SOURCE: Aanerud, Rebecca. “Fictions of Whiteness: Speaking the Names of Whiteness in U.S. Literature.” In Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism, edited by Ruth Frankenberg, pp. 35-59. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Aanerud discusses the social, historical, and literary implications of “whiteness” in three works, including Kate Chopin's The Awakening.

One of the signs of our times is that we really don't know what “white” is.

—Kobena Mercer, in How Do I Look? Queer Film and Video

In our society dominant discourse tries never to speak its own name.

—Russell Ferguson, Out There: Marginality and Contemporary Art

Racializing Whiteness

The final lines of Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening unmistakably mark Edna as white: “The foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents about her ankles. She walked out. The water was chill, but she walked on...