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Luigi Pirandello's two short stories La verita and Certi obblighi and the play derived from them Il berretto a sonagli seem to be, at least on the surface, about adultery. The three male protagonists' dilemmas come about as a result of their wives' sexual transgressions, which consequently impose certain "obligations" upon them. The themes of adultery and betrayal, however, are merely surface elements, used to explore the theatrical nature of identity and of all social experience. Specifically, the three works show how role-playing-within-roles safeguards the identity of the betrayed husbands, by protecting them from social humiliation. / Since all Pirandellian characters role-play, and as a consequence portray and assume multiple identities, this thesis examines the function and significance of this technique in both narrative and theatrical contexts. It attempts to show that while the device is a feature common to all three works, it is in the dramatic adaptation that role-playing in relation to identity acquires its more visible and effective treatment.

The thesis sets out to examine Hardy's representations of women in sexual and marital relationships, and to relate those representations to contemporary developments in sexual ideology and in fiction. An Introduction considers the way in which ideology exerts pressure upon literary form, and discusses the particular appeal of female characters to Hardy's imagination. The first chapter is concerned with the constitution of sexuality as a subject of public discussion, and with its decisive shift from the area of moral discourse to that of the scientific. The influence of Darwinism and of neo-Darwinism upon ideologies of sexual difference and the nature of woman is discussed, together with the ambiguous political status of much contemporary feminist thought. There follows a chapter on Hardy's experimentalism with genre and narrative voice in his early fiction, and its relation to his female characters. An examination of The Return of the Native situates it as Hardy's first attempt at a double tragedy, of a man and of a woman, intellectual and sexual. "Women and the New Fiction 1880-1900" gives an account of the development of the "Fiction of Sex" and the novel of the "New Woman", and discusses the novel of womanliness, liberal feminist fiction, and the fiction of womanhood. The challenge that these new forms and modes of writing posed to the dominance of realism in the period is discussed. The last three chapters examine Hardy's last major novels in this enabling context of the New Fiction, and focus on the experiments with narrative method that bring about a radical break between Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. A brief conclusion argues that Hardy's experimentalism must be seen in its relation to contemporary fictional practice, and not as the product of personal temperament or of his own sexual and marital experiences. The thesis ends with a bibliography of works consulted.

This thesis examines characters in Chinese and Japanese, including semantic shift. The writing system in China, Japan and a number of other nations whose script relates to characters, notably Korea, will also be discussed. By examining this "Character Cultural Sphere" in East Asia along with the historical and modern character standardizations and reformations, the role of Chinese characters proves to be essential. Furthermore, the thesis investigates semantic shifts of characters as windows on socio-cultural change in two given areas, namely "disorder" to "order" and "natural" to "artificial, manmade". One major aim is to explore shifts of meanings (semantic shifts), that can provide a commentary on the changes in societal and cultural values. The results reveal that the pattern of semantic shifts between China and Japan is considerably similar. Regarding "natural vs manmade" the overall trend shows that in both China and Japan, more characters acquired the meaning of "artificial, manmade" as time goes by, reflecting the changes in society. Regarding "disorder vs order", while the percentage of characters relating to "disorder" remained relatively stable in these two countries, the percentage of characters relating to "order" saw an undeniable increase - more than double in both Chinese and Japanese - showing that in both countries, the overall societal trend was obviously towards more "order" while "disorder" continues to exist. These results give quantitative data regarding the pattern of evolution of Chinese and Japanese societies, particularly Chinese, and provided an insight through written scripts into the evolution of human beings and civilizations. Also, because of its length, the main database of the research, the table of 2,500 common-use characters with commentary, is attached after the bibliography as an appendix.

This thesis examines the wonder and the terror of the sea as it is evident in Herman Melville's novel, Moby-Dick. The examined characters stand in wonder or terror of the sea, or images of the wonderful and terrifying sea reveal characteristics of these sailors. Definitions, the views of the critics, and Ishmael's observations comprise chapter one. The common sailors (Bulkington, Fleece, Perth, the carpenter, the Manxman, and the boy Pip) make up chapter two. Chapter three consists of the four pagan harpooners (Daggoo, Tashtego, Queequeg, and Fedallah). The three mates (Flask, Stubb, and Starbuck) comprise chapter four. The thesis does not examine captain Ahab or Ishmael as each alone is material for a thesis.

Charles Dickens owes his success as a novelist to his imagination. Therefore, his attitude toward imagination is of interest. One way of determining his attitude toward imagination is to examine the characters that have imaginations.There are several characters in Dickens' works that misuse their imaginations. Initially Dickens regards these characters leniently. Eventually, however, he regards them harshly. He dwells on the damage caused by the misdirection of their imaginations.Many of the other characters who are imaginative are children or childlike adults. Dickens treats them sentimentally. This tendency to sentimentalize such characters continues throughout Dickens' career. However, with certain characters he does seem to try to correct this tendency.Finally in his last complete novel, Our Mutual_ Friend, he treats Jenny Wren, a character who uses her imagination a positive way, realistically. She represents the final development of his attitudes on imagination.

