Mobility, Place and Identity in Women's Road Narratives: A Spatial Analysis of Mona Simpson's 'Anywhere but Here' and Barbara Kingsolver's 'The Bean Trees'

Abstract

This thesis sets out to explore women's road narratives in terms of mobility, place and identity. Since the publication of Jack Kerouac's masterpiece On the Road, road narratives have been a recurring feature in American literature and culture. However, the female aspect of this genre remains under-explored. Literary works by and of women on the road are generally overlooked. The muteness of this genre does not seem to occur due to a lack of literary works, but rather due to a lack of accessibility as well as public and critical attention. My research will examine how the notion of class and upward mobility relate to the American tradition of traveling the road as it is presented in two central novels within this genre. The texts I will explore are Mona Simpson's Anywhere but Here and Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees. Both explore the intricacies of life on the road as well as the desire for a better life. Moreover, central to these novels is that traveling seems to occur while they are relocating from one place to another, rather than driving as a means of only exploring the American milieu and landscape. I am interested in the nexus between space and mobility. Specifically, how this relates to traveling the road as well as the dynamics of the local environment of place. Likewise, I will look at how identity and personal development are reshaped by their encounters during their travels on the road, as well as by their settlement into a new location and circumstance. Furthermore, I will explore how relocation functions as a catalyst for a journey of personal reinvention both materially and psychologically. However, these novels not only question the notion of upward mobility but also reveal the social dynamics that obstruct these characters from ascending socially and economically. Doreen Massey's contribution to social geography and especially space and spatiality rewrites our understanding of space and place as homogenous and static localities. Drawing on Massey's definition of space as "interrelations", "multiplicity" and always "under construction", I will focus on the complexity of social dynamics on a macro scale as well as the micro scale of social interactions. Additionally, since these novels are not restrained by the traditional road trip structure of departure – adventure – return, these novels are not either bound by the prospect of "the return". Hence, these narratives are able to explore the future of these characters as open and under construction. This enables the characters in Anywhere but Here and The Bean Trees to engage with the dynamic spaces they explore during their travels, as well the embedded social structures of the places in which they eventually seek to position themselves. Even though these novels deal with these issues differently, these texts can be considered as potent critiques of the notion of relocation as an easy and unproblematic means of achieving upward mobility.