This project examines the reconfiguration of myth, legend, and folklore to subvert cultural expectations of gendered performance in Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch.” Spivak’s desire for “making home uncanny” serves as a throughline for the project, guiding an exploration of the dual concepts of mother as first home and ultimate uncanny: both a point of origin and the point of departure (McComiskey 33). This exploration hinges on Kristeva’s notion of the maternal semiotic, considering Machado’s unnamed Narrator as a revisioning of the Gorgon Medusa, thus equating her eventual beheading with castration, a silencing of the female speaking subject. Drawing on the researcher’s own experience with motherhood and nonconsensual obstetric procedures, this project uses the dual perspectives of literary theory and creative writing to consider who is permitted to tell stories, how they tell them, and if they are to be believed.
Joella Cleary is an English and Professional Writing Studies major with a minor in Creative Writing. Born and raised in Yadkin County, North Carolina, she is a wife and mother of three children. Having previously attended Salem College as a traditional-aged student, she returned to complete her studies in Fall 2023. She plans to attend graduate school in the fall and will eventually pursue a PhD in Literature, with a concentration in Literary Theory.