English Language and Literature Commons^™

Imagining Woman Otherwise, Or Nothing: Sexuation As Discourse In Lacanian Thought, Rahna Carusi

Rahna M Carusi

My dissertation looks at the connections between Lacan’s four discourses and the sexuation graph in order to claim that sexuation is discursive and that, as Lacan presents it with the phallus as its quilting point, the sexuation graph is a narrative based on patriarchal hegemony, which is one of many possible narratives. I argue that through the hysteric’s discourse and a removal of the phallus as the Symbolic-Imaginary quilting point, we can begin to formulate new narratives of sexuated subjectivities. The textual objects I use for this project are literary and filmic works where women are the central topic or …

Joan Rivers And Queen Elizabeth, Marleen S. Barr

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Virginia Woolf's Publishing Archive, John K. Young

John K. Young

Woolf the publisher remains that “drab figure in the gray overalls” for many Woolf scholars, despite an abundance of archival material documenting Woolf’s role as publisher. The most familiar Woolf archives are of course the manuscripts and drafts, many now in print, that have inescapably changed the way we read Woolf’s published texts.

To Better Serve And Sustain The South: How Nineteenth Century Domestic Novelists Supported Southern Patriarchy Using The "Cult Of True Womanhood" And The Written Word, Daphne V. Wyse

History Theses

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, American women were subjected to restrictive societal expectations, providing them with a well-defined identity and role within the male-dominated culture. For elite southern women, more so than their northern sisters, this identity became integral to southern patriarchy and tradition. As the United States succumbed to sectional tension and eventually civil war, elite white southerners found their way of life threatened as the delicate web of gender, race, and class relations that the Old South was based upon began to crumble. Despite their repressed status in southern society, most elite southern women chose to support …

Performing Literacy: How Women Read The World In The Late Eighteenth-Century British Novel, Amy Hodges

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the intersection of sensibility, Social identity, and literacy practices among representations of women readers in four late eighteenth-century British novels. Through an analysis of the authors' use of identity constructs which shaped and were shaped by reading practices, this study documents the rise of Social identity formation as mutually constitutive with the history of reading. The first chapter reveals how Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote uses Arabella's follies as education for readers about the corresponding processes of reading their society and reading novels. The second chapter argues that Frances Burney's Evelina considers women's ability to read others …

The Heroine's Journey, Catherine Bailey

The Hilltop Review

My current research focuses on representations of gender in contemporary literature and visual culture, with a particular emphasis on feminist criticism. Furthermore, I am interested in the ways in which ancient mythology, fairy tales, and folklore have shaped--and continue to shape--societal ideals about normative gender behavior. While some myth critics profess the benefits of framing one's life in terms of a grand narrative--an archetypal "hero's journey"--feminist critics and queer theorists argue that these sweeping narratives can be damaging to people of all genders by forcing them into limiting social scripts. Much of my recent research has explored the question of …

The Bitter Relicks Of My Flame: The Embodiment Of Venereal Disease And Prostitution In The Novels Of Jane Austen, Melanie Erin Osborn

Melanie E Osborn

Resembling the mercurial, black beauty mark used as an ornamental concealment of syphilitic sores, Jane Austen’s comedy of manners likewise acted as a superficial cosmetic device that concealed the ubiquity of venereal disease and prostitution hidden within. Through her characters, Austen used veiled narrative to highlight the reality of venereal disease and prostitution in eighteenth-century England. This thesis uncovers the hidden narrative in Jane Austen’s novels, as a means of better understanding the impact venereal disease and prostitution had on sexual issues with women and the female body during the eighteenth century. Beginning with an almost comic reference to venereal …

The Emergence Of Feminism During The Late Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries By Female Artists And Authors, Tracy S. Koubek

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

This thesis paper identifies the ways in which the painters Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and Mary Cassatt and the writers Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning challenged the limitations of their sex by engaging in professions outside of the domestic sphere during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This essay first focuses on the negative effects that a separation between the private and public spheres had on women, how these changes came about, the expectations society imposed on women, and how many women learned to cope and step forward into the public sphere. The emphasis shifts to an examination of the lives …

The Androgynous Tomboy: Adolescent Liminality In The Contemporary Southern Bildungsroman, Brooke Alexandra Shippee

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Androgynous Tomboy: Adolescent Liminality in the Contemporary Southern Bildungsroman is an analysis of the adolescent, specifically, of the young tomboy characters central to three Bildungsroman texts set in the American South during the twentieth century: Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding (1946), Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country (1985) and Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina (1993). I seek to challenge the very notion of the conventional tomboy within the coming of age literary genre by defining these youths as androgynous, rather than as young individuals who assume a singular gender opposite of their biological sex. Throughout my work, …

The Bitter Relicks Of My Flame: The Embodiment Of Venereal Disease And Prostitution In The Novels Of Jane Austen, Melanie Erin Osborn

