This thesis represents a study of The Years by Virginia Woolf and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Both novels attempt to redefine the role of women in patriarchal society during the 1930s. The domestic role women had to fill within a masculine household constrained their ability to form an independent "self," apart from fathers and husbands. I argue that these novels articulate the possibility for women to access an independent self by examining the meaning behind domestic objects in and of the house. Lucy Irigaray asserts that women were, and still are, associated with being valued as a desirable "commodity". Since women have no choice but to work within the symbolic order and are already labeled as "object," women writers have manipulated the system by examining the subject/object dichotomy. The relationship women have with inanimate, and particularly domestic, objects shows how time (the past and the future) manipulates freedom in the present moment. Woolf's reflection on how "moments of being" function as gateways to a heightened sense of awareness is prevalent in her last published novel, The Years. I invoke Friedrich Nietzsche to consider notions of how an antiquated past hinders identity in du Maurier's Rebecca. In the literary texts of Woolf and du Maurier, women have a unique relationship with material objects in relationship to subjectivity. By examining the spatial constructs of the home, women are able to construct themselves as free "subjects" in a male dominated world. / by Stephanie Derisi. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2012. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

"It may be said that one of the most important characteristics of the professional librarian is his familiarity with bibliographic methods. This is due to the fact that the librarian is responsible for the accessibility of the knowledge found within the library's collections, and that in carrying out his responsibility, he must utilize bibliography. As one authority has put it, bibliography leads the inquirer, 'through channels as well-defined as are the entrances to harbors, to the particular record or records of communication which contain the information or other matter which he seeks.' Because it was felt that she needed practice in acquiring skill in this 'art of communication,' the writer decided to undertake as a graduate paper a study which would involve bibliographic investigation, a study in the form of a bio-bibliography. In choosing an author as the subject of the bio-bibliography, it was necessary to select one who might be claimed as being within the province of librarianship. Miss Daphne du Maurier, the prominent English novelist, was chosen as the subject of the paper for several reasons"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1956." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Ruth H. Rockwood, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-74).

Revision of thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sussex. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [263]-273) and index.