[pt] Este trabalho apresenta uma reflexão sobre o feminino,sobre os enigmas que flutuam o seu universo e que produzem uma imagem social relevante e sustentável . Essa imagem enuncia transformações decorrentes de aspectos sócio-culturais e vai revelando como o comportamento feminino está inserido em circunstâncias históricas e em que proporção a literatura desvela e influencia tais mudanças. Para esse olhar , tomamos A Moreninha, de Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, como fio condutor e o romance nos foi mostrando uma nova mulher, uma mulher que em sua morenice retrata brasilidade e apresenta nova matiz feminina. Conseqüentemente, visualizamos um novo Macedo, um Macedo que alinhava irreverência e equilíbrio, um Macedo que ousamos ver grande e anunciador de um universo feminino capaz de tecer novos conceitos e de produzir voz e tornar-se visível e representável. / [en] This work introduces a study about the feminineness, about the riddlesthat floatits universe and produce an important and sustainablesocial image. This image enunciates transformation originated from social- cultural aspects and keeps on showing how the feminine behavior is inserted in historical circumstances and in which proportion literature shows influences these changes. Concerning this point of view we consider A Moreninha, written by Joaquim Manuel de Macedo as the starting point and the novel began to show a new woman, a woman who with her brunetteness represents brazilian feelings and also a new female clour. For this reason we visualize a new Macedo. A Macedo that gathered inreverence and equilibrium. A Macedo we dare to consider a great announcer of a feminine universe able to create new concepts and producing voice, becaming visible and representative.

This thesis examines the ways in which a small group of young Pākehā women use underwear to construct a range of complex gendered subjectivities. I explore how these subjectivities are influenced by both material and discursive spaces. Three underwear shops in Hamilton, New Zealand - Bendon Lingerie Outlet, Bras N Things and Farmers, and various visual representations depicting contemporary notions of normative femininity, are under investigation Feminist poststructuralist theories and methodologies provide the framework for this research. One focus group and three semi-structured interviews were conducted with young women who purchase and wear underwear. Participant observations of shoppers in Bendon Lingerie Outlet, Hamilton and autobiographical journal entries of my experiences as a retailer and consumer of underwear continued throughout the research. Advertising and promotional material in underwear shops and a DVD of a Victoria's Secret lingerie show are also examined. Three points frame the analysis. First, I argue that underwear consumption spaces are discursively constructed as feminine. The socio-political structures governing these spaces construct particular types of bodies. These bodies are positioned as either 'in' place or 'out' of place. Second, underwear shops can be understood as feminised, young and thin embodied spaces. Bodies that fit this description are hence positioned as 'in' place. However, female bodies that are 'fat' and/or old and male bodies are marginalised within the space and thus positioned as 'out' of place. Third, I consider particular forms of normative femininity by examining the ways in which underwear disciplines and contains the body. Women's underwear moulds and shapes flesh to fit contemporary feminine norms. Examining the specific relationship between the body, underwear and space provides a means to re-theorise geography and makes new ground for understanding how clothed bodies are constituted in and through space.

This thesis consists of two parts – a creative work, Memory and Memorialisation, and an exegesis, Writing Women’s Lives: Women’s Autobiographies,that documents the writing process and the theoretical perspectives informing it at various stages. It is the result of a twelve year investigation into the writing process; the nature of memory, death and desire in objects and places; and their role in personal representation. The exegesis highlights the difficulties encountered in simultaneously writing and critiquing one’s own autobiographical works. As autobiography is also written ‘in relation to’ significant others, the emotional, ethical and legal issues inherent in the writing and publication of autobiographical works are explored. The creative work is not a unitary text and comprises a collection of fragmented yet connected autobiographical stories that experiment with form using archival collections – a blending of memory with family and local history – the results of excavating the past to make meaning in the present. Images are used singly and in collages to signify the temporality and intertextuality of these auto/biographical acts. Restriction: View part thesis only. Contact UWS Library for terms of full-access. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>This essay analyzes the difference between feminine and masculine narration in Stephanie Meyer's final novel in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. The methods used are Narratology, Reader-Response Criticism and Gender Theory. Breaking Dawn is divided into three different books and one of the main characters, Bella, is the narrator in the first and the last book, and the other main character, Jacob, is the narrator in the second book. Bella's and Jacob's narration styles are manifested in the title names and inside the text, and the analysis shows why Bella is a stereotypically female narrator and why Jacob is a stereotypically masculine narrator.</p>

