This essay focuses on the character of Lily Briscoe in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. From a gender perspective it discusses Lily's striving to exceed her socially constructed position as a woman by attempting to be an artist. At the beginning of the twentieth century women were supposed to be housewives rather than artists. This ideology of femininity held women back from achieving anything outside the home, and forced women to attempt to escape their femininity in order to pursue their dreams. This essay discusses Lily's efforts to escape her femininity by attempting to transcend her body and by striving to achieve an androgynous mind.

Chinese feudal women have long been identified as victims of the Chinese Confucian patriarchy and discussed in terms of notions of backwardness, dependency, female passivity, biological inferiority, intellectual inability, and social absence. This image of the victimized women, however, is a product of China’s modernization and Westernization processes since late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. Its formation is inseparable from the appropriation of the colonialist categories of sex binarism by the May Fourth male “new intellectuals.” This binary, linear gender ideology, together with the social context of Confucianism’s long-term status as the official, orthodox ideology in premodern China, easily led to the conceptualization of women in terms of absence, marginalization, and ultimately victimization. In this process, Chinese women became Woman, the other of Man, which constitutes a monolithic, ahistorical entity that masks specificities and variations in different historical periods and concrete cultural contexts, and obscures the dynamics of gender relationships. Kunqu (Kun opera) and the literati culture of late Ming (1573-1644) and early Qing Dynasty (1644~1722) surrounding it could be of particular use to demonstrate the problem of this binary and static conceptualization of gender in premodern China. In this study, I will be examining the case of two distinguished kunqu, Mudan ting (The Peony Pavilion) and Taohua shan (The Peach Blossom Fan), whose text, music, and performance raise interesting questions about femininity and masculinity in the specific social and cultural context of the time. Through this study, I want to help illuminate the inadequacy of the modernist, rigid sex binarism in understanding traditional Chinese gender ideology which cannot be reduced to the Western sexual physiology and biology, and to refute the ahistorical construction of the victimized Chinese Woman. / text

Zinaida Gippius's literary works are striking for the development of the theme of androgyny. / Chapter One examines the major Russian Symbolist intellectuals in their treatment of androgyny, which was animated by a desire to transfigure the world. Gippius's treatment of androgyny was at odds with the prevailing theory because it was not based on the defeminization of humanity. / Chapter Two addresses Gippius's reconstruction of Symbolist androgyny theory and explains the rejection of gender-based motivation in her metaphysical system by its orientation toward personality and an awareness of God. / Chapter Three shows how she used her poetry and prose to advance her belief that a perfect, androgynous love could reunite humanity with God. While Gippius's prose describes the search for this type of love, her poetry deals with it as a lyric experience. / The religious motivations of Gippius's redefinition of Symbolist androgyny indicate the need to re-evaluate the place of Orthodox Christianity in the evolution of Russian Symbolism.

This thesis considers the links between identity and landscape in key works by American artist Roni Horn, focusing on a selection of her photo-installations and books. In particular it argues that Horn approaches landscape as a performative category through which to address the performativity of identity, and that in doing so her work privileges the viewer as an embodied participant. Drawing on a feminist approach grounded in phenomenology, the thesis locates androgyny as a key structuring principle in the artist’s work. Identifying herself as neither male nor female, Horn employs the notion of in-between-ness to negotiate gender binaries of male/female and to describe the indeterminate and contingent nature of androgynous being. Importantly, the thesis argues that Horn addresses these issues of identity by staging experiences in her work that invite the viewer to perform the very processes by which identity is defined and played out. This strategy is examined through concepts of doubling, the sublime, horizons and dwelling, each of which in their own way involve a sense of orientation and disorientation that gestures toward the in-between-ness of androgyny. The thesis also considers the tensions between visuality and embodiment in Horn’s work. Her use of photographic images within an installation practice is one that establishes a complex set of relations between the opticality of the photograph and the actuality of ‘real’ space. It is argued that the experiential potential of Horn’s photo-installations and books is only realised through the dialectical relation between visuality and embodiment in which both are equally privileged. / Full thesis with illustrations can be requested via Inter-Library Loan.

