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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Women authors, English 17th century History and criticism'
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1
Lobban, Paul. "Inhabited space : writing as a practice in early modern England; Margaret Hoby, Eleanor Davies, Katherine Philips." Title page, contents and abstract only, 2001. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phl796.pdf.
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Xu, Sufeng. "Lotus flowers rising from the dark mud : late Ming courtesans and their poetry." Thesis, McGill University, 2007. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=102831.
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The dissertation examines the close but overlooked relationship between male poetry societies and the sharp rise of literary courtesans in the late Ming. I attempt to identify a particular group of men who devoted exclusive efforts to the promotion of courtesan culture, that is, urban dwellers of prosperous Jiangnan, who fashioned themselves as retired literati, devoting themselves to art, recreation, and self-invention, instead of government office. I also offer a new interpretation for the decline of courtesan culture after the Ming-Qing transition.Chapter 1 provides an overview of the social-cultural context in which late Ming courtesans flourished. I emphasize office-holding as losing its appeal for late Ming nonconformists who sought other alternative means of self-realization. Chapter 2 examines the importance of poetry by courtesans in literati culture as demonstrated by their visible inclusion in late Ming and early Qing anthologies of women's writings. Chapter 3 examines the life and poetry of individual courtesans through three case studies. Together, these three chapters illustrate the strong identification between nonconformist literati and the courtesans they extolled at both collective and individual levels.
In Chapter 4, by focusing on the context and texts of the poetry collection of the courtesan Chen Susu and on writings about her, I illustrate the efforts by both male and female literati in the early Qing to reproduce the cultural glory of late Ming courtesans. However, despite their cooperative efforts, courtesans became inevitably marginalized in literati culture as talented women of the gentry flourished.
This dissertation as a whole explores how male literati and courtesans responded to the social and literary milieu of late Ming Jiangnan to shed light on aspects of the intersection of self and society in this floating world. This courtesan culture was a counterculture in that: (1) it was deep-rooted in male poetry societies, a cultural space that was formed in opposition to government office; (2) in valuing romantic relationship and friendship, the promoters of this culture deliberately deemphasized the most primary human relations as defined in the Confucian tradition; (3) this culture conditioned, motivated, and promoted serious relationships between literati and courtesans, which fundamentally undermined orthodox values.
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Gossage, Ann. "Between the lines : the representation of Canadian women in English-language novels written by women in the 1930s." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=24085.
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This thesis examines the role of Canadian women as presented in English language novels of the 1930s written by women authors. Within the context of the Great Depression it focuses on issues that are central to women's daily lives such as work, love, marriage and motherhood. It also isolates recurring themes in the novels and attempts to understand the authors' messages within their social context. Social reform, politics and gender relationships are among the subjects explored.
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Chung, Wing-yu, and 鍾詠儒. "British women writers and the city in the early twentieth century." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2003. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B2702409X.
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Collins, Margo. "Wayward Women, Virtuous Violence: Feminine Violence in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature by Women." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2000. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2474/.
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This dissertation examines the role of "acceptable" feminine violence in Restoration and eighteenth-century drama and fiction. Scenes such as Lady Davers's physical assault on Pamela in Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) have understandably troubled recent scholars of gender and literature. But critics, for the most part, have been more inclined to discuss women as victims of violence than as agents of violence. I argue that women in the Restoration and eighteenth century often used violence in order to maintain social boundaries, particularly sexual and economic ones, and that writers of the period drew upon this tradition of acceptable feminine violence in order to create the figure of the violent woman as a necessary agent of social control. One such figure is Violenta, the heroine of Delarivier Manley's novella The Wife's Resentment (1720), who murders and dismembers her bigamous husband. At her trial, Violenta is condemned to death "notwithstanding the Pity of the People" and "the Intercession of the Ladies," who believe that although the "unexampled Cruelty [Violenta] committed afterwards on the dead Body" was excessive, the murder itself is not inexcusable given her husband's bigamy. My research draws upon diverse archival materials, such as conduct manuals, criminal biographies, and legal records, in order to provide a contextual grounding for the interpretation of literary works by women. Moving between contemporary accounts of feminine violence and discussions of pertinent literary works by Eliza Haywood, Susanna Centlivre, Delarivier Manley, Aphra Behn, Mary Pix, and Jane Wiseman, the dissertation examines issues of interpersonal violence and communal violence committed by women.
