English Language and Literature Commons^™

Little Cricket On The Hearth: The Quiet Feminism Of _Little Women_, Caroline Anderson Klein

Honors Theses

Since the advent of the cult of domesticity, the stakes for female characters in domestic literature have been notoriously high. There was no room for flaws, rebellious decisions, and certainly no room for mistakes—whether of the woman’s own accord, or simply as collateral damage of a male character’s immorality. In this shallowly Calvinist domain, women were never more than one broken guardrail away from social ruin or death. In writing Little Women, Louisa May Alcott breaks these molds through unflinching kindness to her female characters from childhood to adulthood, even unto death. Alcott achieves this quietly feminist feat by …

Mothering As Feminism, Meera Patel

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay proposes the concept of mothering-as-feminism, with the intention of interrogating American ideals of mothering and caregiving. Reforming the way we view mothering, as it relates to feminism, requires a re-evaluation of the American role of women and mothers—and how they are portrayed (and therefore seen and understood), valued, and supported. Focusing on the evolution of feminist theory throughout the past 70 years, as well as personal and secondary experiences, I demonstrate how political and social change occurs generationally and is dependent on the education of our children. Ultimately, I show the important role children’s literature plays …

Kids, Culture, And Queerness: The Progression Of Lgbtq+ Representation In Children's Media, Sarah Stevens

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Historically, popular media has functioned as a window into society’s ever evolving idea of normalcy. Children’s popular media, which contains elements of both entertainment and didacticism, is further burdened with the responsibility of influencing the perspectives of upcoming generations. This truth is particularly salient for the LGBTQ+ community, who have faced consistent misrepresentation or utter erasure from children’s media in the recent past. While there have been marked improvements in both the quality and quantity of queer representation in children’s media since 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges case, there is still a significant need to acknowledge intersectional queerness and queer gender …

The Boy In The Text: Mary Barber, Her Son, And Children's Poetry In Poems On Several Occasions, Chantel M. Lavoie

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

The Boy in the Text: Mary Barber, Her Son, and Children’s Poetry in Poems on Several Occasions

This paper reconsiders the work of Dublin poet Mary Barber, whose collection of poems appeared in 1733/34. There she acknowledges the assistance of Jonathan Swift, and frames her poetry as a pedagogical aid to her children’s education—particularly that of her eldest son, Constantine. Barber’s relationship with Swift has received much critical attention, as has her focus on her own motherhood—sometimes in critiques that suggest both of these hampered the quality and scope of her work. This paper asks readers to look at her …

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: Girlhood In The Creation, Content, And Consumption Of Victorian Children’S Literature, Betsy Barthelemy

English Honors Projects

The Golden Age of (British) Children’s Literature was famous not only for the proliferation of fiction it hosted, but also for how much of that work featured young heroine protagonists. Starting with the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and examining two other fantasy works compared with three realistic children's novels from this half-century period, this project elucidates the differences between these genres and examines how authors used the characteristics of each to empower their heroines. It argues that these fictitious heroines influenced real-world readers to create progressive futures by providing examples of rebellious girl characters finding happy endings.

Tomboys Are Girls, Too!: A Study Of Sibling Relationships In Caddie Woodlawn, Julia G. Kicinski

English Seminar Capstone Research Papers

Readers can understand the sibling relationships present in Carol Ryrie Brink’s novel, Caddie Woodlawn, by studying the main character’s tomboy personality. Many scholars read this character through a feminist lens, treating her solely as a fictional character. However, this paper approaches the character from a nonfictional perspective to study how Caddie as a tomboy relates to her strong relationship with her brothers. This paper takes the definition of “tomboy” into account, as well as the psychology behind the development of both strong and weak sibling relationships, to determine whether Caddie’s tomboyism developed because of her strong relationship with her …

Sculpted From Clay, Shaped By Power: Feminine Narrative And Agency In Wonder Woman, Mikala Carpenter

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

By applying deconstructive and feminist theories to the Wonder Woman saga, this thesis develops a potential definition of feminine narrative in contrast to the normative and exclusionary patriarchal narrative that reigns supreme in popular culture and Western ideology. Though much of comics discourse functions on the assumption that superhero narratives are homogenous reflections of this ideological hero narrative, I posit that the Amazonian princess's resilience and iconicity stem from her own narrative's uniquely deconstructive nature: Where the patriarchal story would demand dominance, destruction, and violence, the feminine narrative that Diana models advocates for equality, nurturance, and emotional and rational communication. …

