Women writing woman: representations of gender and sexuality

Pykett, Lyn. 'Women writing woman: representations of gender and sexuality', In: Women and literature in Britain 1800 - 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp.78-98, 2008. RAE2008

C. G. Jung and literary theory: the challenge from fiction

C.G. Jung and Literary Theory remedies a significant omission in literary studies by doing for Jung and poststructuralist literary theories what has been done extensively for Freud, Lacan and post-Freudian psychoanalysis. This work represents a complete departure from traditional Jungian literary criticism. Instead, radically new Jungian literary theories are developed of deconstruction, feminist theory, gender and psyche, the body and sexuality, spirituality, postcolonialism, historicism and reader-response. As well as linking Jung to the work of Derrida, Kristeva and Irigaray, the book traces contentious occult, cultural and political narratives in Jung's career. It contains a chapter on Jung and fascism in a literary context. [From the Publisher]

Engendered Conversations: Gender Subversion Through Fictional Dialogue in Lawrence, Hemingway and Forster

This dissertation examines gendered fictional dialogue in popular works by D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway and E.M. Forster, including Howards End (1910), The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928). I apply Judith Halberstam’s notion of female masculinity to direct speech, to explore how speech traits inform modernist literary aesthetics. My introduction frames this discussion in sociolinguistics, Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, M.M. Bakhtin’s discourse theory, and gender studies. It provides an opportunity to establish experimental dialogue techniques, and the manipulation of gendered talk, in transgressive texts including James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928) and Radcyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928). The first chapter discusses taboos and dialect in D.H. Lawrence’s fictional dialogue. The second chapter establishes gender subversion as a crucial element in Ernest Hemingway’s dialogue style. The third chapter contrasts Forster’s latently gendered speech with his techniques of dialect emphasis and dialect suppression. Finally, my conclusion discusses gender identity in the poetry of Dorothy Parker and Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, and the temporality of gender in “Time Passes” from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927). New Woman characters like Lady Brett Ashley typified a crucial moment in women’s liberation. They not only subverted stereotypes of womanhood through their dress or sexual freedom, they also adopted/adapted masculine idiom to shock, to rebel against and challenge male dominance. Different speech acts incited fashionable slang, became a political protest symbol or inspired psychoanalytic theory. The intriguing functions of women’s masculine speech in early twentieth century fiction establishes the need to examine additional connections between gender and talk in literary studies.

Gender, Authorship and Male Domination : Mary Shelley’s Limited Freedom in "Frankenstein" and "The Last Man"

Ever since Ellen Moer's "Literary Women" (1976), "Frankenstein" has been recognized as a novel in which issues about authorship are intimately bound up with those of gender. The work has frequently been related to the circumstance of Shelley's combining the biological role of mother with the social role of author. [...]

Literary love making in Nicholas Sparks novels: Finding the balance between the writer’s life and the writer’s work in bestselling Romantic Literature

For almost a decade now Nicholas Sparks has been writing love stories. Not only has he been publishing his stories, but they have received high acclaim in each of their installments. Several of his novels have been made into major motion pictures and increased his popularity quite significantly. His status as a successful romantic fiction writer is undeniable, but the question is, why? What is it about Nicholas Sparks that makes his novels so engaging, and personally, what do I need to do as an aspiring novelist to try and acquire the same literary status? Sparks’s novels reach readers at a number of different levels, thus giving them appeal no matter the intellectual intent of the reader. Theoretically, Sparks engages reader response techniques as well as formalist processes such as “habitualization” and “defamiliarization,” while also developing engaging plot lines that represent many of the experiences from his own life. His writing is not only academically redeemable, but it is also creatively stimulating; between the two, Sparks represents the thunder and lightning combination all writers strive for while trying to achieve literary success. This project also offers a creative element in which I attempt to exemplify many of the traits discussed in the analytical sections of this document, by recreating them in a creative, fictitious fashion. Themes such as: motion versus stasis, life versus death, and the ordinary versus the extraordinary all exist within the narrative structure of my short story “Trip to Fall.” Besides these thematic elements, the creative section strives to represent the balance Sparks achieves between the experiences of his own life and the fictitious world he creates. Overall, this project delves into the life of Nicholas Sparks to better understand the inspiration for his writing at the level of form as well as content, while also paying tribute to Sparks’s style through a representation of his work in my own words.

Feminist perspectives on gender ideology in recent young adult literature

This study of gender in young adult literature examined a range of recently published texts in both the fantasy and realist genres and determined that narrative discourse contests the dominant patriarchal paradigm most sucessfully when female protagonists enact a trickster role.

