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Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons

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English Language and Literature

William & Mary

Theses/Dissertations

Articles 1 - 10 of 10

Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Framing The Female Narrative: Male Audiences And Women's Storytelling Within Two Brontë Novels, Sammy Murphy May 2022

Framing The Female Narrative: Male Audiences And Women's Storytelling Within Two Brontë Novels, Sammy Murphy

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Since being published, both Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights have attracted scholarly and critical attention on account of their framed narratives. At the time of publication, some portion of this attention was negative; however, since the early 20th century, scholars have moved towards recognizing and analyzing potential purposes for the narrative structures of both texts. Within my thesis, I enter into this field of scholarship so as to analyze how the frame narrative functions as a tool for both simulation and subversion within the two texts. More specifically, I argue that Emily and …


'Carcern' And 'Wordcræft': Enclosure, Connection And Gender In Cynewulf's "Juliana" And "Elene", Katherine Grotewiel May 2022

'Carcern' And 'Wordcræft': Enclosure, Connection And Gender In Cynewulf's "Juliana" And "Elene", Katherine Grotewiel

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The scholarly narrative around monastic enclosure has centered on rigid gender divisions. But Cynewulf's Juliana and Elene reveal a more complex picture. Through images of enclosure, binding and the creation of words, Cynewulf unwinds these restrictive ties of gender in the epilogues of his poems and instead identifies with the figures in these poems not along lines of gender, but in their experiences of enclosure.


Feelings Of Fallenness: Affect And Gender In Victorian Fallen Woman Novels, Kate Kowalski May 2022

Feelings Of Fallenness: Affect And Gender In Victorian Fallen Woman Novels, Kate Kowalski

Undergraduate Honors Theses

A famous poem by Coventry Patmore articulated Victorian expectations for women: to be “the angel in the house.” The woman was the arbiter of morality, spiritual guide and helpmeet, and was worshiped almost as a goddess of purity— and goddesses need no legal protections. Chastity and submission were not only expected, but demanded of Victorian women. After all, these qualities were scientifically inherent in women (to the Victorian mind); the biological imperative of reproduction and maternity rendered women’s bodies a sacred space and prevented their minds from developing as a man’s could.The twin forces of Victorian patriarchal science and religion …


Flipping The Castle: Evolution Of Gothic Spaces In The Domestic Sphere, Kate Lucas May 2021

Flipping The Castle: Evolution Of Gothic Spaces In The Domestic Sphere, Kate Lucas

Undergraduate Honors Theses

"Flipping the Castle" explores topics of domesticity in Gothic literature over the course of three centuries. The Gothic is a genre with roots in 18th century British literature, but more broadly, it can be described as horror that has a social function, and it is the birthplace of some of the most successful narratives in horror fiction. The aspects of the Gothic this research is concerned with is its themes of unchecked masculine aggression versus repressed femininity, its ability to adapt over time, and its preoccupation with setting, specifically the home, whether that be a medieval castle, a haunted house, …


“Garden-Magic”: Conceptions Of Nature In Edith Wharton’S Fiction, Jonathan Malks May 2021

“Garden-Magic”: Conceptions Of Nature In Edith Wharton’S Fiction, Jonathan Malks

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I situate Edith Wharton’s guiding idea of “garden-magic” at the center of my thesis because Wharton’s fiction shows how a garden space could naturalize otherwise inadmissible behaviors within upper-class society while helping a character tie such behavior to a greater possibility for escape. To this end, Wharton situates gardens as idealized touchstones within the built environment of New York City, spaces where characters believe they can reach self-actualization within a version of nature that is man-made. Actualization, in this sense, stems from a character’s imaginative escape that is enabled by a perception of the garden as a kind of natural …


Emily Dickinson's And Christina Rossetti's Portrayals Of Goblins And Their Threat To Feminine Integrity, Miki Jean Hazard Jan 2002

Emily Dickinson's And Christina Rossetti's Portrayals Of Goblins And Their Threat To Feminine Integrity, Miki Jean Hazard

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Katherine Anne Porter's "Old Mortality" And Virginia Woolf: A Study In Feminism, Rebecca S. L. Waite Jan 1998

Katherine Anne Porter's "Old Mortality" And Virginia Woolf: A Study In Feminism, Rebecca S. L. Waite

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


A Voice Of One's Own: Virginia Woolf, The Problem Of Language, And Feminist Aesthetics, Lisa Karin Levine Jan 1993

A Voice Of One's Own: Virginia Woolf, The Problem Of Language, And Feminist Aesthetics, Lisa Karin Levine

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Virginia Woolf's "Between The Acts" As An Extension Of Woolf's Feminist Polemics, Patricia Ann Hoppe Jan 1993

Virginia Woolf's "Between The Acts" As An Extension Of Woolf's Feminist Polemics, Patricia Ann Hoppe

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Christina Rossetti: A Feminist Visionary, Cindy K. Currence Jan 1990

Christina Rossetti: A Feminist Visionary, Cindy K. Currence

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.