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Shakespeare, Female Sexuality, And Consent, Bayley Goldsberry

BYU English Symposium

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to explore the study and analysis of women in Shakespeare, specifically regarding their autonomy, authority, and sexuality. This paper looks at a survey of several different female characters in Shakespeare’s works such as Measure for Measure, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, and Love’s Labour’s Lost in an attempt to understand the ways in which Shakespeare redefines our understanding of consent. This paper discusses women’s autonomy as power, women’s authority as independence from male expectations, and female sexuality as agency rather than as whoredom. Ultimately, this paper looks at consent …

Economic Relationships: An Exploration Of Margaret’S Relationships In Elizabeth Gaskell’S North And South, Erica L. Pratt

BYU English Symposium

Money has been said to be the root of evil, yet it forms a “necessary but uncertain feature” (Poovey 57) of a capitalist and consequently, modern society. With the rise of industrialization in Victorian England, the simultaneous abhorrence and dependency that characterized the middle-class Victorian perspective regarding money-making practices created complex moral, social, and economic codes of conduct.

Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel, North and South is particularly interesting because of the way in which it engages these complex ideas. As Gaskell’s main character, Margaret Hale, moves from the idyllic south of England to an industrial town in the North, she must …

From Parent To Child, Writer To Reader: Tracing Cultural Inheritance In Contemporary Black Memoir, Nicole Jacobsen

BYU English Symposium

Recent examples of black memoir include patterns of cultural inheritance. In an autobiographical extended essay written as if a letter to his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates quite clearly positions himself as both heir and father, passing on an inheritance through the writing of Between the World and Me. As she writes Ordinary Light in the wake of her mother’s death, Tracy K. Smith tackles the complex gifts and burdens left to her by her beloved parent. In Negroland, cultural critic Margo Jefferson reflects on a racial past whose rules and expectations were clearly laid out for her by her …

Vulnerable Monsters: A Comparison Of Shelley’S Frankenstein And O’Brien’S Rocky Horror, Olivia Moskot

BYU English Symposium

This paper studies Richard O'Brien's film The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) as an adaptation of Mary Shelley's gothic novel Frankenstein (1818), battling the academic and pop culture perception of the piece as a mere parody or castaway spoof. Through this paper, it is made evident that there are distinct thematic elements of Rocky Horror that establish it as a major conceptual adaptation of Frankenstein. First, the definition of adaptation is clearly established. Next, Shaun Soman’s research on Robert Stram’s “selection” and “amplification” as it applies to Frankenstein’s transformation into Rocky Horror is summarized and put into context. …

Native American Culture Through An Unconventional Feminist Lens, Alyssa Graff

BYU English Symposium

The feminist movement, though rarely analyzed through a Native American perspective, acts as a tool to modernize continuous cultural issues among indigenous people. Zitkala-Ša’s work, while it fits into this feminist framework, is rarely discussed among Native American scholars. Specifically regarding her American Indian Stories, Zitkala-Ša demonstrates the strength her feminine upbringing provides and the effect it has on her interaction with women on a national scale later in life. In this paper I draw the connection between Zitkala-Ša’s writing and the existing critical conversation around Native American feminism. Along with her autobiographical texts, Zitkala-Ša’s correspondence with women’s organizations in …

The Writing Between The Lines: The Effects Of Psychotherapy On Anne Sexton's "In Celebration Of My Uterus", Dalan Grundvig

BYU English Symposium

This essay discusses the effects of Anne Sexton’s therapy on her poem “In Celebration of My Uterus.” While therapy certainly influenced the major themes and style of Sexton’s poetry, a broad study of therapy’s influence on her works undermines the intimate way in which therapy shaped Sexton’s individual poems. In order to assist the student of Sexton’s poetry in appreciating the magnitude of therapy in shaping her individual works of poetry, this essay addresses “In Celebration of My Uterus.” It discusses the therapeutic self-expression which inspired her to write “In Celebration of My Uterus” and how her therapy aimed to …

“All That Was Important In Life”: Toward A Compassionate Anthropocene In Tracy K. Smith’S “Watershed”, Isaac B. Robertson

BYU English Symposium

In Tracy K. Smith’s “Watershed,” the Pulitzer-prize winner and current Poet Laureate of America juxtaposes accounts of ecological violence with individual eschatological experiences. Having been “powerfully compelled and disturbed by a Nathaniel Rich article about chemical pollution that appeared in the New York Times Magazinein January 2016,”¹Smith knew that she wanted to compose a found poem using lines of the report, although she didn’t know at the time what form that would take. Later, she “had the idea of marrying the facts from that article . . . with the narratives of near-death-experience (NDE) survivors.” Yet while …