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Hirsch, Brett Daniel. "Werewolves and women with whiskers : figures of estrangement in early modern English drama and culture." University of Western Australia. English and Cultural Studies Discipline Group, 2009. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2009.0175.
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Each chapter of Werewolves and Women with Whiskers: Figures of Estrangement in Early Modern English Drama and Culture explores a particular figure of fascination and fear in the early modern English imagination: in one it is owls, in another bearded women, in a third werewolves, and in yet another Jews. Drawing on instances from drama and other cultural forms, this thesis seeks to examine each of these phenomena in terms of their estrangement. There is a symbolic appositeness in each of these figures, whether in estranged and estranging minority groups, such as Catholics, Jesuits, Jews, Puritans, Italians, the Irish, and the Scots; or in transgressive behaviours, such as cross-dressing and gender trouble, infidelity and apostasy, intemperate passion and unnatural desire. Essentially unfixed and unstable, these emblematic figures are indicative of cultural uncertainty and therefore are easily adapted to suit changing political, religious, and social climates. However, adaptability and fluidity come at a price, since figures of difference have an uncomfortable way of transforming themselves into figures of resemblance. Thus, this thesis argues, each of these figuresowls, bearded women, werewolves, Jewsoccupies an undefined and undefinable space on the precarious boundary between the usual and the unusual, between the strange and the strangely familiar, and, most strangely and paradoxically of all, between us and them.
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Wang, Bo. "Inventing a Discourse of Resistance: Rhetorical Women in Early Twentieth-Century China." Diss., Tucson, Arizona : University of Arizona, 2005. http://etd.library.arizona.edu/etd/GetFileServlet?file=file:///data1/pdf/etd/azu%5Fetd%5F1188%5F1%5Fm.pdf&type=application/pdf.
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Reynolds, Paige Martin. "Reforming Ritual: Protestantism, Women, and Ritual on the Renaissance Stage." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2006. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5439/.
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My dissertation focuses on representations of women and ritual on the Renaissance stage, situating such examples within the context of the Protestant Reformation. The renegotiation of the value, place, and power of ritual is a central characteristic of the Protestant Reformation in early modern England. The effort to eliminate or redirect ritual was a crucial point of interest for reformers, for most of whom the corruption of religion seemed bound to its ostentatious and idolatrous outer trappings. Despite the opinions of theologians, however, receptivity toward the structure, routine, and familiarity of traditional Catholicism did not disappear with the advent of Protestantism. Reformers worked to modify those rituals that were especially difficult to eradicate, maintaining some sense of meaning without portraying confidence in ceremony itself. I am interested in how early Protestantism dealt with the presence of elements (in worship, daily practice, literary or dramatic representation) that it derogatorily dubbed popish, and how women had a particular place of importance in this dialogue. Through the drama of Shakespeare, Webster, and Middleton, along with contemporary religious and popular sources, I explore how theatrical representations of ritual involving women create specific sites of cultural and theological negotiation. These representations both reflect and resist emerging attitudes toward women and ritual fashioned by Reformation thought, granting women a particular authority in the spiritual realm.
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Pickard, Claire. "Literary Jacobitism : the writing of Jane Barker, Mary Caesar and Anne Finch." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2006. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:85514fc9-6f0c-4992-ae8c-2666dc1f7ede.
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This thesis argues that much of the gender based criticism that has led to the "rediscovery" of neglected early modern women writers has, paradoxically, also served to limit our understanding of such writers by distracting attention from other aspects of their writing, such as their political commitments. The three authors considered, Jane Barker (1652-1732), Mary Caesar (1677-1741) and Anne Finch (1661-1720), have been selected precisely because Jacobitism is central to their writing. However, it will be argued that a focus upon gender politics in the texts of these writers has led to a failure to comprehend the party political boldness of their work. The thesis examines the writing of each author in turn and explores the implications of Barker's, Caesar's and Finch's Jacobite allegiances for their respective views of human history as played out in political affairs. It also considers the ways in which each author attempts to reconcile a cause that is supposedly supported by God with apparent political failure. The quest of Barker, Caesar and Finch to investigate these issues and to comprehend how Jacobitism forms part of their own authorial identities is central to what is meant here by "literary Jacobitism" in relation to these writers. The thesis demonstrates that Jacobitism is enabling for each of these three women as it enhances their ability to conceive of themselves as authors by allowing their sense of political identity to overcome their scruples about their position as women who write. However, it also illustrates that Jacobitism functions differently in the writing of each of the selected authors. It thus argues that an undifferentiated labelling of the work of these three women as "Jacobite" is as restrictive as their previous categorisation as "women writers".
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Jin, Xiaotian, and 金小天. "A generation 'betwixt and between': youth, gender and modernity in 1920s and 30s middlebrow women's writing." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2010. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B45814934.
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Gomez, Clemente Jr. "Manhood in Spain: Feminine Perspectives of Masculinity in the Seventeenth Century." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2016. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc849616/.
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The question of decline in the historiography of seventeenth-century Spain originally included socio-economic analyses that determined the decline of Spain was an economic recession. Eventually, the historiographical debate shifted to include cultural elements of seventeenth-century Spanish society. Gender within the context of decline provides further insight into how the deterioration of the Spanish economy and the deterioration of Spanish political power in Europe affected Spanish self-perception. The prolific Spanish women writers, in addition, featured their points of view on manhood in their works and created a model of masculinity known as virtuous masculinity. They expected Spanish men to perform their masculine duties as protectors and providers both in public and in private. Seventeenth-century decline influenced how women viewed masculinity. Their new model of masculinity was based on ideas that male authors had developed, but went further by emphasizing men treating their wives well.
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Roth, Jenny. "Law, gender and culture : representations of the female legal subject in selected Jacobean texts." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14658.
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This thesis addresses some of the extant gaps in law and literature criticism using an historical cultural criticism of law and literature that focuses on the Jacobean female legal subject in cases of divorce and adultery. It examines the intellectual milieu that constructs law and literature in this period to contribute to research on female subject formation, and looks specifically at how literature and law work to construct identity. This thesis asks what views Jacobean literature presents of the female legal subject, and what do those views reveal about identity and gender construction? Chapter one offers some essential historical contexts. It establishes the jurisprudential conditions of the period, defines the ideal female legal subject, touches on recent historical scholarship regarding women and law, explores how literature reveals law's artificiality, and links the Inns of Court to the theatres. Chapter two focuses on women and divorce. The first sections discuss the theology and ideology which impacted on divorce law. The latter sections examine Elizabeth Cary's Tragedy of Mariam, ca. 1609, and two manuscript accounts of Frances Howard's 1613 divorce trial, William Terracae's poem, A Plenarie Satisfaction, ca. 1613, and The True Tragi-Comedie Formarly Acted at Court, a play by Francis Osborne, 1635. These texts reveal the legal construction and frustrations of married women, and illustrate a gendered divide in attitudes towards women's legal position. Chapter three examines women and adultery law. It then juxtaposes representations of women justly accused of adultery, like the real-life Alice Clarke, and the fictional Isabella in John Marston's The Insatiate Countess, 1613, and unjustly accused, like the virtuous wives in Marston's play. This chapter reveals how male anxiety creates the stereotypes that constrain the female legal subject within systems of patrilineal inheritance. As a whole, this thesis uses literature to explore the Jacobean female legal subject's relationship to her husband and to the law, and, in some cases, it challenges the assumption that women were effectively constrained by legal dictates which would keep them chaste, silent and submissive. Literature, in some cases, works alongside law to sustain constructed identities, but radical literature can undermine law by challenging the stereotypes and identities law works to maintain.
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Hoffman, Megan. "Women writing women : gender and representation in British 'Golden Age' crime fiction." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11910.
