By Her Own Hand: Female Agency Through Self-Castration in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction explores the intentional methods of self-castration that lead to authorial empowerment. The project relies on the following self-castration formula: the author’s recognition of herself as a being defined by lack. This lack refers to the inability to signify within the phallocentric system of language. In addition to this initial recognition, the female author realizes writing for public consumption emulates the process of castration but, nevertheless, initiates the writing process as a way to resituate the origin of castration—placing it in her own hand. The female writer also recognizes her production as feminine and, therefore works to castrate her own femininity in her pursuit to create texts that are liberated from the critical assignation of “feminine productions.” Female self-castration is a violent act of displacement. As the author gains empowerment through the writing process, she creates characters that bear the mark of castration. The text opens a field of play in which the author utilizes the page as a way to cut, disfigure, or erase the feminine sexual body. On the authorial level, the feminine writer works through her self-castration process through the process of writing, editing, and publication. Within the text, her characters demonstrate a will toward liberation from authorial productive hegemony by carrying the mark of their creator’s castration and by taking on the power the process allocates to the writer.

This dissertation explores the ways in which Charles Dickens writes Nancy in Oliver Twist, Anthony Trollope writes Carry Brattle in The Vicar of Bullhampton, and Elizabeth Gaskell writes Esther in Mary Barton to represent and examine some very personal and painful anxiety. About Dickens and Trollope, I contend that they turn their experiences of shame into their prostitute's shame. For Gaskell, I assert that the experience she projects onto her prostitute is that of her own maternal grief in isolation. Further, I argue that these authors self-consciously create biographical parallels between themselves and their prostitutes with an eye to drawing conclusions about the results of their anxieties, both for their prostitutes and, by proxy, for themselves. In Chapter II, I assert that in Nancy, Dickens writes himself and his sense of shame at his degradation and exploitation in Warren's Blacking Factory. This shame resulted in a Dickens divided, split between his successful, public persona and his secret, mortifying shame. Both shame and its divisiveness he represents in a number of ways in Nancy. In Chapter III, I contend that Trollope laces Carry Brattle with some of his own biographical details from his early adult years in London. These parallels signify Carry's personal importance to her author, and reveal her silences and her subordinate role in the text as representative of Trollope's own understanding and fear of shame and its consequences: its silencing and paralyzing nature, and its inescapability. In Chapter IV, I posit that Gaskell identifies herself with Esther, and that through her, Gaskell explores three personal things: her sorrow over the loss of not one but three of her seven children, her possible guilt over these deaths, and her emotional isolation in her marriage as she grieved alone. In her creation of Esther, Gaskell creates a way both to isolate her grief and to forge a close companion to share it, thus enabling her to examine and work through grief. In Chapter V, I examine the preface of each novel and find that these, too, reflect each author's identification with and investment of anxiety in his or her particular prostitute.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Stockholm, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-94).

Submitted by Automa??o e Estat?stica (sst@bczm.ufrn.br) on 2017-12-12T17:30:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 ElizabeteMariaAlvaresDosSantos_TESE.pdf: 544895 bytes, checksum: e7b846e4105f690d671cd1ad18c76b94 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Arlan Eloi Leite Silva (eloihistoriador@yahoo.com.br) on 2017-12-12T20:49:50Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 ElizabeteMariaAlvaresDosSantos_TESE.pdf: 544895 bytes, checksum: e7b846e4105f690d671cd1ad18c76b94 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-12-12T20:49:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ElizabeteMariaAlvaresDosSantos_TESE.pdf: 544895 bytes, checksum: e7b846e4105f690d671cd1ad18c76b94 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-11-10 / Este trabalho tem como principal objetivo o de elaborar um estudo comparativo entre Charles Dickens e Graciliano Ramos, inicialmente escolhidos, respectivamente, por suas obras: Oliver Twist e Inf?ncia. Nossa atividade comparativa busca apresentar algumas aproxima??es e distanciamentos entre esses autores e suas obras. No decorrer de nosso trabalho, apresentamos o perfil de cada romancista e seus respectivos cen?rios s?cio-hist?ricos, desde suas forma??es distintas a realidades representadas pela Literatura Ocidental, dos S?culos XIX e XX, respectivamente. Primordialmente, o nosso principal foco ? a explora??o da crian?a e as viol?ncias desferidas a elas. Por?m, diante de sociedades t?o infinitamente distintas, os conceitos e representa??es de ?crian?a? e de inf?ncia s?o muito diferentes entre si. Ao longo de nosso trabalho, tivemos o cuidado de separar o memorial?stico do historiogr?fico, do autobiogr?fico, especialmente no tocante ? est?tica das obras liter?rias, raz?o do nosso trabalho. O componente ?lembran?a?, nos conceitos de Jeanne Marie Ganegbin, d? suporte te?rico ao nosso estudo, assim como os de Eliane Zagury amparam a rela??o de autobiografia como vi?s de express?o dos relatos de mem?ria. Ao final da nossa pesquisa, apresentaremos a aproxima??o entre os dois autores, pois ambos viveram a narrativa da viol?ncia em suas obras. / The main aspect of this work is to elaborate a comparative study between Charles Dickens and Graciliano Ramos, initially chosen, respectively, for their works: Oliver Twist and Inf?ncia. Our comparative work presents some of the common aspects and distances between these authors and their works. On the course of our work, we present the profile of each novelist and their socio-historical scenarios, from their distinct formations to realities represented by the Western Literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively. Initially, our main aim is on the child exploitation and the violence inflicted on them. However, due to societies so infinitely different, the concepts and representations of "child" and childhood are very different from each other. Throughout our work, we have taken care to separate the memorial, the historiographical, the autobiographical, especially regarding to the aesthetics of their literary works, the reason for our study. ?Remembrance?, in the concepts of Jeanne Marie Ganegbin, gives theoretical support to our study, as well as the ones from Eliane Zagury which support the relation of autobiography as an expression bias of the memory reports. At the end of our research, we will be presenting the similarities between both authors, since they have lived, sometime in their lifetime, the narrative of violence in their works.

