Dualities of Safety and Terror in Queer Fiction

Abstract

In American culture, the home is one of the core spaces of ‘family values’ that theoretically rejects queerness and nonconformity. However, queer fiction offers a counterpoint to this framework. By reclaiming Gothic and speculative elements for queer narratives, writers are able to reimagine the home, including the home-as-symbol. In particular, this article will examine the home and how female characters experience it as a site of both potential safety and potential terror. In part, this is born of a conflation of the feminine and monstrosity. These characters “maintain a discomfort with the scripts of heteronormative existence” (Sara Ahmed, Queer Feelings, 151). Here, I will look at the way that women conjure monsters for their protection (Starling House, Alix E. Harrow), are themselves objectified and made monstrous (“The Husband Stitch,” Carmen Maria Machado), are haunted by generational traumas (The Haunting of Alejandra, V. Castro), and are monitored and demonized by an authoritarian government (I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, Marisa Crane). While the physical space of the home can operate as a space of privacy and safety, social expectations of heteronormativity and gender do not stop at the threshold of the home, and so gender expression/sexuality can still clash with social expectations in this space.