Browsing by Subject "Women in literature"
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Item A feminist analysis of the narrative structure of Isabel Allende's The Infinite Plan(Texas Tech University, 1996-12) Sorelle, Elizabeth M.This thesis is divided into three main chapters. Chapter II concerns the narrative presences within the novel that inform the text and make it feminist. Narrative presences include the characters and factors that directly affect the narration. In The Infinite Plan, these include a female omniscient narrator; the feminist reality of the twentieth century; the paratext; and Reeves' confessions to his psychiatrist and narrator. Chapter III analyzes the role of the omniscient female narrator, who is the most powerful figure in the novel. As the lover of Reeves, she has a vested interest in his well-being, but she is more than just a sympathetic character. She controls the text: she fictionalizes his past based on his confessions and allows him only limited space to voice his own story. Ultimately, she determines when he has fully recovered and when he can confidently reveal that new-found health to the reader. She controls the novels and guides Reeves' healing. Chapter IV examines Reeves' narrations, which expose him as a stereotypical male who struggles to escape the masculine realm of lust, power, and destruction. With the assistance of his lover and his psycliiatrist, he ultimately recognizes that in order to heal from his painful life, he must surrender to the feminine realm of emotion, love and compassion.Item A postmodern end for the violent Victorian female(Texas Tech University, 2002-12) McClenagan, Cindy MarlowRecent media attention on the trial and conviction of Andrea Yates, the Texas woman convicted of drowning her five children, as well as on female suicide bombers in Israel, indicates not only "a morbid curiosity in the United States relating to mothers killing their children" (Meyer and Oberman 19), but also a special, intense fascination with women who involve themselves in "masculine" acts of violence, especially murder. Since contemporary examples of violent women abound, why do authors--and the public--continue to turn to the past, to nineteenth-century cases of female aggression, for inspiration? Perhaps it is as Margaret Atwood suggests, that in turning to the past we hope to explore and then expose the possible misconstruction of that past, thereby infusing it with multi-layered meanings for present and future generations {In Search 3 9). Not only Atwood, but also Angela Carter and Toni Morrison have claimed the past of individual violent women, exploring and infusing the stories of Grace Marks, Lizzie Borden, and Margaret Garner with new, alternative endings, thereby redeeming the violent women of yesteryear, and perhaps all women "because we are the ones who need it" (Atwood 39). By rewriting the past with postmodern tools, all three authors offer a brighter tomorrow, one loosened from the grip of a history that is often structured oppressively with respect to women.Item Amanda Wingfield as survivor: actress choices relating to her memories and her children(Texas Tech University, 1986-05) Book, Rona LeeNot availableItem Aphrodite unshamed: James Joyce's romantic aesthetics of feminine flow(2007-05) Thomas, Jacqueline Kay; Rossman, Charles; Moore, Lisa L., 1960-In Aphrodite Unshamed: James Joyce's Romantic Aesthetics of Feminine Flow, I trace the influence of romanticism and anthropology on Joyce, and argue that he renews by classicalizing an ironic romantic genre also inspired by anthropology, the fairy tale arabesque. Created by the random cobbling together of fairytale types, plot elements, and set pieces, the arabesque's context was early anthropological work on folktales in Germany. I argue that, basing his fiction on this "nonsense" genre, Joyce mines the works of Homer, Shelley, Walter Pater, and Lucien Levy-Bruhl in order to promote--indeed, to narratively model--an abandonment of honor culture in favor of a neo-archaic culture of spiritualized sexual love. To do this, Joyce brings down to earth the airy Aphrodite of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, and sexualizes the serpentine narrative trope Pater uses to aestheticize her power--both by chiasmatically structuring his fiction. Joyce envisions a world in which "cultural" men, because they sacralize and no longer shame female sexuality, participate in women's "primitive," i.e., not fully cultural, being. Indeed, I argue that, borrowing from Lucien Levy-Bruhl's conception of the mystical epistemologies of "primitives," Joyce viewed women as modern "primitives" capable of revitalizing overly intellectualized, alienated, and violent masculine Western culture. By creating recursive chiasmatic constructions of characters, images, and plot, Joyce creates layers of narrative infinity signs that body forth the unending "primitive" feminine rhythm that he makes the signature of his work. I argue that his work reveals that he viewed women as less than fully cultural, i.e., closer to rude animal life and the blunt forces of nature by virtue of sex, menstruation and child-bearing. He implicitly argues against the "new woman" and for women's continued "primitivity" in the service of his new, still male-produced, culture. His