Powder Bluw by Harrison Stuart

I want to love a Girl The way I did when I first discovered them: With flower crowns and blankets over shoulders, The alcoholic scent of polish being removed. She unravels my hair, deft Deaf to my best attempts to stay braided.

But I love a girl In that I do until I don’t. I reject her like an organ When the fever gets too high And strip the bed As soon as she leaves.

I want to love a Boy The way Liepke paints them: Hands travelling over the valleys of a ribcage, My own curls tangled with his. When he lays his head in my lap, I am as much for him as he is for me.

But I love a boy In that Dorian way: With the ugly in the attic And both of you under the sheets— It's almost better than the real thing.

But if I am honest I would just as gladly take your hand in mine And call it a day. And if I am honest, Walking on glass doesn’t hurt anymore Since I started taking my coffee with cream.

Written by Harrison Stuart Illustrated by Audra Crago

Around twelve he slipped into the boardwalk diner; a cheap little place that reeked of nineties sensibilities. He’d had too many beers to pass for sober, but too few to really be drunk. His belly was warm. His vision spun softly when he looked in one spot for too long. Sinking into the booth was relaxing, the pleather cracked but soft enough, a comfortable spot to bask in his faint boozy glow. The greasy smell of burgers cooking reminded him that he was hungry. He decided he’d order a meal as soon as he could convince himself to stand up.

She was sitting at a booth in the other corner of the diner, looking at her phone, eating french fries one by one. Absent-mindedly, he stared at her dark hair and her collarbones. He watched her dip a fry into yellow mustard and put it in her mouth. Red lips. She was alone. He was alone too. Before his eyes could drift further, she stood up a little stiffer, and stared back at him. She was still holding a french fry. He didn’t expect to talk to her. It happened before he paused to think. —French fries and mustard? Is that a thing? She paused for a second and looked at the fry in her hand. He held his breath, until he heard a laugh. —I don’t like ketchup! He smiled back at her, paused for a moment. His legs didn’t move. Then they did, and he sat across from her. She was still smiling, but less so. He wanted her to smile. —How has your night been? He hated the question as soon as he asked it. It seemed so lazy and typical. She answered it anyway. —My friend got too drunk too early, so I had to take her home before she did something dumb. Didn’t really want to go back to the club, so I figured I would eat something and head home. What about your night? She ate another french fry, and he tried not to watch too closely. —I didn’t feel like dancing anymore, and I got kind of sick of my friends, so I pulled an Irish exit. I’m hungry. I came here. Sometimes, you just need a burger, you know?

It felt stupid when he said it. She tilted her head and bent her lips into a soft, sympathetic frown. —Friends giving you a hard time? That sucks. He laughed but didn’t mean it. —It’s nothing. It’s just kind of like that sometimes. She glanced back to her phone for a second, then they made eye contact again. Her eyes were powder blue. He knew he would remember that. —Hey, I’m gonna order some food. Don’t run off on me? Again, the words didn’t feel right. Too possessive. He worried possessive meant threatening, and imagined himself as a creepy, predatory character he didn’t want to be. But she still smiled as he hauled himself to his feet and walked to the counter. Ordering his food, the decision not to look back at her was tangible. He told himself that he wasn’t going to do it and he didn’t. She glanced up from her phone and watched him sit back down across from her, clutching a paper cup full of cola. —What’s your name, anyway? His heart jumped a little. He sipped the drink to buy himself a moment. —Benjy. —Benjy? Not just Ben? —It’s what my family used to call me. My friends caught on. I guess it never went

away.

He closed his eyes for a second and shrugged, then continued. —It’s grown on me. I don’t like it when people call me Benjamin, or Ben. That’s not me. I’m Benjy. She laughed a little. —It’s cute. —You never gave me your name, you know. —I’m Laura. This time, he smiled. He pinched the straw in his drink with his index and middle finger and took a sip. —That’s a really pretty name. —Thanks. She ate two more fries, and he sipped his cola. —Did your friend get home safe? She frowned a little. —Yeah. —You say that like it’s a bad thing. —It’s not—I mean, of course it’s not a bad thing—but it happens a lot, you know? It’s exhausting.

