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"That Flesh-Locked Sea Of Silence”: Language, Gender, And Sexuality In Beckett’S Short Fiction, Emily F. Oliver

Honors College Theses

This paper asserts the interconnectedness of language, gender, and sexuality in the short prose of Samuel Beckett. “Assumption,” “First Love,” and “Enough,” are used as specific examples of Beckett’s fiction, selected because they assist in understanding Beckett’s participation in, and inversion of, the hegemonic privileging of the masculine. This interpretation focuses on the use of gendered language, verbalization as a sexual expression, and the manipulation of the “male” and “female” voice. The analysis is both informed by, and seeks to nuance, the linguistic criticism established by second-wave French feminists Kristeva, Irigaray, and Cixous.