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Review Of George Eliot In Context, Margaret Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This collection offers a wide range of individual and rigorous criticism, with essays by the most informed specialists: amongst others, Margaret Harris on 'Biographies’, John Rignall on 'Landscape' and 'Metropolitanism’, Melissa Raines on 'Language', Leonee Ormond on 'The Visual Arts', Ruth Livesey on 'Class' and 'Transport', Joanne Shattock on 'Editions ' and 'Publishing and Publishers’, Richard Menke on 'Industry and technology'. Texts in context include journalism as well as fiction and poetry.

I have a few reservations. Most of the essays are remarkably condensed but one or two have more breadth than depth. In 'Travel and Tourism' Judith 10hnston touches …

'In Isolation Human Power Is Limited, In Combination It Is Infinite': Tracing Ludwig Feuerbach's Essence Of Christianity Through Daniel Deronda, Milena Schwab-Graham

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Written between January 1873 and June 1876, Daniel Deronda was George Eliot's final and most ambitious novel. The Jewish-born, later excommunicated Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, whose Ethics Eliot translated in 1856, would perhaps seem the more obvious choice of philosophical context for our analysis of Deronda, owing to his religious affinity with the eponymous protagonist. However, Ludwig Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, translated by Eliot in 1854, provides a more thorough basis for drawing out the ethical complexities of her final novel. Feuerbach's philosophy, the influence of which is integral to all her novels, hinges upon 'the moral [ ...] qualitative, …

Chairman's Annual Report For 2013, John Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

We can be pleased with the Fellowship's year in 2013. For some time now we have tried to add extra events to the well-established series of meetings built up over the years. In 2013 we looked towards Coventry to provide a theme for the year, and were delighted with the results, much helped, it has to be said, by the enthusiasm and new ideas brought to the Fellowship by Vanessa Oakes, whose writing skills have much enhanced our programme. The other major event for the year was our emergence, blinking and floundering, into the world of websites and Facebook (Twitter …

Casaubon's Impotence: A Literary Libel?, Marianne Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

There are some literary hypotheses which so suit readers' impressions of a text that they become accepted almost as literary fact, as if they were stated in the text itself or had been confirmed by the author in an interview, letter or notebook. This seems to have become the case with Edward Casaubon's sexual impotence in Middlemarch. Gordon Haight complained that undergraduates 'despite a generation of sex-education' never failed to describe Casaubon as impotent simply by virtue of his age. Casaubon was around forty-eight. Haight was seventy-three when he wrote this essay, and indignantly listed the famous men who had …

“It Made The Ladies Into Ghosts”: The Male Hero's Journey And The Destruction Of The Feminine In William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! And Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon, Catherine Ruth Schetina

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is a consideration of the intertextual relationship between William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. It considers the objectification and destruction of women and female-coded men in the service of the male protagonist's journey to selfhood, with particular focus on the construction of race, gender, and class performances.

The Power Of Multiplying: Reproductive Control In American Culture, 1850-1930, Virginia B. Engholm

Theses and Dissertations--English

Prior to the advent of modern birth control beginning in the nineteenth century, the biological reproductive cycle of pregnancy, post-partum recovery, and nursing dominated women’s adult years. The average birth rate per woman in 1800 was just over seven, but by 1900, that rate had fallen to just under than three and a half. The question that this dissertation explores is what cultural narratives about reproduction and reproductive control emerge in the wake of this demographic shift. What’s at stake in a woman’s decision to reproduce, for herself, her family, her nation? How do women, and society, control birth?

In …

Hybridity, Trauma, And Queer Identity: Reading Masculinity Across The Texts Of Junot Díaz, Hannah Fraser Legris

Theses and Dissertations--English

When writing about Junot Díaz’s Drown (1996) Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) and This is How You Lose Her (2012), I focus on the iterations of masculinity depicted and embodied by Yunior de las Casas, the primary narrator of this collection. I explore the links between diaspora, hybridity, masculinity, and trauma, arguing that both socio-historical and personal traumatic experience reverberates through the psyches and bodies of Díaz’s characters. I demonstrate the relationship between Yunior’s navigation of the United States and the Dominican Republic and his ever-shifting sexuality, self-presentation, and gender identity. The physical and discursive spaces he must …

Knowing And Being Known: Sexual Delinquency, Stardom, And Adolescent Girlhood In Midcentury American Film, Michael Todd Hendricks

Theses and Dissertations--English

Sexual delinquency marked midcentury cinematic representations of adolescent girls in 1940s, 50, and early 60s. Drawing from the history of adolescence and the context of midcentury female juvenile delinquency, I argue that studios and teen girl stars struggled for decades with publicity, censorship, and social expectations regarding the sexual license of teenage girls. Until the late 1950s, exploitation films and B movies exploited teen sex and pregnancy while mainstream Hollywood ignored those issues, struggling to promote teen girl stars by tightly controlling their private lives but depriving fan magazines of the gossip and scandals that normally fueled the machinery of …

“Of The Woman First Of All”: Walt Whitman And Women's Literary History, Vivian Delchamps

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis contemplates Walt Whitman's role in the lives of 19th and 20th century women writers and his significance to early American feminism. I consider the ways women inspired him to develop pro-feminist ideas about maternity, womanhood, and female liberation.

