Redrawing the naturalized boundaries in Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach

Abstract

Ian McEwan's novel On Chesil Beach, explores, the tension inherent in human sex, sexuality and gender identity. It not only measures the effect of cataclysmic moment in personal lives but also points to women's new identity formed by their own capacity by subverting the male imposed identity. Florence who is the victim of male supremacy, later proposing her husband to live sexless life, attempts to form her own identity herself and denaturalizes the heterosexual, patriarchal norms and values. Her father's inhuman attempt to rape her and her husband's practice to control her feelings even in their honeymoon night are the extremes of male's thinking about women as mere sex-object. Her inclination to her career, and readiness to be separate from her husband and willingness to live with her mother shows as Judith Butler refers by these words: 'denaturalization,' 'resignification' and the 'practice of parody' in Gender Trouble.