Abstract

Abstract:

This article brings together trans theory and narratology in a reading of The Portrait of a Lady's narrator, arguing for their gender fluid and/or non-binary status. The narrator's grammatical and syntactical construction in the novel--minoritized and all-pervasive, inchoate but synergetic--creates a being whose self-expression is only partial but whose restrictions paradoxically afford us a persona whose gender is not categorical. Through readings of the narrator's "I, free indirect discourse, and a rethinking of queer theory's legacy on James, I will also account for how this gender fluid/non-binary reading is thematized within the novel itself.

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