<p>When attempting to convey certain political or ideological agendas in literary texts maintaining specific writing strategies can work as a useful tool. From a feminist perspective the use of <em>écriture feminine</em> as a means of undermining patriarchy has been largely neglected as well as misunderstood by many feminists. However, as argued in this essay, <em>écriture feminine</em> is not only a useful tool for pursuing a feminist agenda, but is also something that needs to be discussed due to the many misunderstandings of it. Resting on the theoretical perspectives of Judith Butler, Hélène Cixous, Antonio Gramsci, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Richard Slotkin this essay investigates Angela Carter’s short story “The Lady of the House of Love” in relation to <em>écriture feminine</em> by exploring how the text rejects patriarchy and its idea of the gender binary. In this short story Carter re-works the classic Sleeping Beauty fairy tale and provides us with a feminist’s version of it. The main thesis of this essay is therefore that Carter challenges the gender binary by de-victimizing “woman” and by engaging in a style of writing that overturns western culture’s definitions of “woman” Carter provides a version of Sleeping Beauty that radically differs from the hegemonic/patriarchal versions.</p>

This paper explores the relationship between postmodernist discourses and feminist discourses, asking, firstly, whether or not feminist political action is possible within a postmodernist theoretical climate that scrutinizes the construction of universalizing group identities, and, secondly, how political action might be undertaken in such a theoretical climate. I contend that Carol Shields, reflecting the postmodernist ideology of Jean-François Lyotard and Patricia Waugh, creates Daisy Goodwill Fletts absence in The Stone Diaries. This absence, in turn, acts to acknowledge the gaps in knowledge that exist within self-legitimating grand narratives. It demonstrates that Daisys performance of these grand narratives, particularly heteronormativity, necessarily obstructs her voice and, thereby, marginalizes her ability to act politically within that narrative. The Stone Diaries, then, calls for a plural public space by exposing what remains unknownwomens lives and narrativeswithin the current public space.

While footwear was originally meant to protect the feet and enable the wearer to span larger distances and rough materials, today shoes are often seen as a fashion statement and a sex symbol for women. In his book, Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things, Marcel Danesi examines how high heels have moved away from the original purpose of shoes and now “seem to contravene this function. They are uncomfortable and yet millions of women wear them." They have moved from practicality to a sign of femininity, sexuality, and power.

As an accepted genre of female composition, song lies in a unique position among musical genres. This allows it to stand largely outside the area of Claude Steele’s notion of “stereotype threat,” and being absent such weighty pressures, it could then furnish an arena in which female composers can do their best work. As a genre that combines the arts of music and poetry, song is based upon a given set of symbols that provide the composer with inspiration. The study of these symbols and their possible metaphorical meanings can offer a guide to that inspiration. By studying two settings by male composers and two settings of female composers, we can compare their individual and gendered approach to those symbols for elements of a masculine or feminine style. Heinrich Heine’s 23rd poem in Die Heimkehr, analyzed thoroughly in Chapter 2, is the focal text in this study. In Chapters 3 through 6 each of the settings is examined at length using both a standard formal analysis and the “Grundgestalt” concept of Schoenberg. The settings examined are “Ihr Bild” by Franz Schubert, “Ich stand in dunkeln Träumen” and “Ihr Bildniss” (two versions of the same work) by Clara Schumann, “Ich stand in dunkeln Träumen” by Hugo Wolf, and a setting of the same name by Ingeborg von Bronsart. Each discussion focuses on the individual reactions to the specific symbols identified in Chapter 2, as well as the global approach to some well-known literary aspects of paternalistic literary culture of the time. The thesis concludes with a summary of the similarities and differences in the preceding four examinations. Chapter 7 also draws conclusions based on those contrasts, which yields an evaluation of gendered reactions and the possibility of a feminine style in the nineteenth century.

This paper explores the relationship between postmodernist discourses and feminist discourses, asking, firstly, whether or not feminist political action is possible within a postmodernist theoretical climate that scrutinizes the construction of universalizing group identities, and, secondly, how political action might be undertaken in such a theoretical climate. I contend that Carol Shields, reflecting the postmodernist ideology of Jean-François Lyotard and Patricia Waugh, creates Daisy Goodwill Fletts absence in The Stone Diaries. This absence, in turn, acts to acknowledge the gaps in knowledge that exist within self-legitimating grand narratives. It demonstrates that Daisys performance of these grand narratives, particularly heteronormativity, necessarily obstructs her voice and, thereby, marginalizes her ability to act politically within that narrative. The Stone Diaries, then, calls for a plural public space by exposing what remains unknownwomens lives and narrativeswithin the current public space.

Each December thousands of Swedish families sit down to watch the annual "Christmas calendar", a series containing 24 episodes. Since the start in 1960, the Swedish public service television company, Sveriges Television, have broadcast a Christmas calendar every year, and is now seen as a firm tradition, attracting audiences of all ages, though the main audience is children. Research has shown that children’s television programs to a certain extent have the same function as news journalism has in agenda setting. Media, together with feedback and interaction with other individuals, plays a big role in the process of socialization. Researchers have though not yet been able to show how much media and media content matters when it comes to shaping people's perception of the world and reality. Thus, we are now concentrating on how gender is depicted in children's programs, in our case the Christmas calendars. How are men and women depicted? What characteristics do the characters have? Does this change due to time? Are there parallels that can be drawn to society as a whole? Our research resulted in ten overall analyses of Christmas calendars, picked from five decades, and five thorough analyses of episodes from these calendars.