Sexual Identity In Patricia Highsmith's 'The Price Of Salt Or Carol'

Patricia Highsmith 's The Price of Salt or Carol (1952) is one of the novels which are considered as the remarkable lesbian literature in the 1950s with a powerful and hopeful ending during the period of negative social norms toward homosexual relationships. Undoubtedly, it can be seen that Highsmith explicitly expresses and indicates the relation between the social context and sexual identity of homosexuals through the story and the protagonists of her work. Thus, the researchers realize that social context has an exceeding impact on the identification of sexual identity for homosexuals. In this section, the researchers would like to review eight of the related researches which associate with sexual identity and social context toward the

It is debated about the relationship between gender, space, and public and private sphere. The writer describes that womanly sphere or natural is referred to the private sphere, while the masculine or civil is referred to the public sphere. Piper explains that in The Price of Salt, it is showed that Highsmith opposes both of the private and public spheres. She attempts to create the third sphere by using the theater or the performance as a metaphor to illustrate the relationship between gender and spheres. Piper also reveals that some of experts claim that identity is a part of “identification of places which involves spaces act as sites for the performance of identity” (1998: 105). Moreover, the writer explains that in Highsmith 's The Price of Salt, the theater is a space where Therese, the homosexual protagonist of the story, feels satisfied and comfortable with it which can be obviously seen though her