No description available.

My doctoral thesis focuses on the twentieth-century Scottish writer, Jessie Kesson, examining the effects of the cultural construction of gender from a feminist psychoanalytic perspective. Although my primary focus is on the detrimental effects traditional gender roles have on girls and women, recently published studies claiming that 'masculinity' is in a state of crisis are of particular value to my work. The reasons contemporary critics offer for this 'crisis in masculinity' vary widely. There are those who are convinced that women are to blame for abandoning their traditional roles as wives and mothers and moving too far into areas of society that are traditionally 'male'. This, they believe, results in a 'feminised' society that has an adverse effect on the development and well-being of boys and men. Those who support this argument generally believe that social, emotional and psychological distinctions between the genders are biologically inherent rather than socially constructed, and would prefer to see gender positions polarised rather than assimilated. At the other end of the scale are those who believe that the behaviours associated with traditional 'masculinity' are outmoded, fostering a form of emotional distrophy that is responsible for the increase in male suicide and autistic-like behaviours. Those who support this argument believe that males should develop a new set of behavioural traits more closely aligned to those traditionally thought of as 'feminine': traits like spontaneity, expressiveness, empathy and compassion. I have found the latter arguments exciting on two counts: firstly because an increasing number of male critics are joining female critics in acknowledging that many of the traits and behaviours traditionally associated with 'masculinity' are life-denying for both sexes; secondly, and most importantly, because these critics are echoing the findings of the feminist psychoanalytic critic, Jessica Benjamin, whose work I have found so stimulating. But, where critics have pointed to the problem ('masculine' behaviour) and recommended that it be modified to something more closely resembling 'feminine' behaviour, Benjamin has not only identified the source of the problem, she has developed a revised theory of human development, 'Intersubjectivity', which offers a positive and transformative approach to human behaviour. I examine Benjamin�s theory closely in Chapter Two, and make use of it in succeeding chapters. In May 2000, financed by the Bamforth Scholarship fund (with help from the Humanities Division of the University of Otago), I attended a conference at the University of St Andrews entitled 'Scotland: The Gendered Nation', which gave me a wider view of the concerns of contemporary Scottish writers and scholars. The paper I presented at the conference, "That great brute of a bunion!": the construction of masculinity in Jessie Kesson�s Glitter of Mica�, was published in the Spring 2001 issue of Scottish Studies Review. Following the conference I spent the rest of May in Scotland finding out more about Kesson and her writing under the generous tutelage of Kesson�s biographer, Dr Isobel (Tait) Murray, from the University of Aberdeen. Kesson wrote many plays for the BBC, and I was able to read Dr Murray�s copies of some of these unpublished works in the security of the Kings College Library, along with back copies of North-East Review to which Kesson contributed. In Edinburgh I visited the National Library of Scotland which holds back copies of The Scots Magazine containing pertinent articles by Kesson and her contemporaries. Then I travelled to those parts of North-East Scotland which feature most precisely in Kesson�s life and writing. My Scottish month was invaluable for its insight into the critical literary climate of Scotland, and for allowing me to reach Jessie Kesson imaginatively: through the boarded-up windows of the Orphanage at Skene; by the ruined Cathedral at Elgin; at the top of Our Lady�s Lane; and on the steps of her cottar house at Westertown Farm. [SEE FOOTNOTE] It was a privilege to trace Kesson�s footsteps and then to return to the other side of the world with a much keener sense of her 'place'. I would like to think this has carried over into my work, the structure of which is as follows: Chapter One gives a brief history of Jessie Kesson�s life and writing. Chapter Two focuses on Jessica Benjamin the feminist psychoanalytic critic whose work provides the main theoretical framework for my thesis. Chapter Three considers the expression of female sexuality in the novella Where the Apple Ripens, and the way society conspires to have it diminish rather than enhance a sense of female self-hood. Where the Apple Ripens is not Kesson�s first published work but, because it introduces the central concerns of my thesis through the experiences of an adolescent girl, I have chosen to begin with it rather than with The White Bird Passes and to work towards increasingly complex gender relations in succeeding chapters. In Chapter Four, The White Bird Passes, I look at the way Kesson depicts girls and women as instruments of male sexuality, controlled by a nervous patriarchy whose institutions (family, education, church) take away the promise of her female characters. Chapter Five is centred on The Glitter of Mica, and considers the consequences of a masculinity constructed around the destruction of 'the Mother'. Chapter Six considers the fate of the anonymous young woman in Another Time, Another Place, and examines the conventions of the social order that deny her self-definition. Chapter Seven also examines the social conventions that shape and limit the lives of Kesson�s female characters - this time in a selection of Kesson�s short stories and poems. In Chapter Eight I look at selected writers from the eighteenth to the twentieth-century whose work, in diverse and often contradictory ways, has contributed to an interrogation of gender in Scottish literature. This is not an historical and systematic survey of gender relations in Scotland; it is not even an historical and systematic survey of gender questions in Scottish literature. Rather, it is an impressionistic account of such matters in some selected Scottish literature - selected in part to cover some highly influential figures, and in part from Jessie Kesson�s more immediate context: feminine, rural, the North East. There is a place for such historical and systematic work, of course, and I hope that someone will do it. All I can hope for is that I may have provided some beginning but more importantly, that my work in this chapter will sharpen, further, an understanding of Jessie Kesson. I begin with the life and work of the poet, Robert Burns. As well as featuring in Kesson�s Glitter of Mica, Burns and his legacy are matters of influence in the gendered ideal of 'Scottishness' for both laymen and writers at home and abroad. Following Burns, I contrast the unconscious gender ideology which permeates Neil Gunn�s writing with the progressive awareness of gender issues that characterises the work of Lewis Grassic Gibbon and aligns the latter with Kesson�s. I then examine the idealised landscapes and sentimentalised characters of the Kailyard era and the hostile response of the anti-Kailyard writers. This leads into an examination of Hugh MacDiarmid�s poem, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle. MacDiarmid, like Burns, was monumental on the Scottish literary scene and his efforts to rekindle the spirit of the primitive Scot through literature have made him influential with a smaller but equally significant group. What is of particular relevance to my work is that the ideal of 'Scottishness' fostered by writers such as Burns and MacDiarmid is heavily dependent on prescribed gender positions which promote the exploitation of women while rendering them subservient to men and politically powerless. It is from within this environment of gender-based Scottishness that Jessie Kesson and other women writers, were writing and arguing. Therefore, lastly, in Chapter Eight, I concentrate on those women writers whose work has the most relevance to the time, place and ideological content of Kesson�s writing: Violet Jacob, Catherine Carswell, Lorna Moon, Willa Muir and Nan Shepherd. The writing of all of these women is concerned with psychic well-being centred on human relations and/or self-determination and, of the five, the writings of Willa Muir and Nan Shepherd are considered more fully because of the particular contribution they make to my examination of Jessie Kesson: Willa Muir commented, both directly and indirectly, on gender matters. Nan Shepherd, quite apart from being a friend of many years to Jessie Kesson, wrote novels in which gender issues are entirely central. FOOTNOTE: I am indebted to Sir Maitland Mackie for giving me a guided tour of Westertown Farm, the setting for Darklands in The Glitter of Mica.

Dedicated to recording, portraying, and indicting the social inequities that he witnessed in nineteenth century Victorian England, one of Charles Dickens' many concerns was the roles assigned to women both in the public and private spheres. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the narratives of Amy Dorrit and Miss Wade in Dickens' Little Dorrit and Esther Summerson in Bleak House to explore the ways in which each woman conforms to, subverts, or rejects her socially prescribed roles as she seeks to create her own identity while simultaneously complying to the duties and roles assigned her. This study focuses on the oral and written narratives of these women exploring their words, stories, and symbolic imagery. It also contextualizes their narratives while answering the critical question: How does individual identity emerge amid rigorously circumscribed social roles? / Graduation date: 1995

This thesis is a feminist interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s treatment of Shakespeare in Orlando and A Room of One’s Own. Although Woolf’s admiration of Shakespeare is evident in both texts, Woolf’s identification of Shakespeare as a gender-neutral or feminist-friendly writer must be qualified. Woolf presents Shakespeare as a worthy but incomplete artistic model, for his work does not explore women with adequate complexity. In these texts, Woolf partially “writes with” Shakespeare, but she also uses his literary works and his status as a cultural icon both to critique the conventional treatment of women as limited by the male perspective and to highlight the gender privilege male writers have historically had. In these two texts, Woolf presses beyond what she perceives to be Shakespeare’s limited exploration of women, ultimately calling for a feminist re-evaluation of gender roles in literature and emphasizing the need for women writers to record women’s experiences.

Thesis (M.W.S.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2001. / Bibliography: leaves 130-135.

