Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

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

Secrets And Hiding Places: The Worth Of Women In Nicholas Nickleby, Elizabeth Redmond May 2007

Secrets And Hiding Places: The Worth Of Women In Nicholas Nickleby, Elizabeth Redmond

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In early Victorian England, married women were denied the legal right to own property, and social convention remanded them to ostracism if they chose to remain single. Likewise, jobs that were available to women failed to pay a living wage, so women were placed under tremendous economic and social pressure to marry. In Charles Dickens' novel, Nicholas Nickleby, he depicts how marriage becomes manipulated within the working and middle classes as a means to acquire wealth. Dickens also compares the repression of women to the abuse suffered by school children in the Yorkshire schools, which had a reputation for neglecting …


'Many Feign As They Are Dead": The Counterfeit Death In Romeo And Juliet And Much Ado About Nothing, Julie Bowman May 2007

'Many Feign As They Are Dead": The Counterfeit Death In Romeo And Juliet And Much Ado About Nothing, Julie Bowman

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Examines the function of the trope of the couterfeit death for two Shakespearean heroines, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Hero in Much Ado about Nothing. Using the plays, antecedents, analogues, and cultural materials, argues that the feigned death functions as a strategy for coping with the limitations and strictures of the heroines' cultural environment; it helps them achieve their particular goals, in both cases a desired marriage. Thus, the heroines become active players in the plots, exercising a measure of agency by counterfeiting death, rather than passive victims of the patriarchal culture.