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Oral History by Lee Smith5/12/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() From the first female voice in the novel to the last, the reader can detect Smith's progress toward and portrayal of female characters who are both mothers and sexually expressive, those who bridge what Rozsika Parker in Mother Love/Mother Hate (1995) calls the "cultural split maintained between the mother and the sexually desiring woman" (259-260). In fact, the Cantrell family curse, which is the impetus for the action of the novel, is based on the repudiation and exploitation of female sexuality. In Oral History, Smith shows how society's rejection and condemnation of openly sexual women, particularly older women, shapes the oral history of a particular geographical region. ![]() Choosing to center the novel on the healing presence of the sacred-sexual Dory Cantrell, Smith attributes mythic qualities not only to Dory but also to other women characters in the novel. Smith moves smoothly from one vantage point to another, providing the fabric to be pieced together by the reader in order to learn the past, present, and even future of the Cantrell family. ![]() Lee Smith's fifth novel, Oral History (1983), covers over a hundred-year time period and is told from thirteen different points of view: seven first person oral narratives and one first-person written narrative interspersed among four pieces told by third-person narrators, sometimes omniscient and sometimes limited to a single perspective. ![]()
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