Problematization of the Conventional Gender Role in Truman Capote's The Breakfast at Tiffany

Abstract

The major thrust of this research is to trace the distinct brand of being a woman who flatly challenges traditional role and responsibility assigned by patriarchy. In Truman Capote's The Breakfast at Tiffany, Golightly demonstrates subversive, nonconformist, creative and anomalous traits. Her assertion of being a different type of freedom-conscious lady, her choices, passions and pursuits for what bring her in conflict with the established gender role. Viewed from the theoretical trajectory of gender and its fluid notion mainly propounded by Judith Butler, the present researcher comes to a conclusive finding that the traditional gender role is a problem in the development of a woman's free spirit. Golightly pursues her passions and embarks on her own subjective world. Her activities and choices are anomalous to the established mores concerning the role and position of women. The rejection of traditional role and hatred to the confining ideology of patriarchy compels Golightly think independently of existing parameter of being a normal lady of her time. Golightly's expression of gender renders her illegible within her social milieu. In her opinion, the idea of being a woman exists only as sociocultural constructions and not as the property of persons. Indeed, they are no more than a set of assumptions which people hold about each other and themselves in certain contexts. Gender is an ideology people use in modern societies.

Key Words: subversion, gender, parameter, tradition, freedom, milieu, stereotype, ideology