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Cultural Criticisms Within Thomas Hardy's Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Holly Rose Litwin
Cultural Criticisms Within Thomas Hardy's Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Holly Rose Litwin
ETD Archive
To understand fully Thomas Hardy’s cultural criticisms within his 1891 novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles, one must look simultaneously at the full range of these cultural criticisms. The novel is a scathing condemnation of capitalism, Victorian beliefs about women, church doctrine, the shortcomings of the educational and judicial systems, and the destructive forces that industrialization and mechanization bring to the natural world in rural agrarian England. Within the past twenty years, scholars have explicated this text in ever-more specific, detailed, and narrow areas of focus, often coming up with fascinating and meticulously researched individual topics. However, I believe that …
Fe/Male Mother Of Two: Gender And Motherhood In Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin, Amy B. Smialek
Fe/Male Mother Of Two: Gender And Motherhood In Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin, Amy B. Smialek
ETD Archive
There are critical reviews regarding Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin that discuss many controversial topics in the novel. Of these reviews, most critics limit their arguments to the taboo topics of American school shootings and Eva’s character as an ostensibly ambivalent mother. Unfortunately, there is little academic criticism on Shriver’s most recognized novel and, among such analyses, two of Shriver’s most crucial depictions are overlooked. Firstly, readers must acknowledge the impact that contemporary American society has on females and mothers. This novel shows how much a culture relies on societal “rules” that govern human expectations. Secondly, Shriver’s …
The Black Death And Giovanni Bocaccio's The Decameron's Portrayal Of Merchant Mentality, Rachel D. Rickel
The Black Death And Giovanni Bocaccio's The Decameron's Portrayal Of Merchant Mentality, Rachel D. Rickel
ETD Archive
Giovanni Boccaccio was a contemporary witness to the effects of the Black Death pandemic, the Yersinia pestis bacterial pandemic in Europe between the years 1346-53, causing 75 million to 200 million deaths across the continent alone. In The Decameron, Boccaccio depicts the outbreak’s high-mortality rates and how that was a catalyst for many social and cultural changes within fourteenth-century Europe. He also goes on to portray the devastating effects of death on, not only the physical bodies of people and animals, but also on their mental, emotional, and spiritual states, and how this accelerated their acceptance of the rising …