English Language and Literature Commons^™

Review Of Giving Birth In Eighteenth-Century England, By Sarah Fox, Chelsea Phillips

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

A Review of Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England, by Sarah Fox

“Before I Am Quite Forgot": Women’S Critical Literary Biography And The Future, Susan Carlile

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

“‘Before I am Quite Forgot’: Women’s Critical Literary Biography and the Future” extends the conversation about literary “worth” in the twenty-first century as it still judges and ignores women authors of the past. Specifically, this essay explores the role of women’s literary historical biography as a primary marker of worth and as a means of shaping legacy. I also discuss my (perhaps more non-traditional) experience—both my personal circumstances and particular material conditions—writing the critical biography Charlotte Lennox: An Independent Mind. Without a substantial biography that shows the scope of Lennox’s mind, her significant corpus, and her interventions in literary history …

Craftivism And Cottonian Bindings: “The Handiwork Of Greta Hall”, Helen Williams

Criticism

Edith Southey, Edith May Southey, and Sara Coleridge Jr. covered Robert Southey’s books in vibrantly printed dress fabrics, creating a collection that came to be called “the Cottonian Library.” This article is a manifesto for Cottonian bookbinding to be studied as feminist literary activism. It argues for the importance of looking beyond the book trades to the domestic and unremunerated ways in which women contributed to Romantic period book design, suggesting that the new feminist Craftivism can prompt us to historicize and to acknowledge the significance of Cottonian bookbinding as a practice that cannot be omitted from any history of …

Honoré De Balzac’S Portrayal Of The Feminine Condition In The Wild Ass’S Skin, Père Goriot, And The Lily Of The Valley, Brooke V. Musmeci

Honors Theses

In 19th century France, women appeared to be second class citizens. They were often limited in their abilities to have independence and secure their own wealth. This perception of women perhaps justifies why, as Honoré de Balzac’s novels illustrated the realities of French society, he attempted to characterize women’s struggles to obtain control and power in their lives. In his novels The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), The Lily of the Valley (1835), and Le Père Goriot (1835), Balzac sought to prove how women could improve their lot.

Firstly, in studying how women had been relegated to second-class citizens under their …

"The More They’Re Beaten The Better They Be": Gendered Violence And Abuse In Victorian Laws And Literature, Danielle T. Dominguez

CMC Senior Theses

During the Victorian age, the law and society were in conversation with each other, and the law reflected Victorian gender norms. Nineteenth-century gender attitudes intersected with the law, medical discourse, and social customs in a multitude of ways. Abuse and gender violence occurred beneath the veneer of Victorian respectability. The models of nineteenth-century social conduct were highly gendered and placed men and women in separate social spheres. As this research indicates, the lived practices of Victorians, across social and economic strata, deviated from these accepted models of behavior. This thesis explores the ways that accepted and unaccepted standards of female …

At Home In The Revolution: What Women Said And Did In 1916: An Interview With Lucy Mcdiarmid

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

Lucy McDiarmid is a scholar and writer. Her academic interest in cultural politics, especially quirky, colorful, suggestive episodes, is exemplified by The Irish Art of Controversy (2005) and Poets and the Peacock Dinner: the literary history of a meal (2014; paperback 2016). She is a former fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation and of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Her most recent monograph is At Home in the Revolution: what women said and did in 1916 (published 2015). The Vibrant House: Irish Writers and Domestic Space (co-edited with Rhona Richman Kenneally) was published …

Anna Larpent And Shakespeare, Fiona Ritchie

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

Anna Larpent (1758-1832) is a crucial figure in theater history and the reception of Shakespeare since drama was a central part of her life. Larpent was a meticulous diarist: the Huntington Library holds seventeen volumes of her journal covering the period 1773-1830. These diaries shed significant light on the part Shakespeare played in her life and contain her detailed opinions of his works as she experienced them both on the page and on the stage in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London. Larpent experienced Shakespeare’s works in a variety of forms: she sees Shakespeare’s plays performed, both professionally and by …

