Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Languages and Arts (ICLA 2018)

Marlon James’s Queer Perspective on Woman’s Heterosexuality in A Brief History of Seven Killings

Authors
Marliza Yeni
Corresponding Author
Marliza Yeni
Available Online March 2019.
DOI
10.2991/icla-18.2019.107How to use a DOI?
Keywords
female character, metamorphosis, queer theory, straight woman, homosexuality
Abstract

This article examines Marlon James’ novel A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), which presumably presents his queer perspective on woman’s straight sexual orientation through a female character named Nina Burgess. Burgess is the main female character who has to experience many traumatic dramas in her life due to her sex and gender as a heterosexual woman. Being a ‘normal’ Jamaican young woman makes her suffer a lot. Taking Burgess as the main object of the research, her traumatic experiences become the primary data to show James’ perspective about woman’s heterosexuality. Another character (Weeper, the gay gang member) is used as comparison to Burgess. The result of the analysis is two-faced; when assessed with feminist perspective (image of woman), the novel seems to present a positive transformation of Nina Burgess from a weak person to an independent woman. Yet, a queer look at her transformation describes another thing: she is not content with her life as a straight woman. Her transformation liberates her from men’s fearful domination, yet it cannot give her psychological comfort and happiness, that she starts to lose interest in man. The writer argues that Burgess’ sexual unhappiness indicates James’ way of questioning woman’s choice to be sexually straight.

Copyright
© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
Open Access
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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Volume Title
Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Languages and Arts (ICLA 2018)
Series
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research
Publication Date
March 2019
ISBN
978-94-6252-683-9
ISSN
2352-5398
DOI
10.2991/icla-18.2019.107How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
Open Access
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Cite this article

TY  - CONF
AU  - Marliza Yeni
PY  - 2019/03
DA  - 2019/03
TI  - Marlon James’s Queer Perspective on Woman’s Heterosexuality in A Brief History of Seven Killings
BT  - Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Languages and Arts (ICLA 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 651
EP  - 657
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icla-18.2019.107
DO  - 10.2991/icla-18.2019.107
ID  - Yeni2019/03
ER  -