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In this thesis, I examine representations of women and gender in British ‘Golden Age' crime fiction by writers including Margery Allingham, Christianna Brand, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey and Patricia Wentworth. I argue that portrayals of women in these narratives are ambivalent, both advocating a modern, active model of femininity, while also displaying with their resolutions an emphasis on domesticity and on maintaining a heteronormative order, and that this ambivalence provides a means to deal with anxieties about women's place in society. This thesis is divided thematically, beginning with a chapter on historical context which provides an overview of the period's key social tensions. Chapter II explores depictions of women who do not conform to the heteronormative order, such as spinsters, lesbians and ‘fallen' women. Chapter III looks at the ways in which the courtships and marriages of detective couples attempt to negotiate the ideal of companionate marriage and the pressures of a ‘cult of domesticity'. Chapter IV considers the ways in which depictions of women in schools, universities and the workplace are used to explore the tensions between an expanding role in the public sphere and the demand to inhabit traditionally domestic roles. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the image of female victims' and female killers' bodies and the ways in which such depictions can be seen to expose issues of gender, class and identity. Through its examination of a wide variety of texts and writers in the period 1920 to the late 1940s, this thesis investigates the ambivalent nature of modes of femininity depicted in Golden Age crime fiction written by women, and argues that seemingly conservative resolutions are often attempts to provide a ‘modern-yet-safe' solution to the conflicts raised in the texts.
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Tanner, Jane Hinkle. "Sharing the Light: Feminine Power in Tudor and Stuart Comedy." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1994. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278551/.
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Studies of the English Renaissance reveal a patriarchal structure that informed its politics and its literature; and the drama especially demonstrates a patriarchal response to what society perceived to be the problem of women's efforts to grow beyond the traditional medieval view of "good" women as chaste, silent, and obedient. Thirteen comedies, whose creation spans roughly the same time frame as the pamphlet wars of the so-called "woman controversy," from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, feature women who have no public power, but who find opportunities for varying degrees of power in the private or domestic setting.
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Glover, Jayne Ashleigh. ""A complex and delicate web" : a comparative study of selected speculative novels by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing and Marge Piercy." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002241.
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This thesis examines selected speculative novels by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing and Marge Piercy. It argues that a specifiable ecological ethic can be traced in their work – an ethic which is explored by them through the tensions between utopian and dystopian discourses. The first part of the thesis begins by theorising the concept of an ecological ethic of respect for the Other through current ecological philosophies, such as those developed by Val Plumwood. Thereafter, it contextualises the novels within the broader field of science fiction, and speculative fiction in particular, arguing that the shift from a critical utopian to a critical dystopian style evinces their changing treatment of this ecological ethic within their work. The remainder of the thesis is divided into two parts, each providing close readings of chosen novels in the light of this argument. Part Two provides a reading of Le Guin’s early Hainish novels, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World is Forest and The Dispossessed, followed by an examination of Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five, and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The third, and final, part of the thesis consists of individual chapters analysing the later speculative novels of each author. Piercy’s He, She and It, Le Guin’s The Telling, and Atwood’s Oryx and Crake are all scrutinised, as are Lessing’s two recent ‘Ifrik’ novels. This thesis shows, then, that speculative fiction is able to realise through fiction many of the ideals of ecological thinkers. Furthermore, the increasing dystopianism of these novels reflects the greater urgency with which the problem of Othering needs to be addressed in the light of the present global ecological crisis.
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Boettcher, Anna Margarete. "Through Women's Eyes: Contemporary Women's Fiction about the Old West." PDXScholar, 1995. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4966.
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The myth of the West is still very much alive in contemporary America. Lately, there has been a resurgence of new Western movies, TV series, and fiction. Until recently the West has been the exclusive domain of the quintessential masculine man. Women characters have featured only in the margins of the Western hero's tale. Contemporary Western fiction by women, however, offers new perspectives. Women's writing about the Old and New West introduces strong female protagonists and gives voice to characters that are muted or ignored by traditional Western literature and history. Western scholarship has largely been polarized by two approaches. First, the myth and symbol school of Turner, Smith, and followers celebrated American exceptionalism and rugged male individualism on the Western frontier. Second, the reaction against these theories draws attention to the West's legacy of racism, sexism and violence. The purpose of the present study is to collapse these theoretical fences and open a dialogue between conflicting theoretical positions and contemporay Western fiction. Molly Gloss's 1989 The Jump-Off Creek and Karen Joy Fowler's 1991 Sarah Canary selfcritically re-write the Old West. This study has attempted to explore the following questions: How can one re-write history in the context of a postmodern culture? How can "woman," the quintessential "Other" escape a modernist history (and thus avoid charges of essentialism) when she has not been in this history to begin with? In this study I analyze how these two contemporary feminist authors, Molly Gloss, and Karen Joy Fowler, face the dual challenge of writing themselves into a history that has traditionally excluded them, while at the same time deconstructing this very historical concept of the West. Fowler's and Gloss's use of diverse narrative strategies to upset a monolithic concept of history-- emphasizing the importance of multiple stories of the Old West-- is discussed in detail.
