Witnessing Sadism in Texts of the American South - Women, Specularity, and the Poetics of Subjectivity

Looking at works by Carrie Mae Weems, Toni Morrison, Emily Dickinson, Flannery O'Connor, Dorothy Allison, Carson McCullers and Zora Neale Hurston, Raymond uncovers a pattern of femininity constructed around representations of sadistic violence in American women's literature and photography.