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English Language and Literature Commons

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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

“She Was No Taller Than Your Thumb. So She Was Called Thumbelina”: Gender, Disability, And Visual Forms In Hans Christian Andersen’S “Thumbelina” (1835), Hannah J. Helm Jun 2023

“She Was No Taller Than Your Thumb. So She Was Called Thumbelina”: Gender, Disability, And Visual Forms In Hans Christian Andersen’S “Thumbelina” (1835), Hannah J. Helm

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

This article explores representations of femininity and disability in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “Thumbelina” (1835) and select examples of his paper art. In this article, I argue that, on one level, the fairy tale and Andersen’s own paper cuttings uphold feminine and ableist norms. However, on another level, these literary and visual forms simultaneously work to destabilise social prejudices and challenge bodily normativity. I explore how characters and themes associated with the fairy tale and paper art can be (re)read in strength-based ways. In the story, Thumbelina experiences the world through her smallness, and key themes including accessibility, physical …


Gothic Transformations And Remediations In Cheap Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Wendy Fall Apr 2023

Gothic Transformations And Remediations In Cheap Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Wendy Fall

Dissertations (1934 -)

My project considers the transformation of gothic characters as they move among different types of publications in the nineteenth century. As they meander from triple-decker novels to chapbooks, to theatrical scripts, to periodicals, and to penny serials, gothic stories and portrayals of people in them are altered by the length and technological capability of each form. They also mutate to reflect the tastes and ideologies of their changing audiences, and to hybridize genres under the popular influence of realism toward the mid-century. The mainstays of the gothic mode remain stable; these publications adhere to ambiguous or pluralistic ideologies, are obsessed …