He paused for a moment, nervously. —Her getting too drunk? She nodded and he continued. —It’s good you’re around then. She sighed. —It burns me out. —You’re a good friend for doing it, though. She paused for a second, then spoke tentatively. —Why’d you ditch your friends tonight? —I guess, well, I didn’t really ditch them, we got separated, y’know. They went one direction, I went the other, figured it was probably time to head home. — Does that happen a lot? He reclined and looked away from her. —Yeah. While neither of them was looking at one another, he wondered what to say next. He wondered if she was thinking the same thing. But when he looked up again, she was on her phone. A flash of panic surprised him. He spoke without thinking. —You think technology is tearing us apart? Her brow furrowed. —What? He looked away and drummed his fingers on the table restlessly. —Y’know, like, ruining human interaction. It’s not good. We don’t really see one another anymore. Just through screens. Facebook. Tinder, TikTok, Twitter. It’s superficial. Feels kind of wrong.

He leaned back and nervously laughed to himself. She looked away, out of the booth, then back at him. —I guess? I don’t know. She ate her last french fry and stood up. He paused and swallowed. —Hey, can I get your number? It immediately hit him how odd that must sound, right after a tirade against technology. —Weren’t you just saying technology is dumb? —I mean, it is convenient. She smirked at him and held out her hand. He passed her his phone. Watching her input her number, the air seemed very stiff. He didn’t think he was doing this right. Something was missing, something genuine, and he tried to reach out for it. —Hey, it was nice to meet you. Thanks for giving me a chance. She tilted her head and bantered back. —Any reason I shouldn’t have? As soon as she said it, he wanted to be clever. He imagined himself spouting a slick

one-liner, leaning back a little, taking his phone and closing the interaction with a warm smile. —I mean, I am a wanted killer in like, four states. Don’t ask me where the bodies are! She grimaced and his gut sank. —That’s pretty tasteless. He felt a little dizzy but made his best attempt at a reassuring smile. —Don’t worry, I mean, I wouldn’t hurt you. She put his phone back on the table facedown and stammered something he didn’t quite catch. All he picked up on was his name—a hushed, unmistakable ‘Benjy’—and then she was walking out the door, gone. He didn’t try to say anything because he didn’t think there was anything to say. Her number was only half-typed out and he erased it immediately. The back of his neck crawled. Somebody brought him his food. He stared at it. Was he still hungry? He felt nauseous. The greasy burger didn’t smell too good anymore. He dipped a french fry in a dollop of ketchup and didn’t bother to eat it. Over the better part of twenty minutes, he dragged himself through half of his burger and a few fries, dumping the rest in the trash. After that, he moved to another booth and laid down on his back, staring at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. When he flicked his eyes away from them, the purple impressions on his vision slid across the white popcorn ceiling. He kept doing this, staring at the lights, watching the impressions slide, actively thinking about not thinking about every moment of his talk with Laura. He wondered how long it would be before he forgot that name. Two weeks? Two years? Leaving the diner was automatic. He found himself outside on the boardwalk by the water. People walked by but he kept his eyes to himself. Staring past the railing, he looked at the beach. A moment passed and he hauled himself up onto the railing, feet dangling off the edge, safely, only a meter or so above the ground. He wouldn’t risk hurting himself. It was too dark to see the ocean beyond the sand, but he could hear the water, smell the sea air. A few minutes passed. The smell of tobacco smoke drifted by. It occurred to him that this would be a great moment to smoke a cigarette. It would look very cool. Rejected, listening to the water, out in the dark, back to all the passersby. A man on the edge. But he didn’t smoke cigarettes. If he did smoke one now, chances are he would have a coughing fit, and that wouldn’t be very cool at all. For some reason, that thought cheered him up just a little. It was a funny idea, trying to look cool and hacking up a lung. He swung his feet around back onto the boardwalk and spotted the smokers across the street. There were five or six of them, chatting outside of a dingy bar. He wondered what they were talking about. He was surprised by how much he cared. Sitting down on a bench, he watched the smokers file back inside, and stared through the windows into the bar. There were people in there, he mused. Most of them were drunk. Embarrassing themselves. Students stumbled in and out of the front doors, walking, talking, laughing. A tall boy ordered two beers, passing one to a girl who fixed her hair and smiled before taking it.

