Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

British Women Writers Conference Call For Papers

Honorable Mention

For its 25th annual meeting, the British Women Writers Conference invites papers and panel proposals considering the theme of “Generations.

“The World Broke In Two”: The Gendered Experience Of Trauma And Fractured Civilian Identity In Post-World War I Literature, Erin Cheatham

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the complexities of civilian identity and the crisis of gender in twentieth century fiction produced after World War I. Of central concern are four novels written by prominent women authors, novels that deal with themes of trauma, violence, and shifting gender roles in a post-war society: Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier, Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House, and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Jacob’s Room. Although these novels do not directly portray the battlefield experiences of war, I argue that, at their core, they are “war novels” in the fullest sense, concerned with the …

“But I Must Also Feel It Like A Man”: Redressing Representations Of Masculinity In Macbeth, Caitlin H. Higgins

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

The most popular characters in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, second only to Macbeth himself, are the Weird Sisters. Despite being called “Sisters” the women are oddly androgynous and there is very little in their physical appearance or behavior to indicate their gender. Even more importantly, there is nothing to indicate their place in the Scottish patriarchy of which Macbeth and Banquo are firmly established. As the first actors to appear on stage and arguably the manipulators of Macbeth’s fate, the genderless Weird Sisters would have disturbed deeply rooted understandings of gender definition and hierarchy in viewers. This disturbance allows Shakespeare …

“See Ourselves As Others See Us”: Empathy Across Gender Boundaries In James Joyce’S Ulysses, Madison V. Chartier

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

Many critics originally attacked James Joyce’s Ulysses for its dark representation of gender relations. Today, many scholars consider this criticism prematurely formed and recognize that these early critics responded more to Stephen Dedalus’s antagonistic, misogynistic views in the novel’s opening chapters than to the rest of the epic and the views of the novel’s main protagonist, Leopold Bloom, who displays a much more receptive, appreciative attitude toward women. These scholars now believe that gender relations as portrayed in Ulysses actually undermine preconceived notions of a gendered hierarchy. However, this difference in character perspective is not the only or even the …

"Silence Laps Smooth Over Sound': Sound, Gender, And War, In Jacob's Room", Betsy Lawson

SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

In A Room of One’s Own, as well as in Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf contends that the devaluing of women and the perpetuating of women’s inferiority facilitate all heroic and violent action (A Room of One’s Own, 36). In this paper, I’ve applied Woolf’s argument to her 1922 novel, Jacob’s Room, and focused on the ways in which certain sounds become gendered as masculine or feminine and devalued accordingly, leading to a masculine society that operates on masculine ideals. In Jacob’s Room, women’s voices are characterized as chatty and empty, where men’s voices exude authority and …

The Subversion Of Traditional Gender Roles In Thomas Hardy’S 'The Mayor Of Casterbridge', Emma S. Shaw

Student Publications

This essay examines Thomas Hardy's understanding and subversion of gender roles in The Mayor of Casterbridge by focusing on the novel's two most prominent characters and their respective progressions over the course of the narrative. Michael Henchard’s hypermasculine behavior and eventual undoing is juxtaposed with Elizabeth-Jane’s active rejection of the male gaze, as well as her unique role as a proxy for the reader. In his 1886 novel, Hardy questions the legitimacy of gender expectations by acknowledging and subsequently undermining patriarchal traditions.

“The Finest Production Of The Finest Country Upon Earth”: Gender And Nationality In The Writings Of Nineteenth-Century British Women Travelers To Portugal, Manuela MourãO

English Faculty Publications

First paragraph:

Critical attention to the writings of nineteenth-century British women travelers has repeatedly stressed their value as evidence of the writers’ attempts at overcoming the constraints of nineteenth-century ideologies of femininity that constructed women as inferior or ancillary (Frawley; Robinson; Foster; Dolan; Middleton); it has also often emphasized the importance of reading them within contemporary discourses such as imperialism, colonialism, or nationalism (Blunt; Frawley; Foster; Mills; Siegel). This essay focuses on three accounts by nineteenth- century British women travelers to Portugal— Marianne Baillie’s Lisbon in the Years 1821, 1822, and 1823 (1824); Julia Pardoe’s Traits and Traditions of Portugal …

