ABSTRACT
Drawing on John C. Meyer, Matthew Ramsey, and Thomas Veatch, this chapter argues that Willis uses comedy and perceptual incongruities in her short fiction (especially “Blued Moon,” “Spice Pogrom,” “Even the Queen,” and Inside Job) to provoke discomfort with and challenge societal norms (particularly feminine gender norms), as well as to advance a case for what Willis sees as the most important elements of the human experience: friendship, love, and self-determination. Her humorous fiction critiques the idea that comedy is less real than tragedy. However, because humor (as defined by Veatch and others) relies on a perspective by incongruity, that double-vision makes humor a difficult rhetorical tool to control: the humor that brings some audiences together does so by alienating others, and by pitting “normal” against “not-normal,” humor always runs the risk that even critiques of the status quo will end by reinforcing that norm. This is particularly true for comedy, because even as the requisite happy ending unites the deserving characters, it expels those the narrative deems undeserving. Even as Willis argues for a more expansive worldview, the humor and happy ending inherent in the comedy genre create opportunities for readers to take away a contracted one.
