ABSTRACT
Pauline reads the mysterious young woman Fleur first from the standpoint of an integrated Chippewa and next as an Indian woman marginalized in the German-American culture. The German-American woman Fritzie, who works alongside Fleur cutting up the animals, resists to some degree at least the German-American construction of Fleur as Squaw. In "Fleur," Pauline's readings of Chippewa culture and of German-American culture are the keys to her own behavior: her strategies for survival in the white town of Argus and her resistance to both Indian and white male constructions of Woman. Gender is addressed in other ways by Pauline, who continues to transform her earlier fearful responses to Fleur as Other into admiration of her as a forceful woman who defies gender constructions. In narrating the story, Pauline celebrates Fleur as a powerful Chippewa woman, in spite of the material reality of Fleur's gang-rape and in violation of both Indian and white expectations of women.