cooption of what he considers women's "primitive" essence is thus meant to be a source for cultural renewal for modern Westerners.Item Aspectos de conflicto y enajenamiento de la mujer en las novelas de Silvina Bullrich, Beatriz Guido y Clarice Lispector(Texas Tech University, 1977-05) Tavenner, Anna C.Not availableItem Classical goddesses in American short fiction about the Vietnam War(Texas Tech University, 1998-08) Fontenot, Andrea DeanMythology carries within it our cultural heritage and our belief structures. It allows us a common experience for understanding the human condition, and often it gives us the means to explain aspects of our existence that are otherwise unexplainable. Most of us are probably introduced to mythology through the fairy tales we are told as children. Just as Persephone/Demeter/Hecate archetypes offer a means to extract another layer of meaning from the literature of the Vietnam War, fairy tales provide another powerful lens through which to view the works. In this dissertation I will examine selected works from Vietnam War literature filtered through the lenses of both the Persephone/Demeter/Hecate myths and through the lens of fairy tales. My objective is to develop a methodology that will allow the reader to discern layers of meaning not always apparent through other approaches to this literature.Item "A dame to kill for" or "a slut-- worth dying for" : women in the noir of Frank Miller(2011-05) Lamfers, Jordan Scott; Bremen, Brian A.; Kornhaber, DonnaThe depictions of women in film noir and neo-noir have long been objects of interest for feminist scholars. In this report, I extend this scholarship to examine Frank Miller's Sin city graphic novel series as a version of neo-noir that is both intimately connected to noir tradition and innovative in its approach, specifically in terms of his representation of women. Miller depicts his female characters in a variety of ways that reflect both the positive and negative imagery of women in classic noir and neo-noir; in doing so, he creates a new and complex vision of women in noir. This report uses three different characterizations of women in film noir--the spider woman, the femme moderne, and the angel--to explore the ways in which Miller's female characters can be understood to simultaneously uphold and challenge these conventions.Item Darstellung der Frau in "Der geteilte Himmel" und "Kassandra": wie Christa Wolf ihre Forderungen nach "Weiblichem Schreiben" realisiert(Texas Tech University, 1988-05) Bauer, ChristineNot availableItem Das Weibliche in Hermann Hesses Roman Narziss und Goldmund(Texas Tech University, 1984-12) Peters, VeraNot availableItem Feminism and identity in three Spanish American novels, 1887-1903(2004) LaGreca, Nancy Anne; Lindstrom, NaomiItem Imaginative appropriation : confronting otherness through the female body in the works of Cesare Pavese and Italo Calvino(2011-05) Abell, Lynn Valerie; Raffa, Guy P.; Bini, DanielaThis report examines the ways in which Cesare Pavese and Italo Calvino use images of the foreign woman as other. Specifically, both authors inscribe foreign territories onto the bodies of their female characters in order to confront complex cultural differences. Italy is the site of this gendered inscription in Pavese’s Il carcere, while various real and imagined foreign lands are made female in Calvino’s Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore and Le città invisibili. In Pavese’s novella, the satyr-like Concia and the overly maternal Elena are embodiments of Southern and Northern Italy, respectively, and the failure of the protagonist to form a relationship with either woman represents his failure to assimilate into the mezzogiorno and his simultaneous rejection of northern society. In Calvino’s two works, female characters and attributes are consciously used to embody various foreign countries so that the protagonists may grasp the unknown, both physically and psychologically. By linking woman and terrain, Pavese and Calvino attempt to dominate distant lands, which are otherwise enigmatic and incomprehensible, in the typical Orientalist fashion.Item Initiation into womanhood in modern American fiction(Texas Tech University, 1969-05) Smith, Sandra JeanNot availableItem La construcción cultural de "El ángel del hogar" : representación, género, clase y narración en México (1818-1910)(2002-05) Brauchli, Leticia Mora de; Nicolopulos, JamesThis is a cultural study of Nineteenth-Century discourse focusing on the representations of women in print culture which shifts the focus from the scarce or negative representations generally attributed to women in Mexican historiography to the centrality that these representations have in the process of secularization and nation building. Through an analysis that combines gender and cultural studies theory with traditional Mexican historiography, I analyze the paradigm of “The angel in the house” as a semiotic and symbolic nucleus with contested meanings in the cultural imagination. I trace this paradigm from its bourgeois appropriation to justify “the domestic regime” and class hegemony based on a superior morality, to its Catholic usage as a nexus with tradition, and the religious family, to its use as a symbol of the liberal family to regulate desire, emotions, sexuality, and