False Pretenses: The Antisocial Hero

Abstract

By this point we’ve seen that “transgression” can mean many things. Speaking generally, these writers fail to fulfill the most basic expectations. Mary Gaitskill’s “Secretary” contains no violence or explicit sex, and discussions of the practice of spanking are too familiar to be shocking. Gaitskill addresses issues having to do with the treatment or mistreatment of women, but refuses to adopt a social tone, one that attempts to advocate for or advises women in general. Strangely, this outrage of the personal and subjective has an inherent kinship with the best-known transgressive novels, which deal — in purer Menippean fashion — with society as a whole.