Gender And Power In Waiting For Godot, Ryan Wright

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Shakespeare And Boyhood: Early Modern Representations And Contemporary Appropriations, Marvin Tyler Sasser

Dissertations

This dissertation demonstrates that Shakespearean boyhood, both in early modern plays and contemporary reimaginings for young readers, critiques patriarchal and hegemonic ideals through the rhetoric and behavior of boy characters. Although critics have called Shakespeare’s boy characters indistinguishable, I find that they provide Shakespeare a unique resource to offer persuasive skepticism about heroic conventions, education, and political instability. This project begins by examining the lexical network of boy in order to chart its uses in early modern England. The subsequent three chapters establish how Shakespeare uses boys to comment on a range of ideal manhoods, such as the chivalrous …

Review Of Helen E.M. Brooks, Actresses, Gender, And The Eighteenth-Century Stage: Playing Women, Leslie Ritchie

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Review Of Amanda E. Herbert, Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, And Friendship In Early Modern Britain, Angela Rehbein

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Review of Amanda E. Herbert, Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain. New Haven: Yale UP, 2014. xi, 256 pages: illustrations; 24 cm. ISBN 978-0-300-17740-4.

Dress Rehearsal: Word Play And Narrative Construction In The Assembly Of Ladies, Nicola Blake

Publications and Research

In the erotics of theater, words are (theoretically) corporeal. They are up there for public scrutiny. The mind's eye echoes the mind's ear. Words act. They are elements of the: scenic investiture affecting, synesthetically, light space rhythm pattern sound, but they also resound at the deepest level of the: mise-en-scene, through self time memory consciousness as well. Mere words, true. Problematic to the last breath of being. The: material elements of theater - like the: body itself - situate us.

Queer 'Paradise Lost': Reproduction, Gender, And Sexuality, Emily R. Kolpien

Scripps Senior Theses

In the span of this thesis, I investigate the queer nature of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, and argue that in spite of the biblical subject matter it is in fact a text filled with instances of queer transgression. I focus on preexisting feminist critiques of Milton in my introduction in order to ground myself within the academic field, and in order to illustrate how I will be branching out from it. In my first chapter, I discuss the queered nature of the poem’s landscapes, such as Chaos and Hell, and the specifically queer and masculine nature of …

Expanding The Literary Enterprise: How We Experience The Texts Of The Advanced Placement English Literature And Composition Curriculum, Molly Ostrow

Honors Theses

How we read the texts of the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition curriculum.

Extremes Of Gender And Power: Sycorax’S Absence In Shakespeare’S The Tempest, Brittney Blystone

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

The Dangers Of Playing House: Celia's Subversive Role In As You Like It, Allison Grant

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

The Beauty And The Barrister: Gender Roles, Madness, And The Basis For Identity In Lady Audley's Secret, Corey Hayes

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis examines the concept of identity in the novel Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. In the mid to late Victorian period, self-definition was strongly tied to gender roles. Men were expected to be mentally active, physical strong, and morally guiding leaders of society, and women were to be their passive, pious, domestically minded followers. These expectations for behavior were so strong that those breaking them were in danger of being considered insane. In Braddon’s novel, the behavior of most characters does not align with the expectations for their gender. The exception is Lady Audley, the apparently ideal …

Donne’S 'Elegy 19': To His Mistress Transcending The Bed, Femininity, And Gender Distinction, Christopher Sarachilli

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

No abstract provided.

Collecting Women: Poetry And Lives, 1700-1780 By Chantel M. Lavoie, Holly Faith Nelson

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Hearing Eighteenth-Century Occasional Poetry By And About Women: Swift And Barbauld, Elizabeth Kraft

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

“In Counterfeit Passion”: Cross-Dressing, Transgression, And Fraud In Shakespeare And Middleton, Anastasia S. Bierman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the way women cross-dressing as men functions as a crime in Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl and William Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Twelfth Night. While many modern scholars have discussed cross-dressing in these plays, many look to the end of the plays as the foundation for their analysis rather than the play as a whole. Because of this oversight, scholars deem the characters in the plays not transgressive, when, in fact, cross-dressing is transgressive. They ignore the way cross-dressing is often presented in writing in the Renaissance, i.e. as a type …

