Thesis (M. A. in English)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2008. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of New Mexico, 1974. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 260-268). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1944. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 216-219).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of New Mexico, 1974. / Includes vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 260-268).

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of English, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1944. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 216-219).

abstract: The Victorian era was the age of museum development in the United States. In the wake of these institutions, another important figure of the nineteenth century emerged--the flâneur. The flâneur represents the city, and provided new mechanisms of seeing to the public. The flâneur taught citizens how to gaze with a panoptic eye. The increasing importance of cultural institutions contributed to a new means of presenting power and interacting with the viewing public. Tony Bennett's exhibitionary complex theory, argues that nineteenth-century museums were institutions of power that educated, civilized, and through surveillance, encourage self-regulation of crowds. The flâneur's presence in the nineteenth century informed the public about modes of seeing and self-regulation--which in turn helped establish Bennett's theory inside the museum. The popular writing and literature of the time provides an opportunity to examine the extent of the exhibitionary complex and the flâneur. One of the most prominent nineteenth-century authors, Henry James, not only utilizes museums in his work, but he often uses them in just the manner Bennett puts forth in his theory. This is significant because the ideas about museums in James's work shaped the minds of an expanding literary public in the United States, and further educated, civilized, and regulated readers. James also represents the flâneur in his writing, which speaks to broader cultural implications of the both exhibitionary complex on the outside world, and the effects of broader cultural influences on the museum. Beyond the impact of James's work, in the late nineteenth century American culture increasingly became centered around the printed word. The central position of books in American culture at the end of the nineteenth century allowed books and libraries to appropriate the exhibitionary complex and become tools of power in their own right. The book and the library relate to the museum as part of a larger cultural environment, which emerged as a result of modernity and a response to the ever-changing nineteenth-century world.   / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. History 2011

This thesis focuses on the triadic relationships in works by Henry James and Vladimir Nabokov. I have used two psychoanalytic case studies, Bertha Pappenheim and Elma Pálos, to reflect how James and Nabokov use the analytic method for revealing stifled and fragmented voices in their daughter characters. I theorise that while Henry James prefigured the analytical doctor/patient dynamic in the father/daughter relationships in his novels, he also adds the mother figure, turning this into a triad. The controlling mother fragments the daughter’s speech and the situation of the triadic relationship damages the daughter’s ability to articulate her narrative. The novels, Watch and Ward (1871), Washington Square (1880), and The Awkward Age (1899) show James’s developing recognition of the role the mother plays in the triad, as well as his own role as author and narrator of the daughter’s story. The case studies also contain damaging triadic relationships. There has been limited interest in the triads and this, so far, has not been commented upon as a reason for the daughter’s mental disturbance. I use unpublished letters to try to uncover the ‘real’ voice of Elma. I see that literary and psychological criticism has been guilty of mistakes in research and misrepresentation. This has further fragmented the story of these women. I hope to show that both Henry James and Sigmund Freud inspired Vladimir Nabokov, despite his vehement opinions against them. He presents the same scenario of the triadic relationship, in a fictional but analytical setting, to express his own anxiety about ‘losing’ his native language. His feminised struggle is apparent in Lolita (1955), and even more so in the character of Lucette, in Ada (1969). Nabokov sees that, in analysis, the mother is a 3 threat to the daughter’s self-expression. He develops the mother character in his fiction to represent this discovery.

This thesis explores the roles of widowhood and sympathy in Henry James's short and long fiction. By the time James established himself as a writer of fiction, the culture of sentiment and its formation of sympathetic identification had become central to American and British writers. Critically, however, sympathy in James's fiction has been overlooked because he chose to write about rich expatriates and European nobility. James's pervasive use of widowed characters in his fiction suggests the he too participated in the same aesthetic agenda as William Dean Howells and George Eliot to evoke sympathy in their readers as a means of promoting class unity. In this thesis I show how James's use of widowed characters places him in the same sympathetic tradition as Howells and Eliot not by eliciting sympathy for themselves, but, rather, by awakening a sympathetic response from his readers for his protagonists seeking love. In chapter one I explore why James may have used so many widowed characters in his fiction. I cite the death of his cousin Minny Temple as a defining moment in his literary career and argue that he may have experienced an "emotional widowhood" after her early death. I also discuss the role of widows in his short fiction, which I suggest, is different from the role of widows in his novels. This chapter is biographical, yet provides important background for understanding why, more than any other author, James's fiction is replete with widowed characters. Chapter two explains the culture of sentiment of which James has been excluded. It explores the theories of David Hume and Adam Smith and their influence on the aesthetic principles defining Howells and Eliot's work. In this chapter I contend that James is indeed part of this sentimental tradition despite his renunciation of sentiment in his fiction because he tried to promote sympathy among his readers through his widowed characters. In chapter three I do close readings of The Portrait of a Lady (1881) and The Wings of the Dove (1902) and argue that these two texts best represent James's attempt at sympathetic writing.

Recent decades have seen heightened interest in Charles Brockden Brown and his contribution to American literature. Scholars have worked to reclaim Brown from the margins of literary history, but he remains on the outskirts of literature classrooms and conversations. In an effort to further map Brown's influence and significance in the American literary tradition, I discuss his most famous novel, Wieland, in relation to Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Brown has not previously been linked to James or The Turn of the Screw in any significant way, but the similarities between the texts provide plenty of room for discussion. I use current trends in adaptation theory to make the link from Wieland to The Turn of the Screw, with particular emphasis on issues of intertextuality in adaptation rather than fidelity to an origin text. I argue that adaptation study is a way of looking at texts rather than the examination of a certain kind of text. With this foundation, I assert that The Turn of the Screw functions as an adaptation of Wieland insofar as both explore reason, conflict, and psychological haunting in the context of late eighteenth-century Enlightenment and late nineteenth-century almost-Modernist America. The juxtaposition of these texts allows for a new reading of The Turn of the Screw, one that explores the often discussed ambiguity and instability of the text as a symbolic critique of America and, more specifically, of democracy.