Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Hearing Adam: Gender Relationships In The Short Fiction Of Caroline Gordon., Linda Elaine Hipple

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Writer and critic Caroline Gordon has been a participant on the Southern literary scene since the early 1930s, yet her works have been neither studied nor appreciated as frequently as the works of her male contemporaries. Her novels and short fiction never received the critical acclaim that they merited due to the perpetuation of the erroneous idea that women have little to say. While at the time other female writers were exploring their emancipation, Gordon retreated to the consistent confines of male-dominated tradition and created fiction embodying her conservative philosophy. This thesis will examine five pieces of her short fiction, …

Trophies Or Treasures: The Burden Of Choice For Mothers, Wives, And Daughters In Washington Square, The Portrait Of A Lady, And The Bostonians., Melissa C. Huisman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the world of Henry James's novels, characters are often placed in difficult situations where their happiness depends on their ability to make a free choice. Female characters are manipulated and diminished by a patriarchal system that not only seeks to subordinate their will, but also to objectify them, to place them on the shelf as a trophy. Fathers and husbands are typically the controlling agents, but James also presents women who appropriate the dominating role.

With varying degrees of success, each female character rejects the status of trophy. Instead, each attempts to make choices and determine her own future. …

Representations Of The Catholic Inquisition In Two Eighteenth-Century Gothic Novels: Punishment And Rehabilitation In Matthew Lewis' The Monk And Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, Jarad Fennell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to determine how guilt and shame act as engines of social control in two Gothic narratives of the 1790s, how they tie into the terror and horror modes of the genre, and how they give rise to two distinct narrative models, one centered on punishment and the other on rehabilitation. The premise of the paper is that both Matthew G. Lewis's The Monk and Ann Radcliffe's The Italian harness radically different emotional responses, one that demands the punishment of the aberrant individual and the other that reveres the reformative power of domestic felicity. The …

Gender Portrayal In J.K. Rowling's “Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix”: A Feminist Rhetorical Criticism, Nicole Ackman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined J.K. Rowling’s (2003) novel entitled, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Although this novel has not yet been classified as a fairy tale, it does contain fairy tale elements. This study reviewed literature in the field of folklore, fairy tales, and feminism. Foss’ (2004) four-step feminist criticism model was employed to analyze gender portrayals in the novel. According to Foss’ model, the novel was analyzed for masculine or feminine perspectives of the world, effects on the audience, improvement of women’s lives, and impact on rhetorical theory. Although Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix …