Recent Dissertations (I)

Recent Brontë scholarship:

The discourse of confession and the rhetoric of the devil unnatural attraction and gender instability in Wuthering Heights and The Master of Ballantrae 
DeFalco, Dana.
2011
Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011.
Abstract:
Often overlooked in the nineteenth century Gothic novel are the complicated social issues existing within the text. In Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae, the authors each create villains who represent the preoccupation with appropriate sexuality and conventional gender roles existing in Victorian England. Brontë's Heathcliff and Stevenson's James Durie embody all that is immoral and non-normative in society with their depraved behavior ; however, because of the authors' craftiness with language, the authors, through their villains, manage to magnetize the other characters and subsequently emasculate those men in the text who emulate the Victorian ideal of masculinity. By focusing their novels on the plight of the Other and his disruption to the homogeneous rules regarding sexuality and gender in the nineteenth century, both authors articulate a profound understanding of the societal fears regarding these issues existing in their time.

The mirror image : the representation of social roles for women in novels by Charlotte Brontë, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Jean Rhys
Muda, Geertruida Elisabeth
2011
Thesis: Groningen : University Library Groningen

Throughout literary history women have made use of stereotypical images to represent women in their work. The most notable images in the nineteenth century were the “Angel in the House” and the “Monster.” Yet, rather than using these images as a stereotype, woman writers during the period 1849-1930 employed them to write novels with a double layer of meaning. On the one hand, these stories present a narrative that seems to confirm traditional role expectations in relation to women, but on the other hand the stories also question these roles and present alternatives. It is especially through the mirroring of the “angel” and “monster” images that women have achieved this ambiguity (and, possibly, subversion). By representing and mirroring both socially acceptable and deviant behavior, female authors were able to depict the still repressive tendencies of patriarchy.
My research in this context has been twofold. First, I wanted to examine how exactly woman writers used these images in their texts. For this purpose, I selected four novels by four distinct female authors, Shirley by Charlotte Brontë, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, and After Leaving Mr Mackenzie by Jean Rhys. Both the likeness and the differences in the use of the various images make these novels interesting “case studies.” A conceptual frame and an examination of the contemporary social context presented the basis for this examination; the four novels were subsequently examined to test my theses.
Through the use of such narrative techniques, contemporary readers obtained a clear impression of the valid norms and social roles for women, but they were also presented with alternatives. The second part of my research consists of an examination of the contemporary reviews that were published immediately after the appearance of each novel. A thorough examination of such contemporary reviews shows that the early readers did indeed pick up the various layers of meaning in these novels and that the use of the mirroring technique worked well as a consciousness-raising device.

"This Heretic Narrative" : de-centering the subject in Charlotte Brontë's "Villette" Picchi-Dobson, Vita Monette.
Reed College (Portland, Or.); Division of Literature and Languages.; English Dept.
2011
Contents: Advisor, Maureen Harkin.

Screening Jane Eyre : gender and the construction of character on film
Wisner, Sarah Jean
Honors project-Smith College, Northampton, Mass., 2011.
Date: 2011-06-02

Categories: Scholar