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Resembling the mercurial, black beauty mark used as an ornamental concealment of syphilitic sores, Jane Austen’s comedy of manners likewise acted as a superficial cosmetic device that concealed the ubiquity of venereal disease and prostitution hidden within. Through her characters, Austen used veiled narrative to highlight the reality of venereal disease and prostitution in eighteenth-century England. This thesis uncovers the hidden narrative in Jane Austen’s novels, as a means of better understanding the impact venereal disease and prostitution had on sexual issues with women and the female body during the eighteenth century. Beginning with an almost comic reference to venereal …

Rape And The Feminine Response In Early Modern England And Several Shakespearean Works, David Alexander Bernard

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Happily Ever After? Redefining Womanhood And Marriage In Nineteenth-Century Novels, Laura Elizabeth Cox

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, and Henry James challenged patriarchal conventions and assumptions by redefining womanhood and marriage in their novels, particularly by breaking from the traditional marriage ending. While Pride and Prejudice, North and South, and Jane Eyre end in marriage, these novels depict a freely chosen companionate marriage based on equality; Villette replaces the typical marriage ending with complete independence; and Washington Square and The Portrait of a Lady both portray the decisive rejection of the marriage ideal for a life of renunciation. This thesis analyzes the ways in which these novels challenge nineteenth-century society, as well …

Architectures Of The Veil: The Representation Of The Veil And Zenanas In Pakistani Feminists' Texts, Amber Fatima Riaz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My dissertation, which works at the intersections of feminist theory, architectural theory and postcolonial literary theory, examines the spatiality of the zenana and the burqa as represented in Pakistani literary and cultural texts. I propose that the burqa creates a portable closet, an interstitial, liminal, “third space” that allows Pakistani (secluded and veiled) women to not only traverse the borders between the private (female, domestic) and public (male) spaces, but to also signal chastity and religiosity while in the public, and semi-public spaces of the cities and villages of Pakistan. I argue that the dupatta, the chador and the hijab …

The Tripled Plot And Center Of Sula, Maureen Reddy

Maureen T. Reddy

Critics of Sula frequently comment on the pervasive presence of death, the uses of a particular cultural and historical background, the split or doubled protagonist (Sula/Nel), and the attention to chronology in the novel. However, as far as I am aware, no one has presented a reading of Sula that explores the interrelatedness of these elements; yet it is the connections among them that most usefully reveal the novel's overall thematic patterns. Sula can be, and has been, read as, among other things, a fable, a lesbian novel, a black female bildungsroman, a novel of heroic questing, and an historical …

Regina Maria Roche’S The Children Of The Abbey: Contesting The Catholic Presence In Female Gothic Fiction, Diane Hoeveler

English Faculty Research and Publications

This article examines Regina Maria Roche’s immensely popular gothic novel, The Children of the Abbey (1796), in light of the ideological and political campaigns that occurred in Britain leading up to the passage of the Catholic emancipation bill in 1829. The Children of the Abbey has been the subject of recent critical interpretation by a number of scholars who attempt to argue that it is pro-Catholic. However, by confronting the portrait of her dead mother in the final volume, Roche’s heroine Amanda discovers not a magical representation of the unknowable and inexplicable past that often stands for Catholicism but instead …

El Choteo En Cien Botellas En Una Pared Y Raining Backwards: El Gracioso Disfraz De Las Circunstancias Trágicas Durante La Revolución Cubana Y El Período Especial, Kristin Nicole Lisenby

World Languages and Cultures

This project attempts to explore the idea that the combination of tragedy and humor in Cuban and Cuban-American literature is a form of “choteo” or “no tomar nada en serio,” which demonstrates a coping strategy used by Cubans during hard times. In the case of Ena Lucía Portela's Cien botellas en una pared, and Roberto Fernandez's Raining Backwards, I believe that the two authors use his and her own personal insight into a Cuban's life during the Cuban Revolution of the 60's and the Special Period of the 90's, and that those personal experiences are reflected throughout the novels …

A Feminist Critique Of Beowulf: Women As Peace-Weavers And Goaders In Beowulf's Courts, Charles Phipps

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis documents the relationship between “Goaders" and "Peace-Weavers" amongst the women of Beowulf. These roles have a large place to play within the framework of the Beowulf narrative and all of its female characters fall into one of these descriptors. Goaders are women who have the role of driving men to violence with words. They do not actually perform the violence themselves but instead induce it in others, souring relationships and compelling men to war. Peace-weavers, by contrast, urge men toward reconciliation with speech and encouragement. Examining the poem's context for these two roles and how they relate to …

“To Say Nothing”: Variations On The Theme Of Silence In Selected Works By Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz, Sandra Cisneros, And María Luisa Bombal, Hannah M. Frantz

Student Publications

This paper explores the various ways in which Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s La Respuesta, Sandra Cisneros’s “Woman Hollering Creek,” and María Luisa Bombal’s “The Tree” address the theme of silence. It interrogates how the female characters in each of these works are silenced as well as their responses to that oppression. Meaning is subjective, so writing is a safe outlet for the oppressed. These works each identify an oppressor, either a husband or the male dominated church, as well as an oppressed individual, who is the female lead. In La Respuesta, the Catholic church, and specifically …

Sacrificio, Violencia Y Nación En Lituma En Los Andes De Mario Vargas Llosa, Cesar Valverde

Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mother Of Three Drowns Children And Other Stories, Laura L. Stubbins

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A collection of short stories depicting fictional characters facing what is absent from their lives.

