Year of Award
2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Type
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Degree Name
Creative Writing (Poetry)
Department or School/College
English
Committee Chair
Sean Hill
Committee Co-chair
Chris Dombrowski
Keywords
sexuality, violence, family, patriarchy, Christianity
Publisher
University of Montana
Subject Categories
Poetry
Abstract
A rerouting of gendered power, Sexual Whatever unleashes femininity repressed in America’s nuclear families. This collection of narrative poetry puts pressure on patriarchal traditions of Christianity through persona, Madonna—a radical culmination of the Madonna-Whore Complex—resisting systemic domination of female sexuality in both public and private spaces. While Madonna dismantles the patriarchy, she investigates the mechanisms of domestic violence, emotional manipulation, the very value of a proper Christian woman.
This book dares to demean female characters through love, sex, and family, while still giving voice to abusers, creating webs of confusion around the many definitions of domestic violence. More characters question their place in Christian society, often entertaining various gods and imagining different versions of Heaven, all a coping mechanism for the sorrowful truth of the female experience. Each poem interrogates whether there is room for the modern woman in Heaven, or if eternal paradise, too, is dominated by the male interest. Sexual Whatever does not only uncover Christian attempts to control femininity, but it exposes the violence couched in control that reveals itself in private spaces.
My hope for this collection of poems is for a reader to familiarize themselves with systemic violence that only continues to unravel and may it empower all people to set a boundary, then protect it. For every female character silenced, Madonna delivers another rageful response, another call for change—another naked protest in The Sistine Chapel—until her very screaming is replaced with echoes of femininity worthy of worship which lives within us all.
Recommended Citation
Tecmire, Madeline Rose, "Sexual Whatever" (2022). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 11962.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/11962
Included in
© Copyright 2022 Madeline Rose Tecmire