This diploma thesis deals with the portrayal of child heroes in English and American literature, in works of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. The chosen novels are Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. These novels are analysed in the themes of child labour and poverty, racism, religion, the view of the world by children in contrast to the adult perspective, upbringing and education. The last chapter deals with the humour of both novelists. Thus the emphasis is put on the social aspect of the literary output of Dickens and Twain. The main aim of the thesis is to depict these child heroes and their acting in the literature of the 19th century, and to reflect the life experience of both authors.

Non-standard language, or dialect, often serves a specific purpose in a literary work and it is therefore a challenge for any translator to recreate the non-standard language of the source text into a target language.  There are different linguistic tools an author can use in order to convey non-standard language, and the same is true for a translator – who can choose from different strategies when tasked with the challenge of translating dialectal features. This essay studies the challenge of recreating dialectal, non-standard speech in a work of literature and compares four different translations of that same piece of literature into another language. With this purpose in mind, the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens is analysed using samples of non-standard language which have been applied to indicate a character’s speech as dialectal. The same treatment is given to four different Swedish translations. The method consists of linguistically analysing four text samples from the original novel, to see how non-standard language is represented and which function it serves, and thereafter, comparing the same samples to the four Swedish translations in order to establish whether non-standard features are visible also in the translated novels and which strategies the translators have used in order to achieve this. It is concluded that non-standard language is applied in the source text and is represented on each possible linguistic level, including graphology, morphosyntax, and vocabulary. The main function of the non-standard language found in the source text samples was to place the characters in contrasting social positions. The target texts were found to also use features of non-standard language, but not to the same extent as the language used in the source text. The most common type of marker was, in all five of the texts, lexical items. It was also concluded that the most frequently used translation strategy used in the target texts was the use of various informal, colloquial features.

The purpose of this study is to determine. whether Charles Dickens's educational theories in England during the nineteenth century are conclusively juxtaposed to John Holt's educational theories in America during the twentieth century. Chapter One introduces the proposition and states the general nature of the discussion in -subsequent chapters. Chapter Two presents a history of economic conditions in nineteenth-century England and shows how its evolution influenced Dickens's educational theories. Chapter Three discusses the economic conditions in twentieth-century America, the moral crisis- and its affect on youth, and Holt's theories of how children fail and how they learn. Chapter Four synthesizes Dickens's and Holt's -theories and establishes that their philosophies and aims in the field of education are closely juxtaposed.

The theatre in the nineteenth century was a source of entertainment similar in popularity to today's film culture, but critics, of both that age and today, often look down on nineteenth-century theatre as lacking in aesthetic merit. Just as many of the films now being produced in Hollywood are adapted from popular or classic literature, many theatrical productions in the early 1800s were based on popular literary works, and it is in that practice of adaptation that value in nineteenth-century theatre can be discerned. The abundance of theatrical adaptations during the nineteenth century expanded the arena in which the public could experience and interact with the great popular literature produced during the period. Additionally, theatrical adaptations afforded audiences the opportunity of considering how the medium of theatre functions artistically, since a story on stage is communicated differently than a story in print. Studying theatrical work as adaptation – especially when we focus on the manner in which the subject is communicated rather than on alterations in the subject itself – reminds us that the theatrical medium is not constituted of the same formal elements as literature and should not be judged according to the same criteria. The stage of the early nineteenth century, perhaps more than in any other age, was defined by its appeal to the sense of sight rather than by attempts to be literary by using literary devices on the stage. Instead, theatre of this age found ways of communicating the subject material of popular literature in an entirely new "language" system, with varying degrees of success. Considering adaptation as a process of translation from one aesthetic language to another reveals that some creative minds were more attuned to the unique aesthetic capabilities of each medium than others. Two case studies of theatrical adaptations produced in nineteenth-century England apply this model of adaptation while considering the unique stage conventions, expectations, and culture of the day. These analyses reveal differing degrees of sensitivity to the mode of communication in literature and theatre.