Reading With The Grain: On Vin Nardizzi’S Wooden Os: Shakespeare’S Theatres And England’S Trees, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Em(Body)Ing Autonomy: Black Women’S Bodies And Self-Liberation In The Novels Of Zora Neale Hurston And Alice Walker, Caitlin Rose Riley Duttry

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Can The Raped Woman Speak?, Zainab El-Mansi

Dentistry

Rape has been known since the dawn of history as a method by which women were subjugated to the power of men. This horrid experience has always been silenced for several reasons which will be investigated in this book. Literature has always been able to uncover what is barred from expression; hence, part of this book is dedicated to surveying the different literary representations of this traumatic experience. What this book is concerned with is war rape, as it gains further connotations during wars and political conflicts. War rape is depicted in the two literary texts of analysis here: Coetzee's …

Undermining The Angelic Restrictions Of First-Wave Feminism: What The New Woman Did, Didn't, And Wouldn't Do, Jane Kristen Asher

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation provides an intertextual reading of Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did (1895), Victoria Cross's The Woman Who Didn't (1895), and Lucas Cleeve's The Woman Who Wouldn't (1895) in order to historically and culturally contextualize these popular New Woman novels in social-purity feminism, the marriage debate, and reticent sexual politics of the late-nineteenth century. By examining the ways that The Woman Who heroines discursively and thematically engage with first-wave feminism and by focusing on this dialectical exchange of feminist ideas and practices as they were manifested in feminist publications and campaigns at the turn of the century, I argue …

Cultural Discourse In Taiwan. Ed. Chin-Chuan Cheng, I-Chun Wang, And Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek., Chin-Chuan Cheng, I-Chun Wang, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

The collected volume Cultural Discourse in Taiwan — edited by Chin-Chuan Cheng, I-Chun Wang, and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and published by National Sun Yat-sen Uiniversity Press in 2009 — is intended as an addition to scholarship in the field of Taiwan Studies. The articles in the volume are in many aspects comparative and the topics discussed are in the context of literary and culture scholarship. At the same time, the volume is interdisciplinary as the articles cover historical perspectives, analyses of texts by Taiwan authors, and cultural discourse as related to Taiwan consciousness, language, and linguistic issues. Copyright release …

Clcweb Best Practices, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Mapping The World, Culture, And Border-Crossing, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek, I-Chun Wang

CLCWeb Library

Authors in the collected volume Mapping the World, Culture, and Border-crossing — edited by Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and I-Chun Wang and published by National Sun Yat-sen University Press in 2010— begin with exploring theoretical premises about the processes and ramifications of cultural crossings to establish a clearly defined theoretical context for the case studies which follow. The case studies range from the creation of identity through patriotic songs in Taiwan under martial law, to nationality and Japanese identity, cultural autonomy in contemporary North America, Asian migration to Latin America, ethnic identity in the writings of Tan, Naipaul, Eliot, and …

Pursuit Of Empowerment: The Evolution Of The Romance Novel And Its Readership In Fifty Shades Of Grey, Amy Elizabeth Quale

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the new-adult romance work Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James and the novel's readership to identify the evolution of the romance genre and the ways in which the genre is used as a tool for empowerment. As the genre evolves, subgenres develop with the new "empowering" characteristics. As new technologies present themselves to readers, readers have more opportunities to participate with one another and affect the genre's evolution. I assert that Fifty Shades of Grey and the romance community are limited by the patriarchal values traditionally portrayed by the genre; however, the nature of the …

Creating Female Space: The Feminine Sublime In The Awakening And The House Of Mirth, Emily F. Faison

Selected Honors Theses

This thesis examines the Edna Pontellier and Lily Bart, the respective protagonists of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, integrating the theoretical concept of the sublime, particularly engaging Barbara Freemans’s idea of a feminine sublime, as discussed in her book, The Feminine Sublime: Gender and Excess in Women’s Fiction. In three chapters, the thesis provides an overview and brief history of the theory of the sublime, contextualizing Freeman’s argument, and measures the success of both Edna’s and Lily’s attempts to engage the sublime as they each struggle to find their place as women …

Performative Gender And Pop Fiction Females: "Emancipating" Byronic Heroines Through A Feminist Education, Joy Smith

Masters Theses

"I can be a regular bitch. Just try me." With this phrase emblazoned across her t-shirt, Lisbeth Salander, pierced, tattooed, and bedecked in leather, waltzes from the pages of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This woman who subverts authority, maliciously tattoos and sodomizes a man, and intentionally distances herself from close relationships of any kind has somehow managed to capture both the attention and admiration of the American audience. This disheartening phenomenon stems from a renewed interest in the Byronic heroine, a female possessing those traits traditionally assigned to Byronic heroes and men, and the rise of …

Occupying The Pedestal: Gender Issues In Ellen Gilchrist, Karon Reese

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ellen Gilchrist's works shows the struggles of women living in a postmodern South. This dissertation explores Gilchrist's representations of southern women as they transition from the old South to modernity. Gilchrist's work depicts women who attempt to break off the pedestal of white Southern womanhood, but never quite do, often simultaneously disrupting and confirming traditional notions of a "good Southern lady." Gilchrist shows how women occupy the pedestal as a form of refuge and also as a form of protest. These are women who, as they navigate the transition to a new South, are reluctant to surrender the privilege of …

What Jane Saw, Kate Singer

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

Review of Professor Janine Barchas' "What Jane Saw?" a website that reconstructs Joshua Reynolds's 1813 retrospective art exhibit, which Jane Austen attended, with particular attention to the Regency social and cultural history depicted in Austen's novels.

