Excellent job, Sarah. You've got an original and creative thesis. And you're right, silence is considered a disempowering thing in our culture, even though most communication is nonverbal.
Some questions:
Just as viewing Porter's work through a postmodern lens 50 years later can be distorting, so too can viewing her work through an eastern lens. And that's totally fine. But are you also meeting the story on its own terms, in other words, taking into account the social mores of the time that it was written? Not sure exactly how you'd do that, but perhaps you could look to see if Porter was influenced by eastern philosophy in any way, perhaps in her letters.
Not sure if this plays into your thesis, but along those lines, Porter spent some time in Mexico and in Europe. Did silence have a different meaning in those cultures? And did that influence her in these stories?
Do you think that Porter's experience with an abusive husband--at a time when women didn't have much agency in that regard--influence her usage of silence as a powerful device in her stories?
What would Porter's characters have to gain by sublimating their egos? How does this provide agency in "Holiday"?
Hope those questions help and aren't too far afield from your thesis. Great topic. I think it will be a very interesting paper.
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Haha, well, you've pretty much articulated all the things I've been anxious about, but was sort of hoping no one would point out:) No, I don't think it likely that Porter was remotely influenced by Eastern philosophy-at least I don't have any research that suggests that that was the case. Unfortunately, though, there is a remarkable lack of scholarship on this topic--a silence, if you'll excuse the pun. I think it will probably come down to making a critical choice about the aesthetics of paper, but you're absolutely right about making sure I don't skew the my reading by assuming that Porter's intentions had anything to do with Eastern silence. I'll have to explicit that my thesis concerns what a reader can get out of the story if they choose to take advantage of an Eastern reading as one of many possible alternatives. Thanks for the feedback--I really appreciate it.
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