This dissertation examines the arguments against tragedy offered by feminist playwrights in their "re-visions" of the plays of Euripides and Shakespeare. / In the first part, I maintain that feminist dramatic re-vision is one manifestation of an unrecognized tradition of women's writing in which criticism is expressed through fiction. I also argue that the project of feminist dramatic re-vision embodies a feminist "new poetics." / In the second part, I examine the aesthetics and politics of tragedy from a feminist perspective. Feminist arguments against tragedy are, in effect arguments against patriarchy. But it is the theorists and critics of tragedy---not the playwrights---who are unequivocally aligned with patriarchy. Playwrights like Euripides and Shakespeare can be seen to destabilize tragedy in their plays. / In the third part, I show how recent feminist playwrights (Jackie Crossland, Dario Fo and Franca Rame, Deborah Porter, Caryl Churchill and David Lan, Maureen Duffy, Alison Lyssa, The Women's Theatre Group and Elaine Feinstein, Joan Ure, Margaret Clarke, and Ann-Marie MacDonald) counter tragedy by extrapolating from the arguments presented by Euripides and Shakespeare in The Medea, The Bacchae, King Lear, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Othello , and by allocating voice and agency to their female protagonists.

This dissertation contributes to medieval feminist scholarship by forging new insights into the relationship between gender theory and developing notions of orality and textuality in late medieval Europe. I examine three conventional satirical depictions of women as deviant speakers in medieval literature---as loquacious gossips, scolding shrews and cursing witches---to reveal how medieval perceptions of oral and textual discursive modes influenced literary representations of women. The dissertation demonstrates that our comprehension of the literary battle between the sexes requires a recognition and understanding of how discursive modes were gendered in a culture increasingly defining itself in terms of textuality. My work pursues the juxtaposition of the rational, literate male and the irrational, oral female across a wide range of texts, from Dunbar and Chaucer's courtly literature, to more socially diffused works, such as carols, sermon exempla and the Deluge mystery plays, as well as texts, like Margery Kempe's autobiography and witchcraft documents, that pertain to historical women. I demonstrate the social impact of this convention by anchoring these literary texts in their socio-historical context. The significance of my identification of this nexus of orality and femininity is that I am able to delineate an ideology profoundly affecting the way women's speech and writings have been received and perceived for centuries. This notion of gendered discourse can also redefine how we perceive medieval literature. Mikhail Bakhtin's discursive principles---ideas that stem from his application of the dynamics of oral communication and performance to the literary text---help to liberate new meanings from old texts by allowing us to read against the grain of convention. Both Bakhtin's theory of dialogism and Walter Ong's summary of the psychodynamics of orality suggest that orally influenced discourse is less interested in monolithic truth than in the art of tellin

