I have chosen to write my research paper on More Than This, a novel by Patrick Ness, published on September 5th, 2013. It is too new to be in the canon and it is based on the present day. This novel reviews many topics such as life after death, sexuality, and family. The main character Seth, commits suicide because of his depression after his family finds out he is gay and he wakes up in what it seems like his own personal hell. I read this when I was in high school and it had a big impact on how I see myself. I was questioning my sexuality around the time I read this and with finding out the main character was gay, it made it easy for me to relate to it and find a sort of underlying significance. It made me realize that I had never really read a book with a strong lead character that was not heterosexual. This really bothered me at the time because while I was growing up I didn’t have many options for representation and I feel like this is part of the reason it took me so long to come to terms with my sexual orientation.

I would like to work on this for my research paper because I find it interesting that while Seth’s sexuality is an important aspect of his life, it isn’t the focal point of the story. I would like to analyze why it is so important for queer youth to have natural LGBT characters portrayed in fiction, society, and everyday life. Since this book is not a part of the canon and is fairly new, I would have to find other scholarly sources relating to LGBT representation in the media. While looking at these resources I have found multiple different positive outcomes of representation ranging from acceptance, exploring your sexuality, and having some type of an escape from reality.

In “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” the knight is told by the hag that he must choose whether he would like her to be an old, true, and humble wife or have her young and fair. He responds in lines 1232-1235 with, “…’Cheseth youreself which may be moost plesance And moost honour to yow and me also. I do no fors the wheither of the two, For as yow liketh, it suffiseth me’ “. Was the knight’s decision influenced by what the hag had said earlier about wives wanting to be in control of their marriages or does he simply give that answer because he believes it is the right thing to do?

In “The Wife of Bath”, Geoffrey Chaucer succeeds in expressing the Wife’s unique viewpoint on marriage in that time period. For example, starting at line 154, the Wife states that “An housbonde wol I have, I wold not lette, Which shall be both my dettour and my thral, And have his tribulacioun withal Upon his flessh whil that I am his wif.” How does the author use this sentence to establish the Wife’s authority in her marriages? Does her usage of sexual power in the relationships portray a longing for control over the men in her life or is she simply afraid of getting taken advantage of?