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Dorothy West's first novel, The Living Is Easy (1948), is easily identified as a "satiric picture of Boston's 'counterfeit bourgeoisie/ its black middle class," and as a novel that "indicts black society artificially modeled on false white values" (Rodgers 161).1 Indeed, the obvious major themes in the novel are racial denial and class elitism, topics that West knew well. The Living Is Easy is semi-autobiographical; West grew up in Boston in a middle-class family in the early 1900s, and several characters in the novel are based on real-life family members and acquaintances, primarily her mother and father as the fictionalized characters Cleo and Bart.
Critics have explored how The Living Is Easy represents and examines other important African American literary themes as well: the Great Black Migration, mother-daughter relationships, and relationships between sisters.2 But in focusing on the overt themes of West's novel, some critics have overlooked a somewhat hidden discourse, the feminism of the novel: West's complex portrayal of Cleo, who, along with her racial denial and class elitism, is angry and frustrated over the limitations and restrictions on women's lives.3 In fact, West herself commented to Lynn Karpen on the often overlooked feminist dimension of her novel: "You see, no one knew what to make of my heroine, because the word 'feminist' had hardly been invented yet" (11). Through the character of Cleo, West offers a critique of the American patriarchal society with its long-established dichotomy: an unlimited public/business sphere for men and a limited private/domestic sphere for women. West subversively pursues this feminist critique by allowing her female protagonist deliberately to cast off limiting feminine gender traits (passivity, domestic interests, and cooperation) and to instead "perform" masculine gender traits (aggressiveness, competitiveness, and business/economic interests).4 By closely analyzing the text with regard to performative gender roles, one discovers that, although West does employ and explore several familiar themes and plot devices-marriage, the domestic sphere, and the community of women-it is her unique representation of Cleo that significantly changes these positive configurations into negative ones.
In addition to these themes and plot devices, through West's examination of gender, she refigures another literary convention: the tragic heroine. As critics point out, Cleo is a "tragic black heroine" because of her racial denial in the pursuit...