Donald Barthelme's Snow White : Restraints of Patriarchal-Hero Narrative

BABA Akira

doi:10.20802/eibeibunka.33.0_73

Bibliographic Information

Other Title

ドナルド・バーセルミ『雪白姫』 : 父権的英雄物語の呪縛
ドナルドバーセルミユキシロヒメフケンテキエイユウモノガタリノジュバク

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Description

Donald Barthelme's Snow White (1967) is, as we will soon notice from its title, a mimetic of Grimm's famous fairy tale, "Snow White." In this novel, it is hard even to recognize the "story" itself, so that we are often perplexed to grasp its theme and meaning. So far, most of the preceding studies on Snow White have been made from the viewpoint that it is a typical "text" of the postmodern metafiction. Admittedly, those views are almost correct; however, we have to say that the crucial mechanism of gender struggle has been overlooked. The purpose of this paper is not only to examine the gender roles in the novel. What is required here is to clarify the anti-patriarchal mechanism of the "text." The issue of the antipatriarchal structure of the "text" is not always irrelevant to that of the gender struggle in the "novel." Therefore, I would like to make clear the fact that both of them work together to deconstruct the patriarchal fairly tale, "Snow White."

Journal

Eibeibunka: Studies in English Language, Literature and Culture

Eibeibunka: Studies in English Language, Literature and Culture 33 (0), 73-88, 2003

The Society of English Studies