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Roberts, David. "The ladies : female patronage of Restoration drama 1660-1700." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.670377.
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Volz, Jessica A. "Vision, fiction and depiction : the forms and functions of visuality in the novels of Jane Austen, Ann Radcliffe, Maria Edgeworth and Fanny Burney." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/4438.
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There are many factors that contributed to the proliferation of visual codes, metaphors and references to the gendered gaze in women's fiction of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. This thesis argues that the visual details in women's novels published between 1778 and 1815 are more significant than scholars have previously acknowledged. My analysis of the oeuvres of Jane Austen, Ann Radcliffe, Maria Edgeworth and Fanny Burney shows that visuality — the nexus between the verbal and visual communication — provided them with a language within language capable of circumventing the cultural strictures on female expression in a way that allowed for concealed resistance. It conveyed the actual ways in which women ‘should' see and appear in a society in which the reputation was image-based. My analysis journeys through physiognomic, psychological, theatrical and codified forms of visuality to highlight the multiplicity of its functions. I engage with scholarly critiques drawn from literature, art, optics, psychology, philosophy and anthropology to assert visuality's multidisciplinary influences and diplomatic potential. I show that in fiction and in actuality, women had to negotiate four scopic forces that determined their ‘looks' and manners of looking: the impartial spectator, the male gaze, the public eye and the disenfranchised female gaze. In a society dominated by ‘frustrated utterance,' penetrating gazes and the perpetual threat of misinterpretation, women novelists used references to the visible and the invisible to comment on emotions, socio-economic conditions and patriarchal abuses. This thesis thus offers new insights into verbal economy by reassessing expression and perception from an unconventional point-of-view.
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Rine, Abigail. "Words incarnate : contemporary women’s fiction as religious revision." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1961.
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This thesis investigates the prevalence of religious themes in the work of several prominent contemporary women writers—Margaret Atwood, Michèle Roberts, Alice Walker and A.L. Kennedy. Relying on Luce Irigaray’s recent theorisations of the religious and its relationship to feminine subjectivity, this research considers the subversive potential of engaging with religious discourse through literature, and contributes to burgeoning criticism of feminist revisionary writing. The novels analysed in this thesis show, often in violent detail, that the way the religious dimension has been conceptualised and articulated enforces negative views of female sexuality, justifies violence against the body, alienates women from autonomous creative expression and paralyses the development of a subjectivity in the feminine. Rather than looking at women’s religious revision primarily as a means of asserting female authority, as previous studies have done, I argue that these writers, in addition to critiquing patriarchal religion, articulate ways of being and knowing that subvert the binary logic that dominates Western religious discourse. Chapter I contextualises this research in Luce Irigaray’s theories and outlines existing work on feminist revisionist literature. The remaining chapters offer close readings of key novels in light of these theories: Chapter II examines Atwood’s interrogation of oppositional logic in religious discourse through her novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Chapter III explores two novels by Roberts that expose the violence inherent in religious discourse and deconstruct the subjection of the (female) body to the (masculine) Word. Chapters IV and V analyse the fiction of Kennedy and Walker respectively, revealing how their novels confront the religious denigration of feminine sexuality and refigure the connection between eroticism and divinity. Evident in each of these fictional accounts is a forceful critique of religious discourse, as well as an attempt to more closely reconcile foundational religious oppositions between divinity and humanity, flesh and spirit, and body and Word.
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Benson, Fiona. "The Ophelia versions : representations of a dramatic type, 1600-1633." Thesis, St Andrews, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/478.
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Lobban, Paul. "Inhabited space : writing as a practice in early modern England; Margaret Hoby, Eleanor Davies, Katherine Philips / Paul Ian Lobban." Thesis, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/21685.
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Lewis, Daniel D. "Women writing men : female Victorian authors and their representations of masculinity." 2011. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1653349.
