Gender Subversions and Identity in Saul Bellow’s Short Fiction: A Comparative Study of Three Stories

Abstract

This article investigates Saul Bellow’s complex portrayal of gender identity and nonconformity across three of his most evocative short narratives: “Leaving the Yellow House,” “The Old System,” and The Bellarosa Connection. Situating these works within the cultural and intellectual transformations of postwar America, the study explores how Bellow constructs characters who resist or complicate conventional gender binaries. Female figures such as Hattie Waggoner, Tina, and Sorella Fonstein perform traditionally masculine traits—emotional restraint, moral leadership, financial control—while male characters like Harry Fonstein challenge hegemonic masculinity through their passivity, introspection, or ethical withdrawal. Through close textual analysis and grounded in the theoretical frameworks of Judith Butler’s gender performativity, R.W. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity, and Stuart Hall’s model of diasporic identity, the article traces how these gender dynamics intersect with questions of memory, trauma, and cultural inheritance. These characters are not merely literary experiments but are rendered as ethical agents whose gender performances speak to broader concerns of marginalization, displacement, and narrative power.  The study further argues that Bellow’s narrative strategies—particularly his use of fragmented memory, apostrophic voice, and mediated narration—serve to highlight the instability of identity and the performative nature of both gender and voice. By placing Bellow in conversation with contemporaries such as Roth, Baldwin, and Plath, the article situates his work within a broader dialogue on gender, ethics, and literary form. Ultimately, the article contends that gender nonconformity in Bellow’s fiction is not a secondary feature but a central narrative force—one that reflects the tensions of Jewish-American experience while inviting a deeper ethical engagement with the politics of voice, power, and resistance.