Browsing by Subject "Women in literature -- History and criticism"
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Empowering women: spaces of conflict in Maria Edgeworth's educational fiction(Texas Tech University, 2001-08) Maharg, Mary EMaria Edgeworth (1767-1849) has long been considered a major contributor to late eighteenth and early nineteenth century educational theory. This dissertation examines six novels written for adults to pinpoint the ways they represent her educational theories. This dissertation focuses on how adult characters respond to their early education and not on her children's fiction. Edgeworth's educational theory stresses several points: women have the same right as men to learn from experience, men as well as women must be properly educated, well educated women balance reason and obedience as well as sentiment and reason, and women must be educated in order to become good wives and mothers. Edgeworth accepts her culture's insistence that women should remain in the domestic sphere, but, I argue, her novels provide for women an empowered space within that sphere. Edgeworth insists that properly educated women have power in spite of cultural limitations but that improperly educated women do not. Without education, she argues, women have no power at all. Modern feminist critics have condemned Edgeworth for her support of the limit placed on women; her restriction of women to domestic space, they argue, supports the patriarchal system and, therefore, the limits that system places on women. These critics object to what they consider Edgeworth's romanticizing of domestic space, which in turn romanticizes women's oppression. However, I argue that Edgeworth's female characters are empowered in that limited space, and thus they push against these limits. Although Edgeworth's empowered space leads later to the Victorian idea of the angel in the house, nonetheless Edgeworth's novels offer real power to women within carefully circumscribed arenasItem Self-destructive women in Toni Morrison's novels(Texas Tech University, 1997-08) Davis, Wendy ENot availableItem The wayfarer's gaze: images of women in the works of Luis de Góngora(Texas Tech University, 2001-12) Donnelly, Giuliana MThe treatment of female characters in the work of Luis de Gongora y Argote is a theme that has received notable critical attention. The focus of this study will be the female characters themselves. Unlike much of the research on Gongora's work, in which the characters serve as devices to trace Gongora's inspiration by previous writers, or in which they as seen as "evidence" in support of the personal aspects of Gongora's life, my purpose is to reveal the writer's attitude toward women by examining how he reflects, or projects, their images. The female figures studied are: (1) Angelica, in the romance of Angelica and Medoro, "En un pastoral albergue" (1602), (2) Hero, of the Hero and Leander folk tradition, addressed in Gongora's parodic romances "Arrojose el mancebito" (1589), and "Aunque entiendo poco griego" (1610), (3) Galatea of the Galatea/Polyphemus/Acis story, in Gongora's La fabula de Polifemo y Galatea (1613), and (4) Thisbe, of the Pyramus and Thisbe tradition, treated by Gongora in "De Tisbe y Piramo quiero" (1604), and La fabula de Piramo y Tisbe (1618), and (5) the women of the Soledades, (1613). I support the connection made by other scholars between the Wayfarer figure and Gongora himself. Thus it is Gongora's view of the women in his texts that will be studied. I make use of such critical tools as the concept of the "male gaze," and binary oppositions. The latter serves as a point of departure for a specific analysis of the texts regarding gendered space and silencing. I will show that the narrative perspective, in the poems studied here, systematically serves to silence, or even erase the women it regards.