“That’s Purely Greek”: Ethnicity and Gender in Ariadne Thompson’s The Octagonal Hearti

Abstract

The Octagonal Heart (1956) depicts Ariadne Thompson’s memories of the happy summers she spent as a child with her extended family in the octagonal house, Parnassus, a private residence near St. Louis, USA. A strong sense of Greekness permeates the intertwining layers of the memoir, the physical one (the house with its Greek-style decorated rooms arranged in an octagonal shape and its surroundings) and the emotional one (which captures the relationships among the family members and their reactions to significant moments in their lives). This essay proposes a close reading of the memoir with a view to examining how gender, ethnic expectations, and attitudes towards assimilation have impacted the hyphenated identities of three generations of women in Thompson’s family.

Keywords

• ariadne thompson
• ethnicity
• gender roles and expectations
• acculturation
• memoir
• first- and second-generation greek americans