Scandalous women: gender and identity in top-notch smut

Examining a diverse range of texts offering controversial representations of female sexuality, this paper demonstrates a persistent link between literary scandal and anxieties about women's sexuality. Texts from Madame Bovary (1857) to The Sexual Life of Catherine M (2001) have provoked various arguments, from debates about the need to restrain the unruly bodies of women to contestations about aesthetic merit, morality, and obscenity. Indeed, the scandalous literature of sexual women is distinguished by efforts to reduce its transgressions into something manageable, whether through naming and categorisation (‘chick lit’ and ‘posh porn’), textual analysis, public censure, or critical excoriation. The desire to manage controversial material signifies a discourse of containment that suggests both women and literature require strict control. As this paper will argue, the relationship between women, literature, and scandal is one marked by both intra- and extra-textual efforts to restrain not only the unpredictability and power of female sexuality, but also the unruly energies of literature itself.

Gender und Genre in melodramatischen Literaturverfilmungen der Gegenwart - Far From Heaven, The Hours, A Single Man

Die Dissertation Gender und Genre in melodramatischen Literaturverfilmungen der Gegenwart untersucht das Medium Film anhand von Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven (2002), Stephen Daldrys The Hours (2002) und Tom Fords A Single Man (2009) als Quelle des Wissens über gesellschaftlich-normierte Geschlechterrollen und sozialkonstruierte Genderkonzepte. Die Arbeit versteht sich als eine nachhaltige Schnittstellenforschung zwischen Gender-, Literatur-, Film- und Medienwissenschaften und zeigt die Öffnung der Germanistik für den medial geprägten Kulturwandel, welcher den deutschen bzw. den deutschsprachigen Kulturraum betrifft. Gender und Geschlecht destabilisieren die Gesellschaft und die „heterosexuelle Matrix“ durch das individuelle Suchen, Finden, Konstruieren und Anerkennen einer eigenen, individuellen Genderidentität. Dieser Prozess kann unter Zuhilfenahme des Erzählens von Geschlecht im Film verdeutlicht werden, denn die audiovisuelle Fiktion modelliert Wirklichkeitsvorstellungen und das Wirklichkeitsverständnis der Rezipienten. Wobei offen bleibt, ob die Fiktion die Realität oder die Realität die Fiktion imitiert. Denn es gibt nicht nur eine Wahrheit, sondern mehrere, vielleicht unzählige Bedeutungszuschreibungen. Die drei paradigmatischen Literaturverfilmungen wurden jeweils in Bezug zu ihren Literaturvorlagen von Virginia Woolf, Michael Cunningham und Christopher Isherwood gesetzt. Sie können als Beispiele für ein wissendes, postmodernes Pastiche des Themen-Clusters Diskriminierung/Homophobie/Homosexualität/„Rasse“ gelten. Alle drei Filme verhandeln durch gemeinsame, melodramatische Motive (Spiegel, Telefon, Krieg, Familie) die Darstellbarkeit von Emotionen, Begehren, Sehnsüchten, Einsamkeit und dem Verlust der Liebe. Durch Verbindungslinien zu den Melodramen von Douglas Sirk und mittels den Theorien von u.a. Judith Butler, Stanley Cavell, Carolin Emcke, Thomas Elsaesser, Sigmund Freud, Hermann Kappelhoff und Laura Mulvey wurde das Begriffspaar Genre und Gender her-ausgestellt und im zeitgenössischen Geschlechter-Diskurs verortet. Das im Verlauf der Arbeit erarbeitete Wissen zu Gender, Sexualität, Körper und Geschlecht wurde als ein Gender-Genre-Hybrid verstanden und im Genre des queeren bzw. homosexuellen Melodrams (gay melodrama) neu verortet. Die drei Filme sind als ein Wiederbelebungsversuch bzw. ein Erweiterungsversuch des melodramatischen Genres unter dem Genderaspekt anzusehen. Die Analyse und Dekonstruktion feststehender Begriffe im Kontext der Gender- und Gay Studies und dem Queer Cinema lösen produktive Krisen und damit emanzipierte Verfahren aus. Diese müssen immer wieder neu beschrieben werden, damit sie wahrgenommen und verstanden werden. Daher sind die drei melodramatischen Literaturverfilmungen ein fiktionales Dokumentationsmodell gesellschaftlicher Konflikte, welches anhand individueller Schicksale verdeutlicht wird.