My doctoral thesis focuses on the twentieth-century Scottish writer, Jessie Kesson, examining the effects of the cultural construction of gender from a feminist psychoanalytic perspective. Although my primary focus is on the detrimental effects traditional gender roles have on girls and women, recently published studies claiming that 'masculinity' is in a state of crisis are of particular value to my work. The reasons contemporary critics offer for this 'crisis in masculinity' vary widely. There are those who are convinced that women are to blame for abandoning their traditional roles as wives and mothers and moving too far into areas of society that are traditionally 'male'. This, they believe, results in a 'feminised' society that has an adverse effect on the development and well-being of boys and men. Those who support this argument generally believe that social, emotional and psychological distinctions between the genders are biologically inherent rather than socially constructed, and would prefer to see gender positions polarised rather than assimilated. At the other end of the scale are those who believe that the behaviours associated with traditional 'masculinity' are outmoded, fostering a form of emotional distrophy that is responsible for the increase in male suicide and autistic-like behaviours. Those who support this argument believe that males should develop a new set of behavioural traits more closely aligned to those traditionally thought of as 'feminine': traits like spontaneity, expressiveness, empathy and compassion. I have found the latter arguments exciting on two counts: firstly because an increasing number of male critics are joining female critics in acknowledging that many of the traits and behaviours traditionally associated with 'masculinity' are life-denying for both sexes; secondly, and most importantly, because these critics are echoing the findings of the feminist psychoanalytic critic, Jessica Benjamin, whose work I have found so stimulating. But, where critics have pointed to the problem ('masculine' behaviour) and recommended that it be modified to something more closely resembling 'feminine' behaviour, Benjamin has not only identified the source of the problem, she has developed a revised theory of human development, 'Intersubjectivity', which offers a positive and transformative approach to human behaviour. I examine Benjamin�s theory closely in Chapter Two, and make use of it in succeeding chapters. In May 2000, financed by the Bamforth Scholarship fund (with help from the Humanities Division of the University of Otago), I attended a conference at the University of St Andrews entitled 'Scotland: The Gendered Nation', which gave me a wider view of the concerns of contemporary Scottish writers and scholars. The paper I presented at the conference, "That great brute of a bunion!": the construction of masculinity in Jessie Kesson�s Glitter of Mica�, was published in the Spring 2001 issue of Scottish Studies Review. Following the conference I spent the rest of May in Scotland finding out more about Kesson and her writing under the generous tutelage of Kesson�s biographer, Dr Isobel (Tait) Murray, from the University of Aberdeen. Kesson wrote many plays for the BBC, and I was able to read Dr Murray�s copies of some of these unpublished works in the security of the Kings College Library, along with back copies of North-East Review to which Kesson contributed. In Edinburgh I visited the National Library of Scotland which holds back copies of The Scots Magazine containing pertinent articles by Kesson and her contemporaries. Then I travelled to those parts of North-East Scotland which feature most precisely in Kesson�s life and writing. My Scottish month was invaluable for its insight into the critical literary climate of Scotland, and for allowing me to reach Jessie Kesson imaginatively: through the boarded-up windows of the Orphanage at Skene; by the ruined Cathedral at Elgin; at the top of Our Lady�s Lane; and on the steps of her cottar house at Westertown Farm. [SEE FOOTNOTE] It was a privilege to trace Kesson�s footsteps and then to return to the other side of the world with a much keener sense of her 'place'. I would like to think this has carried over into my work, the structure of which is as follows: Chapter One gives a brief history of Jessie Kesson�s life and writing. Chapter Two focuses on Jessica Benjamin the feminist psychoanalytic critic whose work provides the main theoretical framework for my thesis. Chapter Three considers the expression of female sexuality in the novella Where the Apple Ripens, and the way society conspires to have it diminish rather than enhance a sense of female self-hood. Where the Apple Ripens is not Kesson�s first published work but, because it introduces the central concerns of my thesis through the experiences of an adolescent girl, I have chosen to begin with it rather than with The White Bird Passes and to work towards increasingly complex gender relations in succeeding chapters. In Chapter Four, The White Bird Passes, I look at the way Kesson depicts girls and women as instruments of male sexuality, controlled by a nervous patriarchy whose institutions (family, education, church) take away the promise of her female characters. Chapter Five is centred on The Glitter of Mica, and considers the consequences of a masculinity constructed around the destruction of 'the Mother'. Chapter Six considers the fate of the anonymous young woman in Another Time, Another Place, and examines the conventions of the social order that deny her self-definition. Chapter Seven also examines the social conventions that shape and limit the lives of Kesson�s female characters - this time in a selection of Kesson�s short stories and poems. In Chapter Eight I look at selected writers from the eighteenth to the twentieth-century whose work, in diverse and often contradictory ways, has contributed to an interrogation of gender in Scottish literature. This is not an historical and systematic survey of gender relations in Scotland; it is not even an historical and systematic survey of gender questions in Scottish literature. Rather, it is an impressionistic account of such matters in some selected Scottish literature - selected in part to cover some highly influential figures, and in part from Jessie Kesson�s more immediate context: feminine, rural, the North East. There is a place for such historical and systematic work, of course, and I hope that someone will do it. All I can hope for is that I may have provided some beginning but more importantly, that my work in this chapter will sharpen, further, an understanding of Jessie Kesson. I begin with the life and work of the poet, Robert Burns. As well as featuring in Kesson�s Glitter of Mica, Burns and his legacy are matters of influence in the gendered ideal of 'Scottishness' for both laymen and writers at home and abroad. Following Burns, I contrast the unconscious gender ideology which permeates Neil Gunn�s writing with the progressive awareness of gender issues that characterises the work of Lewis Grassic Gibbon and aligns the latter with Kesson�s. I then examine the idealised landscapes and sentimentalised characters of the Kailyard era and the hostile response of the anti-Kailyard writers. This leads into an examination of Hugh MacDiarmid�s poem, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle. MacDiarmid, like Burns, was monumental on the Scottish literary scene and his efforts to rekindle the spirit of the primitive Scot through literature have made him influential with a smaller but equally significant group. What is of particular relevance to my work is that the ideal of 'Scottishness' fostered by writers such as Burns and MacDiarmid is heavily dependent on prescribed gender positions which promote the exploitation of women while rendering them subservient to men and politically powerless. It is from within this environment of gender-based Scottishness that Jessie Kesson and other women writers, were writing and arguing. Therefore, lastly, in Chapter Eight, I concentrate on those women writers whose work has the most relevance to the time, place and ideological content of Kesson�s writing: Violet Jacob, Catherine Carswell, Lorna Moon, Willa Muir and Nan Shepherd. The writing of all of these women is concerned with psychic well-being centred on human relations and/or self-determination and, of the five, the writings of Willa Muir and Nan Shepherd are considered more fully because of the particular contribution they make to my examination of Jessie Kesson: Willa Muir commented, both directly and indirectly, on gender matters. Nan Shepherd, quite apart from being a friend of many years to Jessie Kesson, wrote novels in which gender issues are entirely central. FOOTNOTE: I am indebted to Sir Maitland Mackie for giving me a guided tour of Westertown Farm, the setting for Darklands in The Glitter of Mica.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 301-317).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 1999. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 197-201).