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Missouri State University

Gender roles

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Terrible Women I'Ve Been, Meagan Rose Stoops Jan 2016

The Terrible Women I'Ve Been, Meagan Rose Stoops

MSU Graduate Theses

This thesis is a collection of eight short fictions exploring the characterization of unlikable women in fiction. Each work herein incorporates the themes of romantic relationships and denial of traditional female gender roles. The female characters within embody traits of bitterness, passion, perseverance, rage, cunning, and pursuits of self-preservation and love as motivating forces. Through these characters' actions and choices, the narratives dissolve and reject the commonly accepted portrayals of women in fiction in an attempt to grasp at a greater, more complex truth of human nature and the female psyche.


The Essence Of English Identity: Gender's Role In The Stability Of The Nation In English Literature, From The Anglo-Saxons To The Victorians, Natalie Marie Whitaker Jan 2015

The Essence Of English Identity: Gender's Role In The Stability Of The Nation In English Literature, From The Anglo-Saxons To The Victorians, Natalie Marie Whitaker

MSU Graduate Theses

This thesis, using Jungian analysis, investigates how the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, William Shakespeare's Macbeth, and Charles Dickens's David Copperfield reflect the interdependent spheres of gender relationships that affected societal perceptions of English national identity and stability for over a thousand years. Historian Geoffrey Hindley writes, "the historical reality of an English identity grew out of the traditions of loyalty and lordship from the epic heritage of a pagan past embodied in the poem of Beowulf in a common vernacular tongue.” In the three periods examined here, men and women had responsibilities in marriage that were defined by the societal ideals …