Construction and Subversion of Gender Performativity in The Awakening and Their Eyes Were Watching God

Abstract

This dissertation examines the social construction of womanhood in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. It analyses how gender identity is not portrayed as natural or fixed in these novels but as something shaped through social norms, male authority, cultural discourse, and repeated performance. The study uses Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity as the main theoretical framework to interpret how femininity is produced, regulated, negotiated and challenged within patriarchal society. It also uses selected ideas from Simone de Beauvoir, Stuart Hall and Anne Fausto-Sterling to deepen the understanding of identity, representation, and the social construction of womanhood. Through close reading and textual analysis, this dissertation focuses on the experiences of Janie Crawford and Edna Pontellier as women whose identities are shaped by marriage, social norms, male authority and community expectations. At the same time, the study argues that the two protagonists do not remain passive within these patriarchal structures. Instead, they negotiate, resist and subvert the roles imposed on them in different ways and with different consequences. By analysing two novels from different racial contexts, the dissertation broadens the discussion of gender construction and shows how literary texts can unfold the complex relationship between identity, power, and patriarchal social expectation.