The purpose of this study is to explore the manifestations and representations of masculinity and feminity in two novels of Marguerite Duras from a gender studies perspective. We will first review the traditional place of masculine and feminine stereotypes in the phallocentric order, basing our research on Bourdieu’s and Badinter’s work about the role of men and women in our society. Regarding the topic of sexual identity, our theoretical background will include feminist theories as Judith Butler’s gender performativity concept as well as Luce Irigaray’s notion of mimesis. The philosophy part can also give important clues for the interpretation of both male and female sentimental and sexual behavior: the work of the philosopher Michel Onfray, in particular his theory called "solar erotic", will help us to reveal the characteristics of Duras’ erotic writing. The results of our analysis show that both characters in the two novels present an ambiguous sexual identity: they seem to hesitate between the social obligation relative to their gender and the need of acting according to their own nature (androgyny of the Chinese). Our analysis shows the possibility of a deconstruction of the gender as well as a tendency to what Butler calls the subversion of identity. The exploration of Duras’ erotic writing seems to confirm those results, demonstrating the power of feminine desire and sexual pleasure in opposition to masculine sentimental pain and fragility.

The purpose of this research was to examine significant change, if any, in instrumental and expressive traits during adulthood. The research was designed to test the assumption that chronological age and psychosocial stage are related to instrumentality and expressiveness.The present study utilized the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) and a personal information questionnaire. The research question was: Are there differences in traits of instrumentality and expressiveness at different stages of adult development?Three hundred sixty-three men and women between the ages of 20 and 70 participated in the study. The sample included 164 men and 197 warren. Participants were members of volunteer organizations. They were assigned to different groups based on age and psychosocial development.Four 3 x 3 Analyses of Variance procedures were performed. There were three levels of age: (1) 20-35, (2) 36-50, and (3) 51-70. Categorization of psychosocial stage included: (1) no children, (2) children from birth to graduation from high school, and (3) all children graduated from high school. Sex was not combined, rather separate analysis was performed on each sex. The dependent variables were expressiveness and instrumentality as defined by scores on the Personal Attributes Questionnaire. The following effects were studied:(1) Effects of age and psychosocial stage on traits of instrumentality in men.(2) Effects of age and psychosocial stage on traits of expressiveness in men.(3) Effects of age and psychosocial stage on traits of instrumentality in women.(4) Effect of age and psychosocial stage on traits of expressiveness in women.The results of the research indicated that traits of instrumentality and expressiveness in men and women do not change significantly during adulthood. No significant differences were found in men or women with regard to age and psychosocial development on traits of instrumentality and expressiveness.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2009. / Directed by Hephzibah Roskelly; submitted to the Dept. of English. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Apr. 29, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-30, 87-89).

In accordance with American findings, it was proposed that androgynous individuals would be more liberal in their attitudes towards women and more self-actualizing than sex-typed individuals, and that they would tend to conceptualize the well-adjusted person as androgynous, while the sex-typed individual would tend to conceptualize such a person as masculine. It was further hypothesized that sex differences in favour of the female subjects would be found on the first two variables. The Bern Sex-Role Inventory, Shostrom's Personal Orientation Inventory and Spence and Helmreich's Attitudes Toward Women Scale were applied to 192 school counsellors in training and in the field. The hypotheses regarding an androgynous as opposed to a sex-typed orientation on the variables attitudes toward women and self-actualization were not supported; nor were sex-typed individuals found to conceptualize a well-adjusted person as masculine . Sex differences in favour of female subjects were found on the Attitudes Toward Women Scale and on some of the Personal Orientation Inventory scales, and androgynous subjects were found to hold an androgynous model of adjustment.

No description available.

No description available.