RETURN OF THE GAZE

in George Egerton’s “Now Spring Has Come”

Written by Emery Stayzer Illustrated by Karen Au

The Aestheticism movement of the nineteenth century emphasized pleasure and experience. However, it also perpetuated a gendered hierarchy between the spheres of men and women: men dominated the public while women faced confinement within the domestic. Male artists and flâneurs had the privilege of observing and “prescribing aesthetic value” to places, things, and people (Cameron 1). This aesthetic value became evident in representations of the ideal feminine muse, leading to the viewer vs. viewed dynamic, and relegating women to the position of passive muse for male observance. In her text “Now Spring Has Come”, George Egerton explores this dynamic through the perspective of an anonymous female protagonist who returns the narrative-framing gaze, engaging with desire and sexuality in a society defined by male experience. Drawing upon Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze to analyze this text, I argue that Egerton’s speaker returns the gendered gaze and reclaims her agency as an active participant in the narrative. The speaker gazes back at the anonymous male character in protest of his scopophilic view of her, utilizing a scopophilic viewpoint of her own to reclaim her agency. She does so as a means of solidifying her active role in the narrative, despite his efforts to relegate her as passive. Similar to the New Woman archetype, who “refused to be contained by their culturally assigned gender roles,” the protagonist reverses both gender roles and the gaze as she actively seeks out her male suitor (Nelson 9). As the discovery of the male character’s novel is what motivates the speaker’s attraction to him, she returns the gaze traditionally placed upon the idealized female muse by male artists. Instead, the artistic medium of the novel facilitates the placement of the male character as passive muse for the female speaker’s observance. Finally, the anonymous female protagonist rejects the gaze of the impressionistic male artist who finds power in observing the female muse, by controlling representations of herself and her body.

She achieves this through the fragmentation and detailed descriptions of her suitor’s body as well as her own, challenging “assumptions about who is the viewer and who is the viewed” (Henderson 206). Thus, Egerton’s protagonist in “Now Spring Has Come” returns the gaze of her male suitor and refutes her position as passive object for a man’s viewing pleasure. Egerton’s protagonist returns the gaze of the male character by engaging in scopophilia. Mulvey defines scopophilia as “the erotic basis for pleasure in looking at another person as an object…it can become fixated into a perversion, producing obsessive voyeurs” (1957). The voyeuristic perspective produced by scopophilia reinforces the male gaze as it allows male subjects to look at women as sexual objects for their viewing pleasure. As the speaker in “Now Spring Has Come” reverses the gendered power dynamic perpetuated by the male gaze, she becomes the viewer instead of the viewed and reclaims her agency. By reversing the scopophilic viewpoint she objectifies the man’s body, restricting his ability to do the same to her. Upon their first meeting the speaker says, “The door opens, and I am satisfied. In the space of second’s gaze I meet what my soul has been waiting for” (Egerton 25). In this quotation, it is evident that the speaker becomes the voyeur as she looks at her male suitor as an object for her viewing pleasure. She explains that she is “satisfied” with his appearance, illustrating her sexual desire and agency as she makes judgements about his body. In contrast to the gendered divisions of the Victorian period, it is the woman who prescribes aesthetic value in this situation, instead of the man. Her engagement with scopophilia is also evident when she says, “I look into his soul through his eyes and…his soul comes to me as I would have it come to me” (28). The speaker not only owns the gaze but also expresses her control over how the man’s soul presents itself to her. She further objectifies him as she looks beyond the surface of his appearance and into his soul, highlighting her ownership of the gaze. In demonstrating her refusal to be passive, the protagonist takes possession of the gaze and secures an active role in their relationship. Egerton’s speaker also initiates the return of the gaze by actively seeking out the male character. After reading his novel, the speaker says, “I was consumed with a desire to see and know the author…I have a will of my own, so I set to work to find him” (Egerton 23). Her word choice demonstrates the active role she plays in the narrative as she works to get in contact with the man, as well as her sexual desire towards him. The protagonist’s willful assertion highlights her agency and refusal of passivity. Mulvey explains that the male gaze creates “a world ordered by sexual imbalance, [in which] the pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female” (1959). In other words, the male gaze portrays women as passive objects for male pleasure. . However, this is not the case for Egerton’s protagonist. Instead, she initiates contact with the male character and positions him as her muse, as his writing inspires her on an emotional level and facilitates her attraction. When she finds his novel in the bookstore, the owner cautions her against reading it, as “it is a very bad book…

