world we are expected to live. By retelling the old myth that was pervasively known in a new perspective, the novel suggests there might be stories of minorities untold and unknown in our world. By hiding what the Geryon is writing about in his autobiography, which must be Geryon’s understanding of himself, in other words, his own identity, the biography written in a third party perspective refuses to determine Geryon’s identity. By asking questions while answering nothing in the interview, the novel opens up enough room for readers to imagine infinite possibilities in the book. Overall, the novel adapts forms of perspicuity, such as a heroic myth, an autobiography and an interview, and turns these into inspiring texts that does not dictate readers what to see, and that reveals forgotten and abandoned sides of our world.

Virtual World

We were in a Virtual world where the only taboo was real life. But in a true Virtual world I could have gently picked up Elgin and dropped him for ever from the frame. (p.98)

They are in Oxford, away from Elgin. Louise is smiling, calm but she has something undercover. She keeps her secret as if she is a war-time agent. The secret makes Oxford a virtual world. Virtual world is so real, but is not real. The narrator’s prospect and anticipation are wedging into the very thin line crossing real world and virtual world. The narrator is foreseeing that she will go back to her shell, but at the same time wishing she stays.
Halberstam and Freeman’s arguments about time and space of normativity and the queer provide elaborate view in the virtual world, and reveals the characters’ suffocating struggle. Oxford is not just a place where hope and forecast, pretense and sincerity are crossing on an individual level. Rather, it is a place where the narrator and Louise are struggling against overwhelming power of normativity, which is Elgin, marriage, respectful social status and stable economic condition.
They tried to get away from the norm, but their escape may vanish just like their temporary shelter, the rented room. Criticism against them will be as adverse as the scorching heat and distracting noises outside. They may doubt themselves at last, as the narrator sees the illusion of Elgin. You may be some place out of the real world, but the normativity persists so strongly in everywhere that you can never be out of the real world and only realize that you were in the virtual world.
However, these instability and vulnerability of their escape do not undermine its value. As what Halbertstam said, the crisis of instability is also an opportunity to create alternative modes of life. The moment Louise decided to leave Elgin, she made her real world and the virtual world reversed, as ‘my love for you makes any other life a lie’.

The unit of love

  ‘It was years ago but I still blush. Sex can feel like love or maybe it’s guilt that makes me call sex love. I’ve been through so much I should know just what it is I’m doing with Louise. I should be a grown-up by now. Why do I feel like a convent virgin?’ (p.94)

  Quite often pleasure of sex comes with guilt. The guilt that you should have sex only with someone you truly love will make you ‘blush’, and feel like a ‘convent virgin’. It is so burdensome that you sometimes deceive yourself to evade from the guilt. An abrupt sex may be turned into genuine love. As what Warner insists, the guilt itself is illegitimate, restricting people’s identity and behavior without any ethical base. If we refuse the guilt, and if sex no longer necessarily means love, however, how would we know what love is?

  Marriage used to be the evidence of love. It strongly bound love and sex. But ‘grown-ups who have been through so much’ now should realize the norm do not assure you of true love. Love affairs between numerous married women and the narrator showed relationships composed of only obligations and duties cannot mean love.

  The narrator keeps trying to find how sex can be connected to real love instead of guilt and duty. The narrator says the measure of love is loss, and the loss the narrator feels is represented as her body. The narrator get obsessed with sex and touch they used to have, and then with Louise’s body and the narrator’s sensation, and then with her biological body of organs and other parts, even cells.

  Would the narrator still love Louise, who became much paler and thinner and whose all the body parts got serious cellular damage after leukemia treatment? If so, why? Wasn’t it her body that the narrator had sex with, and that convinced the narrator to fall in love? If not, why?

  ‘Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there.’ (p.89). It is the narrator’s memory with Louise that sustains his/her love. The memory is about flesh and carved in flesh. In other words, it is not Louise’s present physical body but the narrator’s memory of her body why the narrator long for her. Memory of body is the narrator’s unit of love.

Boredom

“She treated me like a big cat in the Zoo. She was very proud of me.” (p. 28)

The narrator used to be a wild animal, hunting down numerous women and breaking all the sacred oath. Jacqueline knew how to deal with beasts. The wild soul was free to live and love, but also free to die and hurt. That is why Jacqueline offered stability. Under the cage, there is nothing to worry about. The tiger or the narrator is now no longer a beast but a big cat.

Funny thing is that the narrator thought it was Jacqueline who could be easily dealt with just like a pet. However, she is the only person without any constraints of marriage among women whom the narrator fell in love with. She is by no means a pet. She has a complete control over her life. She would not be dragged by her family nor money, because she is single and has own job. She does not even stick with love; ‘she didn’t cry when I shouted at her. In fact she shouted back.’

Then, where does the boredom the narrator feels come from? Jacqueline is definitely not a boring woman who can be easily predicted. The narrator’s life with Jacqueline is defined as boredom by the narrator’s friends. They ask about frequency of sex and expression of affection. These are what people typically expect from true love, in other words, cliches.

As a forced relationship bounded only by just a marriage commitment cannot be a true love, obsession of sex and sweet nothings to prove themselves true love also cannot be a true love. The stable relationship with Jacqueline looks somewhat different from others, but the novel seems to be going to prove how strong old love cliches are.