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This dissertation covers five female Victorian authors (Elizabeth Gaskell, M.E. Braddon, Dinah Craik, Juliana Horatia Ewing, Edith Nesbit) and the representations of masculinity in their novels. By taking a masculinity studies approach, this dissertation finds that these novels, in an attempt to gain authority and legitimacy in the male-dominated social sphere, often promoted middle-class masculine gender identities as the dominant, ideal masculinity for others. I will argue that female authors in the Victorian period took part in this struggle over re/defining hegemonic male gender identity in different ways, in different genres, for different purposes. Gaskell’s Mary Barton and North and South seek to ensure middle-class dominance over the working classes. Braddon’s novels Lady Audley’s Secret and Aurora Floyd illustrate the unnaturalness of gender (and thus to call into question notions of “natural” differences between men and women, or men and other men) and broaden the definition of acceptable gender identities for men and, by extension, women. The authors of late-period children’s literature created texts that either changed or shield from change both male and female gender identities to define the proper way to educate children during a time when gender roles were undergoing changes due to innovations in industry, education, and calls for equal rights for women and non-hegemonic men. All of these texts display a great amount of confidence in the power of literature to shape gender identity. The male characters in novels covered in this dissertation help govern the individual from abstract potential to concrete reality in terms of how masculinity is lived in the everyday world. While pamphlets, medical journals, and conduct books can instruct the reader on ideal conduct (or, conversely, warn against inappropriate conduct) for men, women, boys, and girls, these texts often function in the abstract. The belief held by these authors in the power of literature is enables them to position fictional men in the real world under the assumption that these characters are therefore able to “live out” these ideas of what is and what is not appropriate in performing one’s male gender identity.Department of English
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Rickard, Suzanne. "On the shelf : women writers, publishing and philanthropy in mid-nineteenth-century England." Phd thesis, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/139147.
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Belluccini, Federica. "“A MUCH MILDER MEDIUM”: ENGLISH AND GERMAN WOMEN WRITERS IN ITALY 1840-1880." 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10222/14358.
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Travel writing is by definition an open and hybrid form that encompasses a variety of genres, styles, and modes of presentation. This study focuses on four little-known travel texts about Italy written between 1840 and 1880 by two English and two German women writers and shows how, by exploiting the openness of the form of travel writing, they broadened its scope beyond mere description to provide insight into national ideologies and identities while expanding the boundaries of the female sphere of influence. This study considers the following texts: Mary Shelley’s Rambles in Germany and Italy, in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844), Adele Schopenhauer’s Florenz: Ein Reiseführer mit Anekdoten und Erzählungen (1847/48) (2007), Frances Power Cobbe’s Italics: Brief Notes on Politics, People, and Places in Italy, in 1864 (1864), and Fanny Lewald’s Reisebriefe aus Deutschland, Italien und Frankreich 1877, 1878 (1880).
In the first chapter, the four texts under consideration are presented against the backdrop of nineteenth-century sexual ideology of the ‘separate spheres’ and the conventions of women’s travel writing. A survey of the long tradition of English and German travellers to Italy and their writings is provided to establish the context in which the texts were produced. Also considered is the role they play in the narrative of Italian nation-building. In the second chapter, the discussion of Rambles in Germany and Italy examines how, by presenting herself as a mother and an educator, Shelley foregrounds the pedagogical purpose of the book, which aims at garnering the sympathy of her British audience for the oppressive political situation of the Italian people and their growing nationalism. The third chapter explores Schopenhauer’s attempt in Florenz to create her own gendered version of the guidebook for travellers in the style of Murray and Baedeker and to revive the memory of the democratic institutions of thirteenth-century Florence at a time when Italians were fighting for democratic reforms and independence. The fourth chapter shows how, in Italics, the representation of Italy in the wake of its partial unification in 1861 is closely intertwined with Cobbe’s own thinking on politics, religion, and women’s emancipation. The fifth chapter examines how, in Reisebriefe, the discussion of the social and political changes that had affected both Italy and Germany in the previous forty years allows Lewald to engage in a reflection on her own femininity and on the role of women in the newly formed German nation.
Shelley, Schopenhauer, Cobbe and Lewald each used travel writing to explore their own identities as women and as writers. Pushing the form beyond exposition into the realm of social commentary, they used it to shape public opinion and to explore new roles for women in society.
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Dalldorf, Tamaryn J. "The victimisation of genius : Mary Robinson's idealisation of the female author in sensibility literature during the decade of the 1790's." Diss., 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/22689.
