Queer couples in straight America: a study of representations of straight woman/gay man relationships in A home at the end of the world and Will & Grace

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to study the queerness of relationships between straight women and gay men in Michael Cunningham s novel A Home at the End of the World and in the TV sitcom Will & Grace. The intention is to analyze such relationships from the point-of-view of the main female characters Clare and Grace, respectively , comparing and contrasting the literary and televisual texts. The theoretical-methodological core of this thesis lies on the concepts of queer theory, based on which the characters and their relationships have been analyzed. However, as it establishes a dialog between a literary work and a TV show, a theoretical chapter on television theory has been added. While providing an overview of television theory, this chapter has also been really relevant in the discussion of Will & Grace. Through a deeper study of queer theory, one realizes that queerness, instead of a fixed identity, may be better understood as an attitude of resistance to heteropatriarchal social rules. Therefore, in spite of Grace s and Clare s conventional aspirations, they both act queerly in several situations, proving that queerness is a positionality which everyone may assume; even straight people