‘A Rebel with a Cause’: The Real Subversive Potential of Transgressive Fiction
“In olden days a glimpse of stocking / Was looked on as something shocking. / Now, heaven knows, Anything goes.” This epigraph begins Chris Jenks’ 2003 work Transgression, exemplifying the sense in which acts of transgression can have real, tangible, palpable effects on society. Jenks defines “transgression” as violating, infringing upon, or going beyond the limits set by a boundary or convention (2). Transgressive fiction, then, is the genre of literature that depicts various acts of boundary-crossing in order to analyze and criticize them for the purpose of reflecting upon the ideological constructions that its characters react against or wholly reject.