Wendy's Story In J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, Jessica Hedrick

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

Although known today as simply Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie’s classic children’s novel was originally titled Peter and Wendy. This paper explores the famous children’s story from Wendy Darling’s perspective, taking particular interest in the narrator’s contradictory stance on Wendy her agency in the original novelized text. Peter Pan may be the most well known of Barrie’s characters, but the novel’s story is Wendy’s. The relationship between a mother and her children forms the crux of the novel; without Wendy, without her relationship with her own mother and her desire to play grown-up, there is no story. Peter Pan …

Parody And The Pen: Pippi Longstocking, Harriet M. Welsch, And Flavia De Luce As Disrupters Of Space, Language, And The Male Gaze, Kelsey Mclendon

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

In opposition to a literary tradition of damsel-in-distress female characters, Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy, and Alan Bradley’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie provide examples of empowered, intelligent, and capable young girls living in a mid-20th century environment and successfully subverting patriarchal norms. Drawing on Laura Mulvey’s theory on women as spectacle, Hélène Cixous’s concept of l’ecriture feminine, and New Historicist influences, I explore the common threads within these post-World War II era texts. Pippi’s strength and humor, Harriet’s spying and writing, and Flavia’s scientific expertise and detectival work illustrate their …

Characters Through Time, Alyssa Venezia

Honors Thesis

T. S. Eliot once wrote that we “often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of [an author’s] work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously” (Eliot 37). By focusing on character adaptations, one comes to understand how authors of children’s books are able to adapt classic literature into age-appropriate texts that retain the merits of the original. Five sets of characters shall be analyzed to demonstrate the success of the adaptations presented in children’s literature. In the first, Sir Bedivere from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur …

Protecting Dixie: Southern Girlhood In Children's Literature, 1852-1920, Laura Anne Hakala

Dissertations

Most scholarship about girlhood in children’s literature tends to rely on national models of girlhood. My project complicates those models by demonstrating how region shapes distinct forms of American girlhood. In particular, I examine representations of southern girlhood in children’s literature published between 1852 and 1920, drawing on the four types of literature that most featured southern girls during this time period: abolitionist literature, Confederate literature, postbellum plantation fiction, and family stories. Using a historicist methodology and spatial analysis, I place these texts in relation to information about the spatial arrangements and protocols of southern domestic sites. By viewing girlhood …

Mother's Bed: Gender Representation In Children's Literature, Karin Hanni

Senior Theses

This children's book and accompanying research paper both address gender inequity in children's literature. There is a significant imbalance of gender representation in children's literature, with the number of central male characters almost doubling that of central female characters. Additionally, the roles of males and females still tend to be stereotypical: boys are action-oriented and heroic, while girls are nurturing and passive. Further, it is believed that boys will only enjoy books about boys, while girls will enjoy books about both boys and girls. This imbalance in children's literature hurts both genders. Children not only learn to read from books, …

Rendering The Unthinkable: (Un)Knowable Animality, Compulsory Recovery, And Heterosexualized Trauma In The Hunger Games, Jennifer Polish

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dystopian fiction is expected to reflect deeply on the interactions between identities, bodies, and state control. Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games Trilogy is no exception. The disturbing trilogy situated animality, disability, and trauma (both of non-humans and of humans) as being firmly controlled by the power of the state (the Capitol). Through its portrayal of hunting and genetic manipulation, the trilogy constructed a state-created animality which refused definitive labeling and insisted upon facing animal subjectivity while simultaneously disregarding the needs and desires of those considered to be non-human. Similarly, the state held sway over both the creation and elimination of …

Unbreakable Glass Slippers: Hegemony In Ella Enchanted, Tori Shereen Mirsadjadi

Scripps Senior Theses

The way Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted simultaneously conforms to its late-20^th-century American standards and rebels against its Cinderella origins is analyzed in this thesis. As an analysis of a piece of literature written for children, the thesis works to defend the notion that playful literature produces a serious dialogue with its readers, and that young female readers are a particularly apropos group for the dialogue about hegemony that Ella Enchanted allows.