The New Woman In Embryo: Masculine Women In Victorian Novels, Kayla Merrick

BYU English Symposium

The Victorian era is marked by many socio-economic reforms, leading the way to greater female freedom in—and from—the home, culminating in the form of the New Woman. The struggles of women under a system which repressed any desire to be anything outside the dictated mold of femininity before, reform by reform, they were given more freedom such way is recorded in Victorian Literature through the trope of masculine female characters. Authors female and male used “masculine” traits on their female characters to emphasize her humanity—and her struggles under a system which denied it— as a tool to promote reform. Wuthering …

Witches Will Be Witches: The Accusation Of Female Power, Rachel Noli

BYU English Symposium

The invocation of the term witch hunt in particular is unsurprising, as it has a long and troubled history, and is used today to discredit politically motivated movements. Major political players have touted the phrase from press conferences to Twitter feeds. However, in the case of the Me Too Movement, the term witch hunt is particularly weighted as it carries with it a complicated Puritan, female, past. Witch hunts have not always been a symbolic representation of a threatening entity to society—they were an authentic reaction to the inexplicable in early American life. Most notably, the Puritan witch trials have …

The Importance Of The Physical: Lucille Clifton's Poetry About Bodies, Kaitlin Hoelzer

BYU English Symposium

Lucille Clifton’s poetry focuses on a variety of subjects showcasing ordinary life in a literary view. However, much of her poetry focuses on her relationship with her body, both physical and emotional. In these poems, Clifton is able to validate bodies that do not fit a Euro-centric and fat-phobic ideal. She also uses her poetry to explore the relationship between body and identity, demonstrating the essential connection between the two. Finally, her poetry about bodies moves beyond the physical aspects to focus on personhood and ownership, proving that while identity and physical body are linked, worth is not dependent on …

A Warrior Heart: Hypermasculinity, Feminine Roles, And The Warrior Trope In Zitkala-Ša’S “A Warrior’S Daughter”, Chelsea Mortensen

BYU English Symposium

This paper explores a reading of Zitkala-Ša’s short story “A Warrior’s Daughter” as a reaction against the portrayal of Native American warriors in western media.

Cherokee writer Thomas King describes the Hollywood Indian Warrior as “the familiar character who rode around wagon trains, burned settlers’ cabins to the ground, bashed babies against trees, and trapped cowboys and soldiers in box canyons” (34). Other scholars of indigenous studies such as Sierra Adarre have traced variations on this stereotype as far back as the 1600s, conclusively showing that this warrior trope was easily recognizable in the United States by the beginning of …

Shakespeare's Mockery Of Courtly Love In As You Like It, Julie Carlson

BYU English Symposium

Shakespeare based his comedy As You Like It on Thomas Lodge’s pastoral Rosalynde, and while scholars such as Dora Smith and Albert Tolman have pointed out that Shakespeare humanizes the characters and relationships found in Rosalynde, scholars have failed to address why Shakespeare only chooses to humanize some of those relationships while he further romanticizes others. Reflecting on scholarship that analyzes the feminist messages and societal critiques found in Shakespeare’s play, this paper addresses the play in the context of the courtly love convention that dominates pastorals like Rosalynde. This paper argues that Shakespeare romanticizes the relationships in Rosalynde …

Feminist Courtly Love In Marie De France, Summer Weaver

BYU English Symposium

Originally considered anti-feminist, courtly love literature can now be read through a feminist lens thanks to the bold work of female writers like Marie de France. Prior to this new reading, courtly love set women in tropes of both idealized perfection and manipulative love. In many depictions, the woman’s actions are controlled by the male author’s, so much so that he creates an idealized image of her that is impossible for a real woman to obtain. In other tales, male authors exaggerate the lustfulness and heartlessness of women as they play with their “male lover’s delicate heartstrings” (Burns 23). Marie …

No-Man’S . . . Or Women’S-Land: Ecological Power Over Human Identity In The Things They Carried, Sam Jacob

BYU English Symposium

Elements of Vietnam’s ecology in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried dismantle former understandings of gender and racial identity. While traditional perceptions of wartime ecologies hold these spaces among the most heavily decimated, damaged, and disfigured on earth, the opposite occurs in O’Brien’s Vietnam. Observing how a land burdened by the destruction of a human war dominates these human forms of identity raises interesting questions regarding the level of control that humans possess over their own identity.

