The major research instrument is interview. We interviewed 13 Chinese brides in Kaohsiung area and the main purpose of this study is to realize the way they interpret their experience of life change. They can provide us abundant discourses and we can experience the plentiful content of the group. We can conclude from the content of interview that the interviewed Chinese brides would adopt different strategies to cope with different issues. They want to strive for the ¡§distinction¡¨ and approved social positions in Taiwan society and would manage their impression by various tactics. Since the Chinese brides haven¡¦t gathered together as a category, their goals and tactics of acting still stay in individual level. They take different roles in different field and construct their images in diverse strategies. We try to classify the Chinese brides in different fields by two main variables: the distribution of capital and ability of motion. The categorizing index is not immobile, but it would modify in changing situation. The purpose of establishing generalized rules is to present the multiplicity and complex power relationship of the Chinese brides phenomenon.

This paper examines the way in which two contemporary Canadian women writers, Anne Carson and Gail Scott, integrate subjective theory into two of their respective texts (Carson's Men In the Off Hours, and Scott's Main Brides). This study rejects the presentation of a single protagonist and instead focuses heavy emphasis upon the presentation of subjective experiments. In this paper the subjects in Men In the Off Hours and Main Brides are examined through the desires they exhibit for the absent other---that which the subject perceives he/she does not have---as central to his/her own conception of him/her self. The paper first acknowledges that subjective theory, the quest for the self, has maintained a central position in scholarly studies. It then proceeds to disseminate and critique Lacanian subjective theory thereby setting the stage for close readings of Carson's Men In the Off Hours through theorist Julia Kristeva's notion of abjection, and of Scott's Main Brides through Jacques Derrida's theory of the borderline. The paper closes by questioning the possibility of a fully realized subject.

Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Montana, 2009. / Title from author supplied metadata. Description based on contents viewed on August 12, 2009. Author supplied keywords: War brides ; World War II ; Montana ; ethnicity ; assimilation. Includes bibliographical references.

The video begins with a black and white wedding photograph from the mid 20th century of an Asian American wedding party with the women in cheongsams and the men in western suits. A male narrator states the importance of the bride. A stain (still in black and white) spreads from bottom of frame rising over the brides face. Color video now shows a tree with a clothesline and a woman hanging a sheet on the line. Asian instrumental music begins. The mother softly describes singing a song to her daughter that her mother sang to her, and then sings the song. A woman folds, tears, or knots a white sheet, intercut with brief flashes of a red stain, while a professional recording of the same children's rabbit song plays as the lyrics appear in English. Finally the white sheet lies on the table and the red stain appears and spreads across the sheet. Male Narrator (sounds like standard documentary narrator circa 1940s or 1950s): "This is the portrait of a very important bride. But whatever her name, where ever she lives, she is the wife and mother of America. How many years will she have before the job gets her down?

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The Hoboken War Bride is a work of historical fiction set in Hoboken, New Jersey during World War II. A young soldier named Daniel and an aspiring actress named Hildy marry days after meeting, though the marriage is doomed to fail. This young couple is not compatible. Daniel ships out to basic training the day after their hasty marriage, leaving Hildy behind with his family, the Anellos, who she quickly becomes attached to. Hildy is exposed to family in a way she had never lived with her own, embracing them even though she doubts she'll ever have a future with Daniel. When Daniel returns after the end of the war, the young couple try to make their marriage work, but it fails almost immediately. Both Hildy and Daniel struggle to pick themselves up after their divorce, finding themselves making choices they never thought they would when they were younger.

It is by now a truth universally acknowledged that the world’s subaltern women (in Gayatri Spivak’s understanding of the term) cannot make their voices heard, that what we think we know about them are mostly stereotypes of our own making. It is likewise acknowledged that literature has a privileged status when it comes to representing these women, given its unique prerogative to retrieve their traces and convey their subjectivity through imagining. Literary texts which embark on this task can be seen as symbolic speech acts and, as such, they depend upon their illocutionary force for success in the public sphere. In this thesis I have chosen to discuss The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka (2011) – a novel I perceive as a collective speech act – from the combined perspective of speech-act criticism (J. L. Austin, S. Petrey), subaltern studies (G. Spivak, G. Pandey) and feminist theory (M. P. Lara, S. Lanser). My analysis explores the interrelation between this little-known story of the first-generation Japanese women immigrants to the US and the sophisticated narrative strategy which sustains it, continually balancing between the women's heterogeneity and their shared experiences, especially their systematic silencing by the dominant population. Finally, the thesis discusses the novel’s larger illocutionary implications for the public sphere, in particular how the reclaiming of the past creates new understandings of the present as well as opens up onto the future.               Keywords: Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic, migrant literature, picture brides, subalternity, feminist theory, communal voice, speech-act criticism, illocutionary force.

