English Language and Literature Commons^™

Textual Variants In Eudora Welty’S "A Piece Of News”, Brooke Derrington, Abby Choe

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Eudora Welty’s “A Piece of News” presents the question, how does one achieve self-actualization? For the protagonist Ruby Fisher, the answer is language, although that answer is not clear in the original 1937 published version of the story. That story’s focal point is Ruby’s tumultuous and complicated relationship with her husband, Clyde. In contrast, the revised 1941 version from Welty’s collection A Curtain of Green shifts the focus from Ruby’s abusive marriage to her interiority. The subsequent increase in word count, shifts in narration, and emphasis on Ruby claiming her name when she reads it in a newspaper elevates the …

Romola: The Failure Of A Husband And Triumph Of A Wife, Ryan Harding

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

George Eliot’s fifteenth century romance Romola follows the coming of age and independence of the titular character, an Italian noblewoman during the Renaissance. This essay examines the development of the relationship between Romola and her husband Tito’s common law wife, Tessa, specifically through the impact of Tito’s personal failures on both women. Throughout the novel, Romola struggles with her failed marriage, her need for personal connection, and Tito’s poor treatment of Tessa. Using the knowledge gained from her experiences and Tito’s poor behavior as an example, Romola transforms herself into the proper husband figure for Tessa: a provider, protector, and …

Simulations Of The Androgynous Society: Shattering Gender Stereotypes In George Eliot’S Silas Marner, Jessica L. Wall

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

This paper examines George Eliot's novel Silas Marner and the compelling argument it asserts against Victorian gender stereotypes. Through the contradictory successes of characters that fail to conform to their expected niches, Eliot presents her revolutionary vision for an androgynous society. Most notably, Silas’s accidental motherhood redeems his purpose while saving Eppie's life, Priscilla's ability to protect the well-being of her family stems from her avoidance of a husband and assumption of a “masculine” managerial position, and Eppie’s idyllic life with Silas is preserved by her refusal to be treated as a possession by male authority figures. Through the experiences …

Life At The Meridian: The Subjectivity Of Ethics In The Works Of Albert Camus And Friedrich Nietzsche, Clancy E. Robledo

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

This paper endeavors to respond to the questions: can ethics can be unbound from its traditional rootedness in religious systems? If so, what contributions did Nietzsche make to liberate value from the shackles of Western morality? To what degree is Camus one of the “new philosophers” Nietzsche calls for in On the Genealogy of Morals?

In an attempt to demonstrate that ethics can and do exist vividly in the realm of the non-religious, this paper will begin by illustrating the metaphysical door Nietzsche opens through his use of aphorisms in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and his investigation of the history …

“Against The Ebony Of Her Skin”: The Impact Of Harlem Renaissance Blues Culture And Literature On The Development Of Womanism, Maia Y. Rodriguez

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

This paper will investigate the ways in which the music and writers spurred by the explosion of African American culture that was the Harlem Renaissance were responsible for propagating the rhetoric and fresh representations of African American womanhood that would later be incorporated into the theoretical framework of black feminism championed by critics like bell hooks and brought into fruition as the recognizable school of womanism by Alice Walker. I will argue, using the literature of “proto-feminist” Harlem Renaissance writers Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston as well as the literature of womanist writers like Walker, that without the Harlem …

Drowning In Sacrifice: Maggie Tulliver’S Role In George Eliot’S The Mill On The Floss, Kami E. Bates

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Upon examining the personal rejection and eventual demise of Maggie Tulliver, the protagonist of The Mill on the Floss, it becomes evident that her death is a sacrifice through which she demonstrates the morality of George Eliot’s religion of humanity. Maggie is a headstrong, intelligent, and memorable character who does not fit into her community and ultimately drowns in a flood while attempting to save her loved ones. The story begs the question: why must such an endearing main character perish? One possibility is that her character flaws make her downfall inevitable. The high-class and hypocritical members of the …

Hemingway’S Flapper Transcending Hollywood Norms: Brett Ashley And The Sun Also Rises, Sam Vaughn

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Hemingway’s portrayal of the “new woman” of the 1920s, namely Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises, is more strikingly complex than those portrayals in popular films of the time. In Brett, Hemingway develops a complexity and depth of the “new woman” portrayal by utilizing Brett’s tumultuous past, which is in stark contrast to her filmic counterparts. Her conflicted characterization sets her apart from the typical flat representation of the woman of her time in film. Hemmingway provides a glimpse into a “real new women’s” complex way of being in the new 1920’s metropolitan world.

A New Heroine: Renovation Of The Saint Theresa Archetype In George Eliot’S Middlemarch, Aaron Elijah Sims

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Dorothea Brooke is a passionate, capable woman in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, but she is tragically portrayed as an updated version of Saint Theresa of Avila from Catholic Mythology. The novel opens, “Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heartbeats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long-recognizable deed” (Eliot 2). There is nothing dishonorable in being a woman of loving heartbeats who sobs for unattained goodness; however, the inconvenient reality is that sobbing will not achieve any practical good, and passionate, able women …

The Art Of Perception: An Analysis Of How A Desired Public Image Affects One’S Actions, Alexandria Mccollum

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Written in 1859, Adam Bede was George Eliot’s first novel and marked the beginning of her fascination with class distinction and social perception. The main characters of her novel, Adam Bede and Hetty Sorrel, find themselves engaged in efforts in maintain their respective images, fulfill societal expectations, and transcend class distinctions. Initially, Adam is painted by Eliot as a devoted, hardworking, hypercritical man while Hetty is depicted as childlike and innocent. As each character struggles to maintain her/his public image and find their place in the class system, they encounter challenges that call for reevaluation of the importance of image. …

Xenophobia, Whiteness, And Citizenship In The United States, Carolyn Dapper

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

In January 2014, the Republican Party released new "principles of immigration" which among many reforms, made space for the possibility of a pathway toward "legal status" for certain groups of undocumented immigrants in the United States. This paper investigates the rhetorical difference between "citizenship" and "legal status" and claims how these principles reflect the GOP's motives to ease their conservative constituents' anxieties surrounding the protection of a traditional, euroamerican definition of American citizenship. This paper analyzes the relationship between whiteness and citizenship, a class which extends beyond ethnicity and involves education, income level, and values associated with WASP America.