"A Meruelous Thinge!": Elizabeth Of Spalbeek, Christina The Astonishing, And Performative Self-Abjection In Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms Douce 114, Murrielle Michaud

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Contributing to the spirited discussion regarding feminist and pro-feminine readings of Middle English hagiography, this dissertation challenges the tradition of grouping accounts of medieval holy women into a single genre that relies on stereotypes of meekness and obedience. I argue that fifteenth-century England saw a pro-feminine literary movement extolling the virtues of women who engaged in what I term “performative self-abjection,” a form of vicious self-renunciation and grotesque asceticism based on Julia Kristeva's model of the abject. The corollary of women's performative self-abjection is ex-gratia spiritual authority, public recognition, and independence, emphasized in the English corpus of fifteenth-century women’s hagiography. …

"To Conceive With Child Is The Earnest Desire If Not Of All, Yet Of Most Women": The Advancement Of Prenatal Care And Childbirth In Early Modern England: 1500-1770, Victoria E.C. Glover

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes medical manuals published in England between 1500 and 1770 to trace developing medical understandings and prescriptive approaches to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. While there have been plenty of books written regarding social and religious changes in the reproductive process during the early modern era, there is a dearth of scholarly work focusing on the medical changes which took place in obstetrics over this period. Early modern England was a time of great change in the field of obstetrics as physicians incorporated newly-discovered knowledge about the male and female body, new fields and tools, and new or revived …

British Women Writers And The Reception Of Ancient Egypt, 1840-1910: Imperialist Representations Of Egyptian Women, Molly Youngkin

Faculty Pub Night

No abstract provided.

Catharine Maria Sedgwick's Contributions To Transcendentalism, Sarah Kingston

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Review Of Marjo Kaartinen, Breast Cancer In The Eighteenth Century, Marie Mulvey-Roberts

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

No abstract provided.

From England's Bridewell To America's Brides: Imprisoned Women, Shakespeare's Measure For Measure, And Empire, Alicia Meyer

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the experience of largely single women in London’s house of correction, Bridewell Prison, and argues that Bridewell’s prisoners, and the nature of their crimes, reveal the state’s desire for dependent, sexually controlled, yet ultimately productive women. Scholars have largely neglected the place of early modern women’s imprisonment despite its pervasive presence in the everyday lives of common English women. By examining the historical and cultural implications of early modern women and prison, this thesis contends that women’s prisons were more than simply establishments of punishment and reform. A closer examination of Bridewell’s philosophy and practices shows how …

Striving For Salvation : Margaret Anna Cusack, Sainthood, Religious Foundations And Revolution In Ireland, 1829-1899, Sean Heather K. Mcgraw

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Margaret Anna Cusack, later Sister Mary Frances Clare, and also known as Mother Clare, (6 May 1829 - 5 June 1899) was an Anglo-Irish Protestant who became a Catholic Nun and the foundress of a still existent Catholic religious order, the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. She was also a vociferous champion for the poor, for Irish political rights, for Irish nationalism, and was the first Irish nationalist woman historian and a prolific writer who wrote more than one hundred works. She was a radical, a revolutionary, a champion and hero, a source of conflict and …

Women, The Novel, And Natural Philosophy, 1660-1727, Karen Gevirtz

Karen Bloom Gevirtz

Women, the Novel, and Natural Philosophy, 1660-1727 shows how early women novelists drew on debates about the self generated by the 'scientific' revolution to establish the novel as a genre and literary omniscience as a point of view. These writers such as Aphra Behn, Jane Barker, Eliza Haywood, and Mary Davys used, tested, explored, accepted, and rejected ideas about the self in their works to represent the act of knowing and what it means to be a knowing self. Karen Bloom Gevirtz agues that as they did so, they developed structures for representing authoritative knowing that contributed to the development …

The 1876 Centennial Exposed: How Souvenir Publications Reveal Contrasting Attitudes Of Race And Gender In The Post-Bellum United States, Hope Hancock

Mellon Scholars' Works

The Centennial Exhibition of 1876 celebrated not only the 100-year anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence but the industrial innovation and reuniting of American society after the Civil War. Using two rare books about the Exhibiton, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Historical Register of the Centennial Exposition, 1876 and The Illustrated Historical Register of the Centennial Exhibition by James Dabney McCabe, Jr., this project compares the portrayal of women and African Americans in the late 19th-century United States.

