Inside/outside: Framing Katherine Anne Porter's creative tensions

This dissertation explores parallels between Katherine Anne Porter's life and fiction in the tensions between conventions and individuals, appearances and identity. The concept of the "gaze" from feminist film theory is used to analyze both Porter's and her characters' sense of their image and how they attempt to manipulate the ways they are perceived. A particular focus of the complexity of these relationships can be seen in Porter's uneasiness with home, never a comfortable place in her fiction, and a difficult issue throughout her life. Rather than retreating from these unresolved tensions, however, Porter embraces them as a resource for the struggles of her characters, a narrative technique, and ultimately as the final document of her life, the McKeldin Library's repository of her papers and belongings in the Katherine Anne Porter Room.