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Mary Robinson’s perceived entrapment within masculine discourse has led to a somewhat distorted portrayal of this author as ‘victim’: critical focus on how she and eighteenth-century society may have constructed her authorial identity, reflecting her primarily as a historical and cultural product, has contributed indirectly to diminish due recognition of the level of autonomy she attained within her own writing. However, recent political interpretations of Robinson’s work have largely challenged these views, acknowledging her considerable influence within the public realm of the ‘masculine’ Romantic. In this dissertation, I aim to build upon, and argue beyond, those readings which have explored Robinson’s political uses of victimisation, as well as those which have studied her promotion of female authorship. I will argue that, by exploring Robinson’s own portrayal of the female philosopher and author, as well as her manipulation of victimisation within sensibility literature, we may be able to better interrogate modern feminist thinking around the concept of the eighteenth-century female philosopher, and thus begin to situate the value of Robinson’s work within a firmer literary compass. I will focus upon the following novels: Walsingham (2003 b), The False Friend (1799), and The Natural Daughter (2003 a). While I will root my arguments in the abovementioned approach, I will avoid contributing further discussion to Robinson’s use of radical politics and defence or fostering of female authorship. First because these are relatively well explored issues around her writing, and secondly because it is wise to be cautious when affirming Robinson’s radical politics, as ultimately this impulse ties into a modern yearning to portray her as a radical feminist. Robinson certainly adopted a radical political stance in some of her novels; yet, I will argue, we cannot value her writing primarily in terms of its political bent, however tempting this approach may be.English Studies
M.A. (English Studies)
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Du, Plessis Sandra Elizabeth. "Exploding the lie : 'angelic womanhood' in selected works by Harriet Martineau, Anne Bronte, Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot." Diss., 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/18635.
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Each of these novelists, in her own way, presents a critique of the idealised
woman of the nineteenth-century. My aim in this dissertation is to reveal the
degree to which each is successful in her mission to 'explode the lie' of angelic
womanhood, and, in so doing, free her long-incarcerated Victorian sisters.
It took great courage and fortitude to utter at times a lone dissenting voice; and
female writers of the present owe a great debt of gratitude to their pioneering
Victorian counterparts, who cleared the way for them to take up the banner and
continue the march towards female liberation from a stifling ideology.English Studies
M.A. (English)
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Dowling, Finuala Rachel. "Subversive narrative and thematic strategies : a critical appraisal of Fay Weldon's Fiction." Thesis, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/16680.
Full textAbstract:
Fay Weldon is a popular, prolific author whose oeuvre stretches from 1967 to the present
and includes 20 novels, three collections of short stories and numerous stage, radio and
television plays, scripts and adaptations. This thesis limits itself to her fiction and follows
the chronological course of Weldon's writing career in five chapters.
Fay Weldon's fiction, situated at the intersection of postmodemism and feminism, is
doubly subversive. It both overturns 'reasonable' narrative conventions and wittily
deconstructs the specious terminology used to define women. Weldon's disobedient female
protagonists - madwomen, criminals, outcasts and she-devils - assert the power of the Other.
Gynocentric themes - single parenthood, sisterhood, reproduction, motherhood, sex and
marriage - are transformed by Weldon into uproarious feminist revenge comedy. This she
achieves through an intertextuality which often involves unorthodox typography, genreswopping
and metafictional devices. Moreover, a unique ventriloquism enables her
omniscient first-person narrators to mimic 'Fay Weldon' herself.
Since her narrators are rebels and iconoclasts, Weldon has always been viewed as a
subversive individual worthy of media attention, especially interviews. For this reason, and
because she is a woman writer who struggled initially against social and domestic odds, the
thesis incorporates in its argument the author's biography and public personae.
Chapter One explores the connections between Weldon's first novels - notably Down
Among the Women (1971) - and early liberationist and anthropological feminism. In Chapter
Two, Bakhtin's dialogic imagination and Derrida's differance provide the basis for a
discussion of multiplicity in Weldon's novels of the late 1970s, particularly Praxis (1979),
shortlisted for the Booker prize. Chapter Three tests the limits of a psychoanalytical model
in accounting for Weldon's novels of (m)Otherhood, including The Life and Loves of a SheDevil
(1983).
