A Young Adult Female Kunstlerroman: Paul Marshall’s Dancing Diva, From Utopian Americanism to Dystopian Realism
Keywords:
Dystopia, Utopia, Kunstlerroman, Young Adult, Feminism, IdentityAbstract
This study aims to investigate how a utopian environment is presented to a naive young adult in Young Adult fiction in Paul Marshall's Brown Girl Brownstones; wherein the coming-of-age utopian narrative is appropriated with dystopia. Against this backdrop, Paul Marshall's protagonist struggles with an ambivalent hybrid sensibility in recognizing and comprehending foreign and native landscapes and people. Since the teen genre is a creation of the final decade of the 20th century, it is initially required to consider a few of the contemporary notions of utopian and dystopian literature. The difference between dystopian and anti-utopian, which are frequently used interchangeably. Utopia aims to evolve, and it negates the idea of subjugation and acknowledges the notion but highlights that people tend to dream. Therefore, utopianism can be seen at its base as the outcome of the basic human tendency to fantasize while awake and asleep as witnessed in Paul Marshall’s Kunstlerroman, Brown Girl Brownstones. Salina's unwillingness to acknowledge her prospective possibility as a wife and mother is juxtaposed against her inability to find a self-identify as a dancer, indicating that woman and artist constitute separate personalities that are completely contradictory. Because of this, Marshall's usage of the Kunstlerroman explores the difficulties faced by female artists in accepting and inhabiting their artistic selves.
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