A Revision of Family and Domesticity in Michael Cunningham's A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, and The Hours

by Struck, Tracy Joy

Primarily through the experiences of his gay protagonists, Michael Cunningham critiques the heteronormative nuclear family structure of the 1950s and depicts alternatives to it. Drawing on the work of feminist critics who focus on the political intent of American women authors during the nineteenth century, the findings of family historians who examine families of the 1950s, and the work of anthropologist Kath Weston, I argue that Michael Cunningham represents domesticity in ways that promote readers' appreciation of and support for alternative family models.