The Caustic Pen Is Mightiest: A Tradition of Female Satire in the Novels of Jane Austen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, and Muriel Spark

Female satirists have long been treated by critics as anomalies within an androcentric genre because of the reticence to acknowledge women's right to express aggression through their writing. In Pride and Prejudice (1813), A House and Its Head (1935), and The Girls of Slender Means (1963), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969), and Muriel Spark (1918-2006) all combine elements of realism and satire within the vehicle of the domestic novel to target institutions of their patriarchal societies, including marriage and family dynamics, as well as the evolving conceptions of domesticity and femininity, with a subtle feminism. These female satirists illuminate the problems they have with society more through presentation than judgment in their satire, which places them on the fringes of a society they wish to educate, distinguishing their satire from that written by male satirists who are judging from a privileged height above the society they are attempting to correct. All three women create heroines and secondary female characters who find ways to survive, and occasionally thrive, within the confines of a polite society that has a streak of savagery running just beneath its polished surface.

Transgender Group Therapy: Process and Issues with Male to Female Clients

Transgender issues are garnering more attention within the mental health field. With the increased social awareness of transgender issues, the mental health field is recognizing the need for effective psychological services for this population. Transgender individuals face unique challenges related to gender non-conformity, the coming-out and transitioning processes, and in society at large, all of which can lead to a number mental health concerns. Group therapy is a promising treatment modality for transgender individuals. The purpose of this paper is to offer a rationale for the effectiveness of group therapy, and recommendations for best practices utilizing the current literature and my experience with facilitating a Male to Female transgender therapy group.

Women Who Kill Women

This article focuses on the phenomenon of women who kill women in the context of India’s dowry murders. Killing by females is rare, and killing of other females is rarer still. India’s dowry deaths, where mothers-in-law are, next to husbands, the most accused and convicted, represents a unique opportunity to examine the mechanics around women who kill, especially in the context of a gender violence crime. The article examines both the roots of the dowry system and the current anti-dowry and dowry-violence legislation to demonstrate the implicit and accepted gender inequities within marriage that serve to under gird an overall system of female oppression within the marital relationship. This inequity is understood to be a positive aspect within marriage, but ironically negative within public Indian society. The article then considers various theories of agency and motivation from social science and feminist literature to answer why some women participate in oppressing other women in Indian society. Finally, the article notes some of the ways in which Indian courts are contributing to the oppressive power structure by limiting the application of the anti-dowry and dowry-violence laws.