The purpose of this study is to determine what effect six real women in Jack London's life had upon the development of fictional women found in thirty-eight of London's short stories. The six women were Flora Wellman London, Bess Maddern London, Charmian Kittredge London, Anna Strunsky, Mabel Applegarth, and Ina Coolbrith. The study will reveal previously unpublished information about these women based on letters, interviews with people who knew them, and previously uncited newspaper and magazine articles. It will also offer, in most cases, the first chronologically organized in-depth biographical profiles ever recorded of these women. The major attributes of these women were scrutinized, their behavior patterns and physical appearances were chronicled, and their relations both with and independent of Jack London were analyzed. The effect the above mentioned six women had on Jack London was that they significantly helped cause him to portray women in a particular (and unusual) way.Thirty-eight of London's short stories which feature female protagonists were analyzed. These fictional females were studied for attributes, behavior patterns, and appearances. The final step was to correlate the attributes and characteristics of the fictional women to those of the real women.An overview of the entire study reveals three key points: (1) although usually portrayed as very masculine and independent, Jack London was a person whose philosophies, educational development, and political viewpoints were greatly influenced by the six women focused upon in this study; (2) strong evidence suggests that twenty-eight of the fictional women in the thirty-eight short stories which featured major female protagonists were modeled upon either the six real women focused upon in this study or upon other real women (Freda Moloof, Mrs. Hans Nelson whom London knew during his lifetime; and (3) although the general critical opinion regarding London's failure to create a series of believable fictional women is still valid, it is not absolute; some of the women whom London created in his short stories were modeled upon real women in his life, and their reflected real characteristics are vivid enough to make them powerful, three-dimensional, believable characters.

This study examines Mary McCarthy's three major female-protagonist works of fiction--The Company She Keeps (1942), A Charmed Life (1955), and The Group (1963)--in terms of the author's attitude towards femaleness. It confronts Elizabeth Janeway's assessment in Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing (1979) that McCarthy's works need not be reviewed in a survey essay on "Women's Literature" because they are "essentially masculine even if not conventionally so" (345). The thesis is that McCarthy's fiction receives a pattern of criticism faulting its lack of imagination and its inability to create "living" characters precisely because she maintained a high degree of self-censorship and control over parts of her awareness that were not male-identified. She was not free to imagine in areas that might unleash the horrors beneath what Norman Mailer has called "the thin juiceless crust" upon which McCarthy's "nice girls" live their lives.Each novel finds the protagonist at a different stage of modern womanhood and using a variety of male-identified responses. Meg Sargent of Company is a young New York sophisticate dealing with divorce, employment, travel, social life, political activism, casual sexual encounters, and the resolution of childhood trauma through psychoanalysis. Martha Sinnott of Charmed is a married woman returning with her second husband to the bohemian artists' community of her first husband in order to resolve the conflict of literary mentorship and patriarchal dominance that had marked the old relationship. In The Group Kay Strong and eight other Vassar Class of '33 females serve as literary embodiments of the social ailment that Betty Friedan cited in her 1963 polemic, The Feminine Mystique.McCarthy's three autobiographies--Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), How I Grew (1985), and Intellectual Memoirs (1992)--illuminate many reasons for and consequences of her male-identified approach to living and writing. Social context for such a fate stems in part from having come of age in the 1930s, being a member of what Elaine Showalter refers to as "The Other Lost Generation." McCarthy's texts provide literary illustration of a common response to patriarchy. / Department of English

The theme of this thesis is the relationship of the Jane Austen heroine to her social environment--codes of proper behavior as exemplified by the heroines of Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion. The study follows the development of the characters from the ignorance of the social code demonstrated by Emma Woodhouse, through views of the expectations of women of marriageable age as seen by Elizabeth and Jane Rennet, to a comparison of sensible and sensitive behavior in Marianne and Elinor Dashwood, and concluding with the perfect propriety of Anne Elliot. The thesis explores the connection between propriety and the heroine, demonstrating why a heroine succeeds or fails on the basis of her individual view of the social code and her behavior in obeying or denying its dictates.

The purpose of this study is to examine the imagery of time, identity, order, and power in William Shakespeare's Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V in order to demonstrate that the dramatist's use of imagery both emphasizes the themes of the plays and frequently develops the characterization of those who people the stage: Shakespeare's skillful artistic technique of incorporating imagery into the dramatic text emphasizes, reinforces, and develops both theme and characterization. The terms "image" and "imagery" refer exclusively to figurative language, excluding the constrictive definitions of visual imagery, wordpictures, and iterative words. In this procedure, I recognize that figurative language involves the process of comparison in which each image contains two parts which have been variously called the subject-matter and object-matter, the minor term and the major term, and the vehicle and the tenor. My analysis deals with the effect achieved by the interaction between the two parts of each image. The major sections of the paper are organized, first, according to the image patterns of time and identity and order and power and, second, by individual play.The imagery of time and identity illustrates that these plays are more than dramatizations of political ideas and philosophies. The dramas demonstrate man's continual relationship with time. Because time is a force which affects all human beings, part of man's identity is determined by his position on the wheel of time. More important, however, than man's position on the wheel of time is the behavior of men and the use which they make of the time given to them. The Henriad portrays King Richard II as a human being who wastes time and fails to recognize its force and significance until it is too late for him to restore the order which he has violated. In taking advantage of time, Richard's successor, Henry IV, imagines that an adequate amount of time exists for him to compensate for having taken Richard's crown. However, Henry IV spends his entire reign trying to settle civil disruption and to change Prince Halls behavior. Finally, the cycle of Henry IV comes to an end without his having been able to restore order to his country. The disordered time which was initiated by Richard and Bolingbroke continues throughout the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V. The position of king which Bolingbroke so eagerly seeks and illegally achieves brings him little happiness and finally destroys him. In a world subject to time and fortune, the positions, roles, and identities of men change. The imagery depicts the disordered segments of time and the subsequent effects in the lives of men, all of which occur because of man's interference in the cycle of time and his violation of its order. No matter what his specific role at any time, man's identity, as the imagery illustrates, is determined by the fact that he is no more than a mortal human being with certain moral capacities. Who he is clearly rests upon his use of these in the time given to him. The Henriad demonstrates that each person, from king to common soldier, fulfills the role of human being in the diverse ways he recognizes and meets his human obligations.