Frances Burney’S Cecilia: A Publishing History, By Catherine M. Parisian, Lee Kahan

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

No abstract provided.

Matters Of Fact In Jane Austen: History, Location, And Celebrity, By Janine Barchas, Laura E. Thomason

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

No abstract provided.

Crossing Borders: An Interdisciplinary Course In The "Enlightenment", Carol White, Kathryn P. Russell

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

In this essay, we present a twofold version of the first team-taught course on the eighteenth century designed by faculty at Clayton State University who plan to develop and teach this course again in the near future. We hope that our explanation of the original course and our projected future version of the course will be useful to scholars who teach in the eighteenth century, as well as to specialists in other historical periods who wish to plan revisions of courses to make them more reflective of current scholarship in gender studies. Authors taught in this course include Benjamin Franklin, …

Bosom Friends And The Sapphic Breasts Of Belinda, Ula E. Klein

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

This article examines Maria Edgeworth’s 1801 novel Belinda in order to argue that the breast at the center of Lady Delacour’s narrative signifies not maternal failure but Sapphic feelings and connections. While previous studies of the novel have discussed the wounded breast of Lady Delacour as a punishment for her transgressions or as an emblem of her patriarchal oppression, this article claims that the wounded breast is both a sign of and a means to female same-sex desire and relationships. This article contrasts the wounded, festering breast with the tableau that ends the novel. The tableau, a constructed vision of …

Conference Report: Romola And Felix, Institute Of English Studies, 23 November 2013., A.G. Van Den Broek

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's two Marmite novels - given their reputations, not everyone tries them, and when they do, they often leave them only partially digested - Romola (1862-3), the one she famously said aged her, and Felix Holt (1866), the one with that involved legal plot, were the focus of last year's George Eliot Conference sponsored by the Institute of English Studies at the University of London. Nevertheless, despite their uneven appeal, the Conference drew a tolerably-sized audience. Barbara Hardy (Birkbeck and Swansea) and Louise Lee (Roehampton) once again organized the Conference, bringing together a group of speakers who variously dealt …

Distancing The Past: New Forms Of Discomfort With Aids In The U.S, John C. Hawley

English

In his Introduction to this collection, Gustavo Subero makes reference to the AIDS Quilt, a reference made especially significant since the year 2012 marked its 25th anniversary. The whole quilt had been last displayed in 1996; in the summer of 2012, 8.000 panels were rotated each day in the National Mall in Washington, DC. The quilt, composed of thousands of 3’ x 6’ panels (intentionally the size of a human grave), currently consists of over 48.000 panels honoring more than 94.000 individuals who have died of AIDS. In the early days of the quilt, in the 1980s and 1990s, the …

Framing Eve: Contemporary Retellings Of Biblical Women For Young People, Elizabeth Gillhouse

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the ideological implications of re-visioning Bible stories for young readers in order to negotiate changing cultural attitudes regarding gender. I begin by exploring three theories of retelling traditional narratives including John Stephens and Robyn McCallum's discussion of "reversion," Adrienne Rich's concept of "re-vision," and the Jewish tradition of biblical Midrash. Stephens and McCallum's term "reversion" emphasizes the inevitable cultural influence that occurs during the process of retelling an existing narrative. Rich's discussion of "re-vision" advocates an active attempt on the part of feminists to re-see traditional narratives that have historically been used to oppress women. The Jewish …

“A Southern Expendable”: Cultural Patriarchy, Maternal Abandonment, And Narrativization In Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out Of Carolina, Natalie Carter

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Bastard Out of Carolina is a remarkable text for many reasons: Allison’s unsentimental portrayal of profound poverty in the Old South; her unflinching depiction of incest; and the conclusion—devastating for character and reader alike—all contribute to the “flawless” nature of this novel. Perhaps most remarkable, though, is Allison’s ability to seamlessly weave a particularly Southern tradition of masculinity and violence into this heartbreaking tale of a daughter’s trauma and a mother’s abandonment. In this article, I will investigate Allison’s multifaceted portrayals of trauma in Bastard Out of Carolina, which—when combined with an analysis of social and economic traditions in …

Shieldmaiden, Allison A. Taylor

Student Publications

"Shieldmaiden" is a poem that examines J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series from a feminist perspective, focusing on the character of Éowyn and her influence on female readers of Tolkien's novels.