"Lazy Jack": Coding and Contextualizing Resistance in Appalachian Women's Narratives

The female characters in most American Jack tales portray ancillary roles and seldom display strong character or initiative. But Appalachian storyteller Beverly Carter-Sexton develops strong women characters in all of her Jack tales. In "Lazy Jack," a remarkable tale involving cannibalism and self-cannibalism, she uses coding and contextualizing techniques to challenge traditional gender and economic relationships that she has observed in her native Rockcastle County, Kentucky. This paper 1) examines the dominant motifs and related versions of this tale to appreciate the changes Carter-Sexton has brought to her telling; 2) analyzes the implicit coding strategies of appropriation, juxtaposition, and incompetence used by Carter-Sexton to subvert male dominance, and links her coding strategies to those used by other female storytellers in her family; and 3) explores the metanarrative and metaperformative techniques she uses to recontextualize the tale.