Wounded Women, Varied Voice, Kathryn Johnston

Undergraduate Review

Daphne du Maurier and Sylvia Plath both use voice as a tool in their respective pieces, “La Sainte-Vierge” and “Lesbos.” Through the implementation of varied voices, these women convey female interiors. Du Maurier’s use of a third-person narrative voice in her short story “La Sainte-Vierge” allows her to comment on the lives of the main characters through the eyes of an outsider. Du Maurier’s outsider reveals a naïve and delusional housewife, unhealthy in her denial within a failing relationship. Contrasting with du Maurier’s Marie is Plath’s first-person voice of a scorned, dissatisfied housewife in her poem, “Lesbos.” Plath’s use of …

`The Only Beguiled Person?': Accessing Fantomina In The Feminist Classroom., Kate Levin

Publications and Research

This article explores how Eliza Haywood's 18th-century novella Fantomina serves as an allegory for the challenges of maintaining a feminist classroom.

Aemilia Lanyer's Use Of The Garden In Salve Deus Rex Judæorum, Anna Brovold

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Aemilia Lanyer used her collection of poetry, Salve Deus Rex Judæorum to redefine the way that women should look at themselves in the eyes of God. She began her collection with poems dedicated to women that she had deemed virtuous and worthy of individual attention. Her dedicatees were then presented to her readers as the true Disciples of Christ; an honor due to women because of their empathy for Christ's situation. Lanyer rewrote the biblical Passion story in order to include a feminized version of Christ, the rightful female Disciples of Christ and an additional trial presented to Pontius Pilate …

Mediums Change, Fears Stay The Same, Lucy Wilhelms

Honors Theses

Although generally dismissed by scholars as being overly sentimental or superstitious, the gothic genre has survived for over four centuries and maintained significant cultural appeal, outlasting the sentimental novel and the travelogue as popular literature. What, then, makes this genre different? What is so special about the gothic?

In my thesis, I examine the evolving cultural appeal of the gothic genre that keeps it attractive and relevant for readers by tracing the gothic text, The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, through its initial inception and its subsequent adaptations. As a novel, The Woman in Black both repeats and revises …

Cumberland [Abstract], Megan Gannon

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Set in a fictional town on the coast of Georgia in July of 1972, Cumberland is the story of two fifteen-year-old twin sisters, Ansel and Isabel (“Izzy”) Mackenzie, who have lived with their frugal, eccentric grandmother since the age of eight when their parents were killed in a car accident and Isabel was paralyzed. Over the years, the burden of caring for her sister has fallen increasingly on Ansel. However, as Ansel cultivates a romantic relationship with a local boy, as well as an artistic apprenticeship with a visiting photographer, her growing desires for selfhood and independence compromise her ability …

"To Bend Without Breaking": American Women's Authorship And The New Woman, 1900-1935, Amber Harris Leichner

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation focuses on constructions of female authorship in selected prose narratives of four American women writers in the early twentieth century: Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Zitkala-Ša, and Gertrude Schalk. Specifically, it examines portraits of women in pieces that appeared in national magazines from 1900-1935 that bracket these writers’ careers and that reflect anxieties about their professional authorial identities complicated by gender and, in the case of Native American Zitkala-Ša (Yankton Sioux) and African American Gertrude Schalk, race as well. In a period characterized by fierce debates over the role of women in a dawning modern age, these writers participated …

Woolf And Intertextuality, Anne Fernald

Anne E Fernald

No abstract provided.

Surviving The Waterless Flood: Feminism And Ecofeminsim In Margaret Atwood’S The Handmaid’S Tale, Oryx And Crake, And The Year Of The Flood, Karen Stein

Karen F Stein

No abstract provided.

Rachel Carson, Karen Stein

Karen F Stein

Rachel Carson is the twentieth century's most significant environmentalist. Her books about the sea blend science and poetry as they invite readers to share her celebration of the ocean's wonders. Silent Spring, her compelling expose of the damage caused by the widespread aerial spraying of persistent organic pesticides such as DDT, opened our eyes to the interconnectedness of all living beings and the ecological systems we inhabit. Carson's work challenges the belief that science and technology can control the natural world. She calls us to rekindle our sense of wonder at nature's power and beauty, and to tread lightly on …

Sacrificio, Violencia Y Nación En Lituma En Los Andes De Mario Vargas Llosa, Cesar Valverde

Cesar Valverde

No abstract provided.