one of the modern realistic school, a tendenz roman” (Egerton 23). Despite the disapproval she receives from the bookseller, the speaker makes her own choice without consulting a chaperone, rebelling against decorum expected of women in this period (Allen 256). In doing so, she projects her gaze onto the male character and solidifies her role as an active participant in the narrative. The speaker obtains agency in returning the gaze of the male character due to her “self-reliance and power of initiation” (Winchester 176). By actively seeking him out, the narrator reverses the male gaze onto her suitor and confirms her authority in the power dynamic of their relationship. Furthermore, the protagonist controls representations of her physical appearance as she returns the gaze through a process of bodily fragmentation. The male gaze results in a level of voyeuristic control that leads to fragmentation of the female body (Mulvey 1958). In this text, the speaker directs voyeuristic control and fragmentation towards the male character, challenging the dynamic of man as viewer and women as viewed. She describes his body in segments: “His hands, for instance, are great labourer’s hands, freckled too; I don’t like his gait either, indeed a dozen things…a great joyous boyish laugh with a deep musical note in it. He has a deferential manner and a very caressing smile; a trick, too, of throwing back his head and tossing his crest of hair” (Egerton 25-6). By fragmenting his body, the speaker reflects the male gaze back onto her suitor. She asserts her dominant gaze by discussing his body based on her subjective view, eroticizing the elements she likes and condemning those she does not. Additionally, by pointing out the parts of his body that she does not like, the speaker establishes her ability to prescribe his body with aesthetic value. As expressed in the introduction of this paper, prescribing aesthetic value was a privilege typically wielded by men within this period. However, in this text, the speaker has “been herself expanding” instead of submitting to the male gaze, drawing parallels with the New Woman archetype (Ouida 155). In constructing him based on her subjective view, Egerton’s protagonist positions herself as the viewer who inflicts her gaze upon the male character and designates him as passive muse for female viewing pleasure. As the speaker controls representations of her own character, she rejects the impressionistic gaze of the male artist and objectification from the male gaze as a whole. For instance, before departing on the steamer the speaker states, “Would I give him a portrait of myself? Yes, I would get one specially done” (Egerton 27). This quotation illustrates that the speaker holds the power in determining the artistic representation of her body. She is in control. By expressing that she “would get one specially done,” (27) the speaker also suggests that she will not allow the male character to create an image of her from his subjective view. She will provide him with a portrait based on her own self-construction, dissolving his power to objectify her. The artist’s lack of control in this situation disrupts his ability to subordinate the muse, as well as his projection of meaning onto her body (Henderson 202).

The speaker achieves a reversal of power and return of the gaze by eliminating the man’s confinement of her as a passive object. The giving of a portrait also suggests a level of voyeurism, as the image looks back at the viewer from the canvas. As Mulvey explains, the male gaze is comprised of a division of labour, where women are defined by their “to-belooked-at-ness,” and men are the bearers of the gaze (1959). In Egerton’s text, the speaker reverses this division of labour by looking back at the man from her portrait. That is to say, although the speaker provides her suitor with the portrait so that he can look at her, she returns his gaze by controlling the depiction of her body in the portrait. She also returns the gaze as her image looks back at the man from within the frame. By controlling the artistic representation of her body and gazing back at the male character both literally and figuratively, the speaker asserts her agency. She also maintains control of her representation as she refuses to internalize the male character’s attempts to relegate her as passive. After he comments on her thin body, pale face, and lack of “buoyant childishness that was so attractive,” the speaker analyzes him in return: “I wanted to sift this thing thoroughly to get clear into my head what ground I was standing on. So I let him [kiss me]. They were merely lip kisses; his spirit did not come to mine, and I was simply analysing them” (31). As she returns his analytical gaze, the protagonist externalizes her agency and refuses to accept belittlement from the male character. The speaker’s resistance in this exemplar is similar to that of the New Woman, who believes that “man merely made himself a nuisance with his opinion and advice” (Ouida 154). The protagonist is once again the viewer as she looks back at the man and critiques him, maintaining agency over her own representation. The female protagonist achieves additional control over her representation as she retrospectively critiques her own body, rejecting the male gaze and turning it back upon her suitor. As she is waiting to meet him for the first time, she says “I wait with an odd feeling that I am outside myself, watching myself as it were. I can see the very childishness of my figure, the too slight hips and bust, the flash of rings on my fingers” (Egerton 25). Through the critique of her body, the speaker reclaims her agency as she eliminates the man’s power to eroticize her body. She describes herself as “childish” and lacking curves, which differs from the ideal impressionistic muse that the male gaze imparts on its subjects. The speaker also maintains her level of power as retrospection allows her to critique her body from her own perspective, as well as from the perspective of men (Henderson 206). The text demonstrates this when the protagonist says she “tried to fancy how he saw me” (Egerton 26). As she examines herself from both perspectives, the speaker understands her body as more than a sexualized object that is passive for male pleasure. In reference to the New Woman, Boyd Winchester writes that a “man loves only what pleases him,” (178) suggesting that the goal of the protagonist aligns with those of the New Woman: sexual and bodily freedom outside of the domestic sphere. To rephrase, the speaker critiques her body in a way that removes