Since 1999 Colombia has experienced dramatic increases in emigration, particularly the emigration of women towards the U.S. as fiancées of U.S. citizens or residents. Parallel to this trend is the increased number of websites facilitating these Colombian-American matches. This dissertation investigates the agency of Colombian women and American men who pursue romantic courtship through the services of International Marriage Brokers (IMBs) from the “Gendered Geographies of Power” (GGP) framework of analysis. It examines how both groups’ social locations, their positioning in multiple axes of differentiation including gender, nationality and social class, affects how and why they exert their agency across and within different geographic scales. Most importantly, it investigates the role the imagination plays (imagination work) in both men and women’s agency, an aspect of the GGP framework that has been under-researched and theorized to date. The research also finds that this imagination work is promoted and cultivated in deeply gendered ways by IMBs seeking to profit off this transnational courtship. Employing data collected via interviews and content analysis of IMBs’ websites, the dissertation analyzes comparatively the expectations each group (women, men and IMBs) bring to their imagination work and experiences of the courtship marketplace. A central question posed and answered in the dissertation is “What do women and men courting each other in cyberspace seek and do they find it?” The dissertation finds that the men seek “traditional” women and the women seek “liberated” less “macho” men. Ironically, the men find Colombian women who are among the most “liberated” women in their homeland but who downplay this aspect of themselves in order to strategically find a more modern man and migrate abroad where they expect to find greater personal and professional opportunities.

Historical work on British war brides has been limited to the creation and collection of nostalgic interview anthologies; often by the women themselves or their children. These anthologies focus on the meeting of Canadian servicemen and British women and the women’s journey to and reunion with their husbands in Canada. Discussions of life in Canada and negative experiences are only briefly mentioned. This dissertation argues that this nostalgic view of war brides in the historical literature hides the immigration, settlement, and citizenship challenges faced by these women in Canada during and after the Second World War. Reception of war brides by the Canadian government and public was not as positive as the current scholarship has suggested. While some war brides flourished in Canada, others experienced adaptational problems, including differences in language and religion, navigating Canada’s housing crisis, and hostile in-laws. A few women also experienced problems related to abandonment, abuse, or husbands with undiagnosed post traumatic stress disorder. Since divorce was difficult to get at the time, these women tended to suffer in silence. Some war brides and their children even experienced problems with their citizenship, due to sexist provisions in the Canadian Citizenship Act in 1946, and changes to the Act in 1976, which made proof of citizenship necessary for all Canadians; something that many war brides were unaware of. This dissertation examines the creation and evolution of Canadian citizenship from a perspective that highlights its initial racism and sexism, as well as the consistent bureaucratic bungling regarding the application of its provisions since 1947. While these cases were fixed by amendments to the Citizenship Act in 2008 and 2014 by the Harper government, the citizenship conundrums that this community faced raise interesting questions about what citizenship means and who gets to be a Canadian citizen. / Thesis / Candidate in Philosophy / Most historical work about British war brides has been overly nostalgic and focussed on the collection and creation of interview anthologies; often created by these women and their children. Discussions of life in Canada and negative experiences are only briefly mentioned. This dissertation argues that this nostalgic view of war brides in the historical literature hides the immigration, settlement, and citizenship challenges faced by these women in Canada during and after the Second World War. The different experiences of these women reveal biases towards their background and gender, relationships damaged by the trauma of war, bureaucratic incompetence in the immigration and citizenship process, and raises important questions about national belonging and the nature of Canadian citizenship, from the post-war period to the present.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes' female dramatic characters are, for the most part, objectified and static, but these passive women perform a crucial narrative and thematic function in the plays. Alongside the destructive activity of the male characters, they dramatize masculine-feminine unions as idealized and contrived and, thus, unstable. Desire, power and influence, as well as the constrictive aspects of physicality, all become gendered concepts in Beddoes' plays, and socially normative relationships between men and women, including heterosexual courtship and marriage, are scrutinized and found wanting. In The Brides' Tragedy, Floribel and Olivia, the eponymous brides, represent archetypes of innocence, purity, and Romantic nature. Their bridegroom, Hesperus, embodies Romantic masculinity, desiring the feminine and aspiring to androgyny, but ultimately unable to relinquish masculine power. The consequences of Hesperus' attempts to unite with the feminine other are the destruction of that other and of himself, with no hope for the spiritual union in death that the Romantic Hesperus espouses as his ultimate desire. Death's Jest-Book expands upon the theme of male-female incompatibility, presenting heterosexual relationships in the context of triangulated desire. The erotic triangles created by Melveric, Sibylla, and Wolfram and Athulf, Amala, and Adalmar are inherently unstable, because they depend upon the rivalries between the males. Once those rivalries end, with the deaths of Wolfram and Athulf, respectively, Sibylla and Amala fade into nothing, their function as conduits for male homosocial relations at an end. In effect, these failed heterosexual triangles function as a backdrop for the idealized relationship between Melveric and Wolfram, whose desire for each other is mediated through their common pursuit of Sibylla, as well as through their blood-brotherhood. Once Wolfram's physical masculinity is deferred through death, the mixing of his ashes with those of Melveric's dead wife, and reanimation, Melveric and Wolfram descend into the tomb together, united for eternity.