Co-authored by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, The Perils of Certain English Prisoners is a tale of linguistic subversion in colonial spaces. Christian George King-a native "Sambo" that betrays the English colonists on Silver Store to a marauding band of pirates-demonstrates a linguistic phenomenon that scholars call interlanguage, or a quasi-language that partially resembles both English and his native language. Because of its status as a language between languages, King's interlanguage disrupts the linguistic hierarchy of the tale by opening possibilities for miscommunication. To combat this underlying tension, the colonists must rely on translation-specifically, on the mistaken belief that all non-English languages, including an interlanguage, can be translated perfectly into English. Perfect translation grants colonial spaces a much-needed façade of unity and cohesion against what would otherwise be linguistic chaos. Yet the very notion that meaning can be perfectly translated is shattered by interlanguage's ability to cultivate both intimacy and resistance in the translator-intimacy, because the colonizers see enough of their own language in the learner to lull themselves into thinking that meaning is transparent; and resistance, because the foreign parts of the learner's speech that remain serve as a continual reminder of the unconquered tongue. While interlanguage is most apparent in King's speech, it is also present, in a unique way, in the construction and co-authorship of The Perils itself. Indeed, interlanguage proves a useful concept for thinking about any textual moment in which individual voices combine into a hybrid voice that cultivates the illusion of unity and cohesion.

The following study is interested in informal education in three of Charles Dickens's novels: A Christmas Carol (1843), Bleak House (1852), and Great Expectations (1860). While substantial scholarly attention has been paid to Dickens's interest in formal education, for example his educational reform efforts, his fictional depictions of schools and schooling, and his "student" and "teacher" characters, my project considers the fictional moments in which Dickens depicts education happening outside traditional "school" settings. I argue against claims that Dickens was exclusively interested in critiquing pedagogical practices; rather, Dickens offers informal solutions to Victorian attempts at establishing a state-run educational system. My project begins with a chapter providing historical context on formal Victorian educational practices; practices which inform Dickens's descriptions of both formal and informal learning/teaching experiences. In my analysis of A Christmas Carol, I analyze the Christmas Spirits's teaching strategies and find that the ghosts offer a more humane pedagogical approach than common Victorian teaching methods like Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster's Monitorial System. My chapter on Bleak House considers the ways in which gendered teaching and learning complicate a Dickensian perspective on what can be defined as best-practice pedagogy. In Great Expectations, I explore how the generic form of the Bildungsroman, or the novel of education, contributes to Dickens's evaluation of learning and social mobility. My project concludes by demonstrating how Dickens explodes and expands definitions of "teacher," "pupil," and "learning" in A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, and Great Expectations, even for twenty-first century audiences. / Master of Arts / In his novels Hard Times, Dombey and Son, and Our Mutual Friend Charles Dickens famously criticizes common Victorian educational practices by depicting unfair and cruel treatment in school and classroom settings. However, Dickens's portrayals of excellent educational settings is often overlooked. My thesis argues that examples of Dickens's successful teachers occur most frequently in his portrayals of informal education. In A Christmas Carol (1843), Bleak House (1852), and Great Expectations (1860), ghosts, friends, mothers, dancing-masters, and dubious neighbors become the best teachers to needy students. My project begins with a chapter providing historical context on formal Victorian educational practices; practices which inform Dickens's descriptions of both formal and informal learning/teaching experiences. In my analysis of A Christmas Carol, I analyze the Christmas Spirits's teaching strategies and find that the ghosts offer a more humane pedagogical approach than common Victorian teaching methods like Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster's Monitorial System. My chapter on Bleak House considers the ways in which gendered teaching and learning complicate a Dickensian perspective on what can be defined as best-practice pedagogy. In Great Expectations, I explore how the generic form of the Bildungsroman, or the novel of education, contributes to Dickens's evaluation of learning and social mobility. My project concludes by demonstrating how Dickens explodes and expands definitions of "teacher," "pupil," and "learning" in A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, and Great Expectations, even for twenty-first century audiences.