美國詩人與小說家杜娜•邦恩斯雖然在她大多數的作品中描述了不少同性情慾的情節，但卻在一生當中竭盡心力否認她的同性戀傾向。然而，她之所以會否認的原因不外乎是對於她自己的性生活採取含蓄的態度，並認為社會上所定義的「女同性戀」一詞其實有貶低女同性戀之意。杜娜·邦恩斯對性生活的含蓄反應可以在The Little Review雜誌所做的一項問卷「世界的藝術家」中看出。從杜娜•邦恩斯回應雜誌的反應中讀者可以看出她試著支持身分意識的存在是必要。杜娜•邦恩斯對「女同性戀」一詞反對的原因是她認為女同志受到社會上不平等的待遇，以及「女同性戀」一詞根本已被社會污名化了。在探討杜娜•邦恩斯對於女同性戀的標準定義時，我們也應該要以她所創作的小說與自傳作品做為衡量的標竿。此篇文章將會節錄其中一篇有名的同性戀小說「夜森林」(Nightwood)，並以現代主義的理論來解析閱讀。此外，本篇文章也會以心理學的角度來探討女同性戀小說中的母女關係。
Djuna Barnes, the American poet and novelist, did everything in her power to deny her lesbian inclination even though she illustrated same-sex love in her novels. Her denial of accepting lesbianism shows not only a reticence with regards to her sexual life, but also her issues with the negatives associated with lesbianism. The former revealed on Barnes's reply to a questionnaire sent by The Little Review to 'the artists of the world.' The latter implied Barnes' awareness of the unequal treatment of female homosexuals, and the social connotations attached to 'lesbian.' In probing the question of Barnes's paradigm of female homosexuality, it is necessary to contextualize Barnes's fictional and autobiographical works. This article will primarily focus on Barnes's heavily lesbian-textured novel Nightwood and position it within a gendered reading of modernism. In addition, the analysis of the mother-daughter relationship in psychoanalytic feminism will also be emphasised.