While critical discourse investigating landscapes and the environment in The Things They Carried primarily construe these spaces as mere symbolic topographies of terror …

“To Die Upon A Kiss”: Spirit-Body Gender Duality In Two Shakespeare Plays, Dane Whitaker

BYU English Symposium

Spirit and body become estranged through the dramatic deaths of Shakespeare’s characters in The Merchant of Venice and its thematic descendant Othello. Scholars of the latter play have recognized the central role of gender, but neglect to follow the trajectory of these plays from unstable sexual identity to consequent spirit-body dissonance. According to Phyllis Rackin’s studies of Elizabethan ideology, both foreign origins and desire for women jeopardized masculinity. As an alien living in Venetian society, Shylock the Jew (created in the 1590s) prefigures the more developed, central character of Othello the Moor (created between 1601-03). Both characters are destroyed, …

The Devaluation Of Consent In The Rape Of Lucrece, Anisa Call

BYU English Symposium

The devaluation of consent on a sexual and political level is responsible for the perpetuation of rape in societies from ancient Rome to Weinstein’s Hollywood. In Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece, Lucretia’s interactions with her two servants expose the paradox of consent. These scenes first justify the devaluation of consent by constructing women as the helpless products of their context, but then show how the patriarchy is nevertheless dependent upon that consent. Faced with the same paradox on a grander political scale, radicals in Shakespeare’s time pushed for a “republican” system that actually devalued consent through disproportionate representation. As this …

The Things They Carried: An Analysis Of Loyalty And Its Disintegration In The Combat Zone, Emily Ensign

BYU English Symposium

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a unique brotherhood develops among the soldiers. The responsibilities and terrors faced in the war bring the men together in a binding pact of loyalty. By joining the battalion, an individual enlists as part of the “membership in the family, the blood fraternity.” This comradery runs deep enough that the soldiers feel as though they are true “brothers” (185). When the soldiers leave the boonies and their familial pact and “become a civilian,” they experience a “new sense of separation” from their brothers that equates to feelings of betrayal (185, 184). The …

Shakespeare In The Wild West, Summer Weaver

BYU English Symposium

Shakespeare is considered the world’s most successful playwright, and his works have been enjoyed in leisure and studied in classrooms for 400 years. With that in mind, it would seem impossible for the complex elegance of Shakespeare’s writings to be compared to the “bang-bang shoot ‘em up” of the Western dime novel genre. However, after reading texts from both genres and gaining an understanding of their common themes, it’s clear that there are remarkable similarities. Ranging from missing mothers to multiple marriages, dime novels and Shakespearean comedies share both similar plot elements and character types. This essay analyzes Much Ado …

Nineteenth Century Sioux And The Empowering Institution Of Motherhood, Rebecca M. Sainsbury

BYU English Symposium

This paper turns to an interview published in the April-June 1891 editions of the Indian’s Friend, entitled, “The Wrongs and Wants of the Sioux—as told by themselves at the Great Council with Commissioner Morgan,” as a medium through which the collaboration of nineteenth century Sioux men and women is explored. Because theorists have concerned themselves mainly with the empowering factors of indigenous female autonomy, they have disregarded the actuality that the feminine influence operated hand in hand with the masculine voices of indigenous chiefs. This analysis provides a space in which indigenous women discreetly insert domestic values into political …

Bewailing Virginity, Emma George

BYU English Symposium

This research paper will discuss the various treatments of a woman's virginity, especially the overvaluing of it as seen in Shakespeare's writing as well as biblical texts. It mostly focuses on the treatment of Ophelia in Hamlet, but it also looks at virginity within a biblical and Renaissance context. One biblical allusion that is made in the play and will be examined is that of Jephthah's daughter as their are many comparisons made to this biblical story. The ancient Israelite laws regarding the punishments associated with taking a women's virginity will also be looked at in order to establish …

The Power Of Identity Forged Through Border Crossing, Mallory L. Dickson

BYU English Symposium

In this paper, I write about various border crossings that shape the lives of the characters in Sandra Cisneros’ book, Caramelo. These crossings include the physical border between Mexico and the United States, cultural borders between the two countries, mental borders, and Nepantla (where the characters are stuck between two borders and given the chance to gain power through their presence in both cultures simultaneously). I argue that the main character and narrator of the book, Celaya, discovers who she is and becomes a blueprint for other Mexican-Americans crossing this same border as she herself crosses these various borders …

