I have chosen to close read The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang which is a graphic novel about Sebastian, who is the crown prince of Belgium by day and a fashion icon who puts on bold and glamorous dresses as the Lady Crystallia by night, and Frances, who is an aspiring dressmaker hoping to flourish as a professional designer. I am choosing to analyze this novel because it addresses a lot of themes and issues we have discussed in class such as identifications vs disidentifications, ambiguity, and the power of labels and it’s just a really well-written novel with beautiful graphics that just gives me sheer joy.
Since this novel deals with the issue of identity, I imagine that the intended audience for my close reading essay would be people who are still trying to figure out who they are and where they are supposed to belong in a world that puts everyone into a “box” and enforces the gender binary ideology onto every person. They would resonate with this novel, and hopefully my close-reading analysis of it, because they would be able to relate with the protagonist who has to grapple with his identity as the Prince and the expectations everyone has from him as a member of the royalty and his identity as someone who likes wearing daring dresses and becoming the icon of fashion in Paris. My close reading of not just the text but also the graphics would hopefully be important to my audience because they would be able to get a better understanding of what the scene might be implying in a broader sense and my interpretation of it can help them identify with the characters and the story more.
Some formally/generically similar texts I have discovered through research are a graphic novel called Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe and the song Queen Bitch by David Bowie. The Prince and the Dressmaker is a graphic novel about coming to terms with one’s identity and I think Gender Queer follows that similar convention. The novel is more specifically about someone who also has to put up a front to preserve his reputation and I think the song has that similar convention so both would appeal to the same audience.
I think that my object intersects/overlaps with class in these ways: ambiguity, identity, and queerness. When it comes to identity especially, I think I also want to talk about disidentification but I am not sure exactly how to approach disidentification because it’s a concept that I think I still need some clarification on.
Words Cited:
Bowie, David. Queen Bitch. Hunky Dory, 1971
Kobabe, Maia. Gender Queer: A Memoir. Oni Press, 2019
Wang, Jen. The Prince and the Dressmaker. First Second Books, 2018