A Young Adult Female Kunstlerroman: Paul Marshall’s Dancing Diva, From Utopian Americanism to Dystopian Realism

Abstract

This study aims to investigate how a utopian environment is offered to a young adult in Paul Marshall's Brown Girl Brownstones; wherein the coming-of-age utopian narrative is appropriated with dystopia. However, the protagonist struggles in recognizing and comprehending foreign and native landscapes and people. Utopia negates the idea of subjugation acknowledging people’s dreams. Salina's unwillingness to embrace her prospective possibility as a wife and mother is juxtaposed against her inability to find a self-identify as a dancer, indicating that woman and artist constitute separate personalities that are completely contradictory. Marshall's usage of the Kunstlerroman explores the difficulties of female artists in accepting and inhabiting their artistic selves. In a Bildungsroman, the protagonist resolves to be an ordinary citizen and the early years are taken into consideration, while in a Kunstlerroman, i.e an "artist's novel," the protagonist disapproves of regular life and presents the main character's entire life.