social mobility. The first chapter interweaves the narratives of nation building, modernization, literature, and “the women question” in the construction of a discursive practice where men and women are equal but with different spheres, and where nation and literature are conformed as masculine enterprises. The next chapter focuses on the rhetoric that sustains the “angel” as a social construct of the bourgeois episteme as portrayed in newspapers and two novels: La quijotita y su prima by José J. Fernández de Lizardi, and Hermana de los ángeles by Florencio del Castillo. This rhetoric recuperates women from the symbolic dominion of the church, establishing the “moral” authority of the state, and the secularized family, which was instrumental in the dismantling of the Old Regime. The third chapter examines four novels of Porfirian Mexico: Baile y cochino by José Tomás de Cuéllar, La Rumba by Angel de Campo, Angelina by Rafael Delgado, and Santa by Federico Gamboa. These female dramas are a symbolic arena where writers ventilate problems of race and class through gender. Finally, since one of my contentions is that female representations in literature not only define “decent” literature but women’s lives, as well as the emerging women writer and her work, in the fourth chapter I analyze these layered implications in the work of Laura Mendez.Item La figura femenina en las obras de Benito Lynch(Texas Tech University, 1965-05) Greene, Jeffry LaneNot availableItem La muerte o destruccion de la mujer en la obra de Jose Leon Sanchez(Texas Tech University, 1995-05) Jacobi, Jennifer A.El propósito de esta tesis es analizar el significado y la función de la muerte o la destrucción de los personajes femeninos en la obra de José León Sánchez. ¿Por qué tienen que quedar derrotadas todas las mujeres? ¿Hasta qué punto es válido buscar una relación entre el hecho de haber sido todas ellas violadas o prostituidas, física o metafóricamente con la necesidad de terminar muertas o destruidas en la novela? Antes de los capítulos que analizan los personajes femeninos en la obra de Sánchez, hay una sección biográiica sobre él, con énfasis especial en algunas de las mujeres importantes que conocía antes de hacerse escrítor. Cada novela es tema de un capítulo que consiste en una profunda exploración de dos personajes femeninos principales. Estos tres capítulos aparecen en orden cronológico, de acuerdo con la fecha de publicación de cada novela. La primera novela discutida. La isla de los hombres solos (1984), incluye una exploración de los personajes María Reina y Juanita. Luego se analiza La luna de la hierba roja (1985), con énfasis en Cecilia Córdoba y Aire. Después se discute la importancia de Marína y Matla en Tenochtitlan (1986).Item La presencia femenina como enfoque en obras selectas de Emilio Carballido(Texas Tech University, 1985-12) Tafoya, CandidoNot availableItem Men and money: parallels between the women of Vanity fair and Middlemarch(Texas Tech University, 1986-12) Martinec, Kellie A. M.Not availableItem Metamorphosis and the emergence of the feminine: a motif of "Difference" in recent feminist quest fiction(Texas Tech University, 1997-05) Allen, Paula J. SmithThe feminine quest has lately been identified and defined to some extent by feminist scholars who have attempted to differentiate its elements from those of the quest of the masculine hero. This differentiation suggests that there is a tme archetype of the questing hero(ine) that lurks behind the mythological figures previously identified in literature by stmcturalist scholars. The tme archetype would be one that would be equally relevant to both the male and female quest, neither a hero nor a heroine, but a figure in which the two are indistinguishable. It is tme that such a figure cannot exist as long as culture so strongly identifies the nature of a human being with his sexual identification. Because roles are assigned by gender, the imagery of the male and female quests differ from one another. The part of each individual, a self, that is neither male nor female is, therefore, not acknowledged. The implication of the differentiafion in roles in the images that represent archetypes is that the casting of the "type" is informed by a culture that fails to define a part of itself The stories examined in this volume are attempts by their authors to create an image of this part of themselves that culture has suppressed. Because language is the clay that culture uses to create its forms, these stories are invariably reflexive. These authors borrow images and patterns familiar to westem culture and re-invest them with meaning pertinent to the feminine consciousness. Their stories, then, are a re-creation of the human experience. The quest heroine's return is determined by her ability to remake her world to sustain herself and those like her. It is this retum that is questioned most by feminist writers and critics of this century, and that deliberation is the organizing principle of this study.Item Nathaniel Hawthorne and the eternal feminine(Texas Tech University, 1965-05) Houston, Neal B,Not availableItem Novel women : gender and nation in nineteenth-century novels by two Spanish American women writers(2001-08) Zalduondo, María M., 1962-; Lindstrom, Naomi, 1950-; Shumway, Nicolas