Though Gide's homosexuality is well-documented, the theme of homosexuality plays a relatively minor role as it affects women in the récit. L'Immoraliste and Geneviève are the only ones in which the theme appears. Therefore, the reader will find little discussion of this subject per se in this work. This study will include only the récit, the art form which has come to be associated with Andre Gide. The récits include: L'Immoraliste (1902), La Porte étroite (1909), Isabelle (1911), La Symphonie pastorale (1919), L'Ecole des femmes (1929), Robert (1929), Geneviève (1936), and Thésée (1946).

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of revealing certain liberated female traits that are to be found as early as the seventeenth century in certain plays of Moliere. A study of the major events in Moliere's life and of the social climate and salons of his time, together with a close analysis of the plays themselves, is necessary to understand this important aspect of his works. In essence, this study attempts to show how Moliere's women emerge as independent individuals who refuse the role society usually assigns them. Although these female characters are products of the seventeenth century, their actions and attitudes are used in this thesis to indicate a foreshadowing of the twentieth-century, liberated woman.

Chan Ka-ling. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-167). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgements --- p.iv / Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter One --- Bridget Jones's Diary： A Novelistic Adaptation of Pride and Prejudice --- p.18 / Chapter Chapter Two --- The Image of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and Its Adaptations --- p.4 7 / Chapter Chapter Three --- The Image of Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones' s Diary and Its Film Adaptation --- p.85 / Chapter Chapter Four --- Evolution of a Heroine: From Pride and Prejudice to Bridget Jones's Diary --- p.110 / Conclusion --- p.142 / Notes --- p.157 / Works Cited --- p.160

Honore de Balzac appartient a cette generation de geants du romantisme flamboyant: politiquement et socialement, il est honorable bourgeois, se souvient des deceptions de l'epoque dechue et prone par consequent le culte du souvenir imperial, ainsi que celui de la passion. C'est pourquoi nous trouvons de constantes ambivalences dans la representation de la femme du monde ainsi que des contradictions deroutantes quant a leur droit d'aimer. Balzac peint des etres d'exception, mais, malgre la place et le role tres important qu'il leur accorde, ces femmes subissent le droit de jugement ultime de l'auteur quand elles s'abandonnent a la passion; leur droit d'aimer semble dans un premier temps tout a fait legitime, puis il semble toujours que la morale chretienne, tellement presente a l'epoque de l'auteur et dans son esprit, l'emporte finalement. Nous verrons, dans un premier chapitre, comment Balzac analysait la societe comme un organisme animal, les especes humaines comme des especes naturelles. Son gout pour la physiologie se retrouve dans la representation de son monde qui nait d'un don d'observation et d'imagination extraordinaire. Dans un second chapitre, je tacherai de presenter la vision critique que Balzac avait de son temps; c'est essentiellement le temps de la Restauration, avec le retour de la dynastie des Bourbons apres l'Empire, quand la monarchie, dit-il en 1835, fut "attestee." Nous verrons son analyse des maux affectant la societe mais aussi sa discussion sur les principes qui la regissent, en rapport surtout avec la position de la femme aristocrate. La representation et le fonctionnement des personnages dans les spheres du physique, du moral, et du social, sont le noyau du troisieme chapitre, temoignant du grand genie de Balzac a donner a l'ame une dimension toute particuliere. D'invention realiste et de vision divinatoire, la projection du chef d'reuvre balzacien est, par consequent, paradoxal; et c'est essentiellement dans La Duchesse de Langeais, Les Secrets de la princesse de Cadignan, Le Cabinets des antiques, La Femme abandonnee, ainsi que Le Pere Goriot, et Le Contrat de mariage, que nous pourrons l' apprecier.

Kate Chopin’s stories including “A Pair of Silk Stockings,” “A Very Fine Fiddle” and “Azelie” are rich in subject-object relationships. Close text analysis helps explicate the power of these objects or things. A thing is animate and an object is not. The stockings, fiddle, and store objects are part of a transaction between things and people; what is an object to one character is a thing to another. Exploration of Victorian women and department stores illuminates how stockings overpower Mrs. Sommers. Research on share tenant life, violins’ value, and Louisiana mixed ancestry reveals how the fiddle enables Fifine and Cleophas to re-imagine their identities and cross social boundaries; similarly, “authentic woman” feminist theory highlights how objects affect Azelie’s agency. Functioning atypically, stockings, a fiddle, and store items become things and not just objects. Things invite Chopin’s characters to embrace uncertainty. We are in things and things are in us. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Bibliography: leaves 421-464.

Bibliography: leaves 221-234. / viii, 234 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English Language and Literature, 1994

Traditional interpretations of James Joyce's Dubliners have often focused on the pervasive "paralysis" of the city, covered in the stories' range of "childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life." However, these approaches have limited their focus on the women in the stories, often spotlighting the male characters--and the author--through a Freudian lens; consequently, the interpretations have overlooked important considerations in light of developing feminist criticism. Through a selection of the stories, this thesis attempts to show how the text of Dubliners offers a cultural critique of the ways in which women were oppressed and constrained by the Irish Catholic ideology which established their roles within society. By the close of the collection, however, Joyce's creation of an inchoate image of the multi-dimensional, sexualized women of his mature works, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, is embodied in the character of Gretta Conroy in "The Dead." Using Judith Butler's theory of performative acts of gender construction and Julia Kristeva's cultural dynamic of "the maternal" in the Stabat Mater, this criticism of the text lifts the female characters from the backgrounds of Dubliners and reveals the diseased culture of Dublin from another perspective. The female characters in the text act out expected cultural roles, often modeled after the Irish Catholic ideal of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Through the speech, silence, and physical acts of the female characters in Dubliners, "the female" in Irish-Catholic-Victorian culture is constructed--and reinforced--for Joyce's audience. This reading then furthers our understanding of the institutions, values, and practices which defined "womanhood" in nineteenth-century Dublin. / Graduation date: 1999

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