A Dakota Woman: Zitkala-Ša’S Fight For Native Gender Identity, Olivia Cronquist

BYU English Symposium

The writings of Dakota author Zitkala-Ša include her memoirs from her elementary education in a white boarding school, as well as some original Native American stories. While there has been much modern scholarship on how Native American women have reconciled their racial and gender identities, I will be examining the link between Native American feminism and assimilation in the boarding school system, exploring the specific aspects of Native femininity that Zitkala-Ša highlights in “A Warrior’s Daughter.” This short story outlines a young Dakota woman’s effort to rescue her lover from the hands of an enemy tribe. Through the main character, …

Navigating Orthodoxy: The Calvinist Self In Lucy Hutchinson’S On The Principles Of The Christian Religion, Jeremy Loutensock

BYU English Symposium

In this paper, I argue that Lucy Hutchinson’s On the Principles of the Christian Religion functions as a clever navigation of Calvinist theology, wherein Hutchinson successfully addresses the potential pitfalls of contemporary belief and constructs an optimistic view of the self. I demonstrate this by comparing Principles to The Judgement of the Synode Holden at Dort to establish the orthodoxy of Hutchinson’s treatise. Then, I examine the emphasis that Hutchinson places on the varied timing and pace of the bestowal of grace and divine enablement and show that these emphases allow Hutchinson to disassociate conviction for sin from reprobation, or …

Harlem's Interpreter: Rudolph Fisher And The City Of Refuge, Brooke Rose

BYU English Symposium

The purpose of this research paper is to analyze Rudolph Fisher’s short story, The City of Refuge, through the lens of evolution. Fisher spoke of evolutionary theory in a commencement address he gave at Brown University and called it the “fundamental feature of existence.” Apart from being a scientist, doctor, and orator, however, Fisher also wrote some of the most celebrated fiction of the Harlem Renaissance. Biographers of his life have noted that in his fiction he becomes one of the most prominent social critics of this movement and era. Like a good doctor, Fisher was able to objectively …

Wonder Woman's Fight For Autonomy: How Patty Jenkins Did What No Man Could, Hanann Morris

BYU English Symposium

Originally created to empower women, the iconic super heroine, Wonder Woman, has fluctuated between feminist icon to an over-simplified object of male fantasy. In this paper, I will do a brief comparison of the many Wonder Woman adaptions in an effort to show how all adaptions, except one, have failed to empower Wonder Woman as a champion of women autonomy. I will also show how given the recent rise of sexual-harassment awareness, it is more important than ever to have role models that are not objectified but are independent, self-governing subjects.

Challenging A Stereotype: Female Nature In Rape Of The Lock And “Saturday. Small-Pox. Flavia.”, Elizabeth D. Smith

BYU English Symposium

Due to events such as the Civil War, Interregnum, Restoration, and the rise of the bourgeois, England’s national identity was subject to change during the eighteenth century. Along with this large-scale change came a questioning of the meaning of gender and gender roles. Because of the relatively new forms of written media, like newspapers and journals, both men and women of various social standings could engage in a literary discussion about such questions. This essay focuses on two poets in particular: Alexander Pope and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Pope’s Rape of the Lock and Montagu’s “Saturday. Small-Pox. Flavia.” hyperbolize society’s …

Finding Peace In Hamlet And Mama Day, Aubri M. Devashrayee

BYU English Symposium

No abstract provided.

Patriarchy & Feminism In The Early 20th Century: Finding Middle Ground Through Kate Chopin, Tanner Call

BYU English Symposium

In the decades leading up to women’s suffrage in the United States, feminism began to surge across the nation. While many feminist writers overtly called for an abandon of female gender roles, not all were as polarizing. One of those more covert authors was Kate Chopin.By crafting female characters that are shaped and influenced by their society’s standards (instead of wholly rejecting them), Chopin is able to create a more poignant and effective commentary on gender roles at the time. This paper will analyze three of her short stories and their focus on how the patriarchal society limits independence, creates …

"For They Were No Gods"-- Lawrence's Defiant Magdalene, Madeline N. Hipol

BYU English Symposium

After the social, cultural and national crisis left in the wake of the first World War there was a loss of faith in Reason and in the traditional Christian God. The resulting literature was of disillusionment, doubt and loss. This essay discusses how D. H. Lawrence sought to cope with the darkness of a “godless” reality, critique a disillusioned society, and respond to the rise of feminism through the creation and development of a failed Christ figure and a defiant Mary Magdalene in his short story “Tickets, Please.” As he develops his Magdalene, Annie Stone Lawrence is able to use …

Deformed, Demented, And Deranged: Limited Categorizations Of Old Women In Fairy Tale Adaptations, Amanda Smith

BYU English Symposium

No abstract provided.