Thesis (M.A.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 76-79). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa. / After many years of hard study and careful research, we can state that focusing on the teaching area is not the key to achieve a good proficiency when learning a foreign language. This idea is based on the fact that, even though there have been many attempts to develop a good method for teaching languages through many decades, none of them has proved to be accepted by the whole language teaching community. Since our work was originally planned to encompass teaching and learning, from our point of view the process of learning is undoubtedly the most important thing. Consequently it must be studied in depth.

Thesis (M.A.)--Western Kentucky University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-89).

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Literatura. / En general, la condición femenina se manifiesta en los roles principales y secundarios que la mujer ha adoptado tradicionalmente en la sociedad, es decir, la manera como la mujer ha logrado insertarse en ella. Esta manera de insertarse corresponde claramente, en primer lugar, al hecho de que la sociedad está regida por el hombre; es por eso que se habla de una sociedad masculina, machista, que le ha impuesto roles a la mujer; segundo, a que los roles de la mujer están determinados por su configuración biológica, ineludible para determinar su función, y la tercera consideración se refiere a las presiones e influencias que el devenir histórico ha dejado caer sobre la mujer. Aunque las presiones de la historia afectan a ambos géneros, la condición de dependencia de la mujer las hace más vulnerables. Esto se revela en el trasfondo histórico social que da marco a la narrativa de la escritora que vamos a estudiar, a la vez que determina actitudes y reacciones frente a las imposiciones del medio en que se desenvuelve. Especialmente, en la narrativa de Edith Wharton se hace presente en forma muy marcada el trasfondo puritano que la presiona constantemente y que la lleva a explorar las contradicciones de la vida, aquéllas que en particular afectan a la mujer. Específicamente, estas contradicciones aparecen en el retrato que Wharton hace de sus personajes femeninos, que nos describen cómo ellas, llevadas por la pasión, enfrentan situaciones que las llevan a elegir un mundo opuesto al que su situación las condenaba a vivir.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-209). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

The primary focus of this thesis is the New York fiction by the prolific American writer Edith Wharton. The particular works discussed in this thesis are The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, and The Age of Innocence, completed by the collection of four novellas, Old New York, and also a selection of Wharton's short stories set in the city of New York. The main argument of the thesis could be encapsulated to say that Wharton's fiction lacks the individuality of the characters, and the main focus of the texts is on society and how society affects the archetypes of the characters created solely for the purposes of this thesis. It is divided into three intersecting chapters, the first topical chapter concentrating on New York as such and how the Gilded Age influenced the Big Apple. Moreover, Wharton and her own relationship with the city is discussed in this chapter as well, pointing at the fact that she was intimately familiar with the custom and the manners of the upper society of New York, which she later implemented in her fiction. Also, the description of naturalism and determinism are provided as those seem to be the genres most utilized by the author. The next chapter revolves around the notion of archetypes as Claude Lévi-Strauss introduced in his "The Structural Study of Myth," which...

Critics of Edith Wharton frequently discuss the material culture that pervades her work, but the trend in doing so has been to rush past the things themselves and engage in abstracted conversations of theory. I would like to suggest that a closer scrutiny of the individual objects being presented in Wharton’s novels can highlight Wharton’s own theoretical approaches to material culture. Working from Bill Brown's distinction between objects and things, I want to argue that Wharton firmly situates the material culture in The Age of Innocence in the background of her characters' lives as objects which they utilize as extensions of the self; but she brings the thingness of material culture to the forefront in Twilight Sleep, where the material culture in the novel alternately stands out and malfunctions, as characters attempt—and fail—to construct coherent and livable identities for themselves in the face of a 1920s New York that Wharton depicts as a paradoxically over-furnished wasteland. I will ultimately argue that things, problematic as they are, become a matter of survival strategy for her characters in Twilight Sleep when they utilize them to reconstruct the social relations that have become increasingly threatened from the world of The Age of Innocence. / text

Thesis (M.A.)--Kutztown State College. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2831. Typescript. Abstract precedes thesis as preliminary leaves. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-120).

Edith Wharton’s male characters offer an important commentary on the evolving situation of the man in American society. Wharton did not wish for women to usurp all social positions from men but rather to claim their rightful position alongside them. Characters such as Lawrence Selden in The House of Mirth and Ralph Marvell in The Custom of the Country display the same characteristics of fear, passion, and vulnerability as do many of her primary female figures. Wharton’s societal concerns do not merely extend to that of her own sex but to that of the male in society who struggled with his sexuality, his body, and his role in marriage. This examination of masculinity within Wharton’s The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, and “The Other Two” will connect Wharton to the evolving man and his identity crisis, as her male characters have been analyzed by critics far less than her female characters. Specific aspects of masculinity often overlooked in her works, such as homosexuality and effeminacy, will come to the forefront and place her work in the context of the rigid expectations for “real American men” at the turn of the century.

Diss. Linköping : Linköpings universitet, 2008.