Faulkner revisited : narrating property, race, gender and history in William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Gloria Naylor's Mama Day

My thesis explores the formation of the subject in the novels of Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. I attach the concept of property in terms of how male protagonists are obsessed with materialistic ownership and with the subordination of women who, as properties, consolidate their manhood. The three novelists despite their racial, gendered, and literary differences share the view that identity and truth are mere social and cultural constructs. I incorporate the work of Judith Butler and other poststructuralist figures, who see identity as a matter of performance rather than a natural entity. My thesis explores the theme of freedom, which I attached to the ways characters use their bodies either to confine or to emancipate themselves from the restricting world of race, class, and gender. The three novelists deconstruct any system of belief that promulgates the objectivity of truth in historical documents. History in the three novels, as with the protagonists, perception of identity, remains a social construct laden with distortions to serve particular political or ideological agendas. My thesis gives voice to African American female characters who are associated with love and racial and gender resistance. They become the reservoirs of the African American legacy in terms of their association with the oral and intuitionist mode of knowing, which subverts the male characters’ obsession with property and with the mainstream empiricist world. In this dissertation, I use the concept of hybridity as a literary and theoretical devise that African-American writers employ. In effect, I embark on the postcolonial studies of Henry Louise Gates, Paul Gilroy, W. E. B Du Bois, James Clifford, and Arjun Appadurai in order to reflect upon the fluidity of Morrison’s and Naylor’s works. I show how these two novelists subvert Faulkner’s essentialist perception of truth, and of racial and gendered identity. They associate the myth of the Flying African with the notion of hybridity by making their male protagonists criss-cross Northern and Southern regions. I refer to Mae Gwendolyn Henderson’s article on “Speaking in Tongues” in my analysis of how Naylor subverts the patriarchal text of both Faulkner and Morrison in embarking on a more feminine version of the flying African, which she relates to an ex-slave, Sapphira Wade, a volatile female character who resists fixed claim over her story and identity. In dealing with the concept of hybridity, I show that Naylor rewrites both authors’ South by making Willow Springs a more fluid space, an assumption that unsettles the scores of critics who associate the island with authenticity and exclusive rootedness.

Faulkner revisited : narrating property, race, gender and history in William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Gloria Naylor's Mama Day

My thesis explores the formation of the subject in the novels of Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. I attach the concept of property in terms of how male protagonists are obsessed with materialistic ownership and with the subordination of women who, as properties, consolidate their manhood. The three novelists despite their racial, gendered, and literary differences share the view that identity and truth are mere social and cultural constructs. I incorporate the work of Judith Butler and other poststructuralist figures, who see identity as a matter of performance rather than a natural entity. My thesis explores the theme of freedom, which I attached to the ways characters use their bodies either to confine or to emancipate themselves from the restricting world of race, class, and gender. The three novelists deconstruct any system of belief that promulgates the objectivity of truth in historical documents. History in the three novels, as with the protagonists, perception of identity, remains a social construct laden with distortions to serve particular political or ideological agendas. My thesis gives voice to African American female characters who are associated with love and racial and gender resistance. They become the reservoirs of the African American legacy in terms of their association with the oral and intuitionist mode of knowing, which subverts the male characters’ obsession with property and with the mainstream empiricist world. In this dissertation, I use the concept of hybridity as a literary and theoretical devise that African-American writers employ. In effect, I embark on the postcolonial studies of Henry Louise Gates, Paul Gilroy, W. E. B Du Bois, James Clifford, and Arjun Appadurai in order to reflect upon the fluidity of Morrison’s and Naylor’s works. I show how these two novelists subvert Faulkner’s essentialist perception of truth, and of racial and gendered identity. They associate the myth of the Flying African with the notion of hybridity by making their male protagonists criss-cross Northern and Southern regions. I refer to Mae Gwendolyn Henderson’s article on “Speaking in Tongues” in my analysis of how Naylor subverts the patriarchal text of both Faulkner and Morrison in embarking on a more feminine version of the flying African, which she relates to an ex-slave, Sapphira Wade, a volatile female character who resists fixed claim over her story and identity. In dealing with the concept of hybridity, I show that Naylor rewrites both authors’ South by making Willow Springs a more fluid space, an assumption that unsettles the scores of critics who associate the island with authenticity and exclusive rootedness.

The effect of gender context on children's social behaviour in a limited resources situation : an observational study

Knowing when to compete and when to cooperate to maximize opportunities for equal access to activities and materials in groups is critical to children's social and cognitive development. The present study examined the individual (gender, social competence) and contextual factors (gender context) that may determine why some children are more successful than others. One hundred and fifty-six children (M age=6.5 years) were divided into 39 groups of four and videotaped while engaged in a task that required them to cooperate in order to view cartoons. Children within all groups were unfamiliar to one another. Groups varied in gender composition (all girls, all boys, or mixed-sex) and social competence (high vs. low). Group composition by gender interaction effects were found. Girls were most successful at gaining viewing time in same-sex groups, and least successful in mixed-sex groups. Conversely, boys were least successful in same-sex groups and most successful in mixed-sex groups. Similar results were also found at the group level of analysis; however, the way in which the resources were distributed differed as a function of group type. Same-sex girl groups were inequitable but efficient whereas same-sex boy groups were more equitable than mixed groups but inefficient compared to same-sex girl groups. Social competence did not influence children's behavior. The findings from the present study highlight the effect of gender context on cooperation and competition and the relevance of adopting an unfamiliar peer paradigm when investigating children's social behavior.