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Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Ophelia's Mistreatment And Ignored Monastic Opportunities, Danielle Tovsen May 2010

Ophelia's Mistreatment And Ignored Monastic Opportunities, Danielle Tovsen

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Thesis: I will argue that Ophelia could have saved her own life if she had left home and fled to a nunnery; the treatment she received from Laertes and Polonius was worse than Hamlet's treatment of her throughout the play and especially in Act 3 .1. Through thorough research, the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, is explored. This thesis specifically focuses on the character of Ophelia and Ophelia's relationships with Hamlet, Laertes, and Polonius. Through the examination of Ophelia, with a literature review of Ophelia's reputation amongst scholars, the argument is made that Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia is one of …


Peace-Weavers And The Soldiers Who Court Them: The Sexual Development Of Women In Shakespear's Plays, Sara Ben-David Apr 2008

Peace-Weavers And The Soldiers Who Court Them: The Sexual Development Of Women In Shakespear's Plays, Sara Ben-David

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This paper moves beyond current psychoanalytic readings of the women in Shakespeare's plays as either Mother or Other to consider instead the extent to which their sexual development from girlhood into womanhood rehearses what Jacques Lacan describes as man's progression out of the Mirror Stage, through the acquisition of language and the recognition of sexual difference, and into a unified subjectivity. The author argues that Shakespeare's own understanding of sexual difference is predicated, in the case of femininity, upon the model of the feminine peace-weaver which he would have found in Greek mythology, particularly in Ovid's Heroides. It is with …