Victorian Women And Their Working Roles, Kara L. Barrett

English Theses

Women during the Victorian Era did not have many rights. They were viewed as only supposed to be housewives and mothers to their children. The women during this era were only viewed as people that should only concern themselves with keeping a successful household. However, during this time women were forced into working positions outside of the household.

Women that were forced into working situations outside of their households were viewed negatively by society. Many women needed to have an income to support their families because the men in the household were not making enough money to survive. When the …

Piracy, Slavery, And Assimilation: Women In Early Modern Captivity Literature, David C. Moberly

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines a hitherto neglected body of works featuring female characters enslaved in Islamicate lands. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many Englishmen and women were taken captive by pirates and enslaved in what is now the Middle East and North Africa. Several writers of the time created narratives and dramas about the experiences of such captives. Recent scholarship has brought to light many of these works and pointed out their importance in establishing what was still a young, unsure, and developing English identity in this early period. Most of this scholarship, however, has dealt with narratives of the …

The Progress Of Indian Women From 1900s To Present, Nidhi Shrivastava

Honors Scholar Theses

Through the study of numerous authors such as the famous Rabindranath Tagore, Manju Kapur, and Anita Nair, my main goal of the thesis was to study and find the progress women have made in India since 1900s. Rabindranath Tagore’s THE HOME AND THE WORLD plant the seed of the women’s movement in India as Bimala, the female protagonist steps out of her household sphere to experience and encounter the “world,” Manju Kapur’s DIFFICULT DAUGHTERS is a story of Virmati, a woman ahead of her times suspended in the hindering traditions during the last years before the partition of 1947. Finally, …

Women In Eighteenth Century London: Female Coming Of Age In Frances Burney’S Evelina, Cecilia, And The Witlings, Kate Hamilton

Honors Scholar Theses

The late eighteenth-century author Frances Burney is best known for popularizing the “comedy of manners,” a literary style later adopted by Jane Austen. Burney’s novels, journals, and plays offer an intriguing commentary on contemporary social customs and etiquette. In particular, she voices the concerns and desires of women, leading scholars to focus on the feminist overtones of her writing. Although she carefully examined female roles in the household and family structure, Burney also provided an insider’s perspective into London high life. As an acclaimed author and member of the royal court, Burney offers a rare insight into the lives of …

Man-Made Menopause, Madeline Horwitz

Undergraduate Research Symposium (UGRS)

In this study I suggest that there are three distinct time periods mark new developments in society’s understanding of menopause, Victorian America in the mid and late nineteenth century, mid-twentieth century America, and contemporary America. This is the case not only in terms of advances in biological science, but also the ways in which the medical establishment has viewed menopause has also changed, and in terms of changes in prevalent gender assumptions. In this paper I hope to expose the ways science, history, and society has medicalized menopause, and the ways in which menopause has been viewed by individual women, …

Mary Shelley, Romantic-Era Women, And Frankenstein's Genesis, Jan Wellington

Jan Wellington

No abstract provided.

To Be A Woman: Shakespeare's Patriarchal Viewpoint, Conley Greer

The Corinthian

Shakespeare's characterization of women necessitates further study and discussion to fully appreciate his genius for interpreting human nature. Two plays in particular, Othello, The Moor of Venice and Measure for Measure, provide excellent female characters for scholarly analysis.