Women’S Literacy In Early Modern Spain And The New World, Ed. By Anne J. Cruz And Rosilie Hernández, Kirsten Schultz

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Inviting Twenty-First Century Students To The Eighteenth-Century Party, Kathryn Strong Hansen

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This article describes a classroom activity that increases students’ connection to literary characters, and by extension, texts. The activity, constructed as a party attended by literary characters, tasks students with taking on the point of view of one character in an assigned novel. This can encourage a student to see the viewpoint of a character that differs from him or her in gender, social status, or any other category of difference. In heightening students’ relationship to eighteenth-century characters, I argue, instructors can bring the eighteenth century closer to contemporary students as well as increase students’ sensitivity to viewpoints that differ …

Populism, Gender, And Sympathy In The Romantic Novel, By James P. Carson, Elizabeth J. Mathews

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Intersectionality Of Race, Gender, And Class In The ‘Hard Times: Women Scholars And The Dynamics Of Economic Recession', Christine Clark-Evans

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Acting, Integrity, And Gender In Coriolanus, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

Shakespeare's Coriolanus... anticipates and corroborates modern-day analyses emphasizing the sociopolitical dimensions and determinants of antitheatrical discourse. In the present essay, I would like to shift my focus from questions of class/status to questions of sex/gender, endeavoring to trace the links between Coriolanus’s antiperformative zeal and his ultra-masculine identity. For though it is true that Coriolanus opposes the dissimulation of others on political grounds (i.e., it creates social confusion), what causes him to reject play-acting in his own person is the sexualized fear that it will unman him (i.e., turn him into a squeaking virgin or crying boy). In this manner, …

Gender Politics In The Novels Of Eliza Haywood, Susan Muse

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study investigates how Eliza Haywood addressed ideological conflicts about gender produced by modernization in early eighteenth-century England. Expanding Michael McKeon's theory of the novel to include "questions of gender," I address a wide sample of novels in order to show how Haywood's writing developed during her long career. Her first preoccupation was the sexual double standard that defined "fallen women" as society's exiles. Influenced by the "she-tragedy" of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, Haywood wrote novels that elicited pity for fallen women and searched for reasons to explain their condition. Haywood's writing became overtly political with her …

Romantic Transports: Tabitha Tenney's Female Quixotism In Transatlantic Context, Rachel Carnell, Alison Tracy Hale

English Faculty Publications

A literary criticism of several books including "Female Quixotism" by Tabitha Tenney, "The Female Quixote" by Charlotte Lennox, and "Angelina" by Maria Edgeworth is presented. According to the authors, these novels constitute a transatlantic genre which highlights the moral and cultural complexities faced by women in the 18th and 19th centuries. Particular focus is given to the novels' political contexts. Realism, the French Revolution, and republican government are also discussed.

Acting Virtuous: Chastity, Theatricality, And The Tragedie Of Mariam, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Given the interrelation of female chastity and female theatricality in early modem discourses, it comes as no surprise that both figure importantly in what is believed to be the first original English drama to be written by a woman. As Elizabeth Cary explores a Jewish queen 's sexual purity in The Tragedie of Mariam, she does so by concentrating on questions of performance. Cary's title character explicitly abjures theatricality even as she embraces chastity, creating a fissure in Renaissance discourses on women that threatens to swallow up the antifeminist idea that female chastity is always an act.

"I Unsex'd My Dress": Lord Byron's Seduction Of Gender In "The Corsair", "Lara", And "Don Juan", Alexis Spiceland Lee

Dissertations

The goal of this project is to posit a theory of how Byron’s texts, specifically through the development of his hero, construct gender and sexuality as styles of seduction that resist easy classification by binary systems. I propose that Byron’s works characterize gender through ironic performances of seduction that, because they reveal that binary structures lack a stable core, dissolve systemic differentiation and thus fatally complicate any attempt to force the individual into rigid categories of gender or sexual identity. Byron’s works deploy seduction as a tactic of ironic representation of both gender and sexual practice that is necessarily multiplicitous …