“Into the Sensual World”: Gender Subversion in the Work of Kate Bush

Abstract

Kate Bush remains one of the most successful and original British female music artists and is often perceived as a female pioneer. This thesis analyses a selection of her earlier work in order to establish how she represents issues of gender and sexuality in her lyrics and performances. Her work is evaluated through the lens of two feminist theories: écriture feminine and gender performativity. Écriture féminine is employed to determine how Bush writes and reclaims female sexuality, while gender performativity subsequently shows how she transcends her position as a woman by taking on and representing characters of the opposite gender. This thesis argues that Bush constructs narratives in her lyrics to represent experiences which transcend the boundaries of binary gender and challenge social sexual norms. Keywords: Kate Bush, gender performativity, écriture féminine, song lyrics, popular music studies