Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex

Butler starts the chapter by critiquing feminist readings of Willa Cather’s identification in fiction as a linear trajectory from male to female. Butler argues that such readings oversimplify the complexities of gender and sexuality within Cather’s works. Referencing Hermione Lee’s notions of cross-dressing and cross-writing, as well as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s reading of cross-identification and lesbian love, Butler argues that Cather’s work poses a challenge to conventional representations of gender identifications.

Butler carries out a detailed analysis of Cather’s 1918 novel My Ántonia. The narrative is a complex interplay of names and identities, with Jim Burden taking on the role of first-person narrator. The novel focuses on the character of Ántonia, Jim’s friend and an immigrant from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). Butler’s analysis focuses on the symbolic importance of Ántonia’s name, which is a gender-ambiguous name.

Furthermore, the analysis centers on the intertwining of linguistic and gendered elements in Jim’s attempt to teach Ántonia English words. The characters encounter a snake shaped like the letter W, which, Butler asserts, alludes to Willa Cather. This symbol blurs the distinctions between character and author. According to Butler, the snake also represents the phallus and becomes a site for castration anxiety as Jim attempts, unsuccessfully, to kill the snake, revealing the hidden tensions between desire, identity, and resistance.