Theories of humour and carnival inform Chapter Four's analysis of how Weldon's wit
- at its tendentious best in The Heart of the Country (1987) - declines into innocence.
Finally, Chapter Five sees Weldon's flagging literary reputation as the symptom of authorial
exhaustion and retreat from a feminist agenda. This concluding chapter is, however,
ultimately optimistic that the mercurial author's undeniable talents may reassert themselvesEnglish Studies
D.Litt. et Phil. (English)
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Townsend, Rosemary. "Narration in the novels of selected nineteenth-century women writers : Jane Austen, The Bronte Sisters, and Elizabeth Gaskell." Thesis, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/18634.
Full textAbstract:
In this studyi apply a feminist-narratological grid to
the works under discussion. I show how narration is used as
strategy to highlight issues of concern to women, hereby
attempting to make a contribution in the relatively new field
of feminist narratology.
Chapter One provides an analysis of Pride and Prejudice
as an example of a feminist statement by Jane Austen. The use
of omniscient narration and its ironic possibilities are
offset against the central characters' perceptions, presented
by means of free indirect style.
Chapter Two examines The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as a
critique of Wuthering Heights, both in its use of narrative
frames and in its at times moralistic comment. The third and
fourth chapters focus on Charlotte Bronte. Her ambivalences
about the situation of women, be they writers, narrators or
characters, are explored. These are seen to be revealed in her
narrative strategies, particularly in her attainment of
closure, or its lack.
Chapter Five explores the increasing sophistication of
the narrative techniques of Elizabeth Gaskell, whose early
work Mary Barton is shown to have narrative inconsistencies as
opposed to her more complex last novel Wives and Daughters.
Finally, I conclude that while the authors under
discussion use divergent methods, certain commonalities
prevail. Among these are the presentation of alternatives
women have within their constraining circumstances and the
recognition of their moral accountability for the choices they
make.English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English)
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Pillay, Ivan Pragasan. ""Could it be madness - this?" : bipolar disorder and the art of containment in the poetry of Emily Dickinson." Thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/827.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation engages in a critical analysis of the poetry of Emily Dickinson which, to me, suggests that the poet suffered from a type of manic-depression known specifically in psychiatric parlance as bipolar disorder. I argue that although Dickinson experienced much pain and suffering she learnt, through time, to address, understand and contain adversity - that ultimately, she transformed these experiences into the raw materials for poetic creation. Dickinson's poetic achievements are often obscured by a misunderstanding of her mental and emotional constitution. This thesis provides an alternative to the views of those commentators who maintain that Emily Dickinson was insane, neurotic or delusional. I intend, ultimately, to offer the reader a fresh insight into Emily Dickinson's poetry by reading it from the assumption that she suffered from bipolar disorder.Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.
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Johnson, Amy R. "Stranger in the Room: Illuminating Female Identity Through Irish Drama." Thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/918.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2007.Title from screen (viewed on May 23, 2007) Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-83)
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Le, Marquand Jane Nicole. "'I'm not a woman writer, but--' : gender matters in New Zealand women's short fiction 1975-1995 : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand." 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1462.
Full textAbstract:
From the late 1970s, New Zealand women short story writers increasingly worked their way into the literary mainstream. In the wake of the early, feminist-motivated years of the decade their gender, which had previously been the root of their marginalized position, began to work for them. However, rather than embracing womanhood, this growth in gender recognition led to many writers rejecting overt identification of their sex. To be a labeled a woman writer was considered patronising, a mark of inferiority. These women wanted to be known as writers only, some even expressing a hope for literature to reach a point of androgyny. Their work, however, did not convey an androgynous perspective. Just as the fact of their gender could not be avoided, so the influence their sex had on their creativity cannot be denied. Gender does matter and New Zealand women's short fiction published in the 1975-1995 period illustrates its significance. From the early trend for adopting fiction as a site for social commentary and political treatise against patriarchy's one-dimensional image of woman, these stories show a gradually increasing awareness of fictional possibilities, allowing for celebration of the multiplicity of female experience and capturing a process of redefinition rather than rejection of 'women's work'. Though in the later 1990s it may no longer have been politically 'necessary' to promote women's work on the grounds of gender, on a personal level the 'difference of view' of the woman writer remained both visible and vital. An increasing sense of woman-to-woman communication based on shared experience emerges: women are writing as women, about women, for women.