Thesis (Ph. D.)--University de Valladolid, 2002. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 307-345).

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Master of Arts / Department of English / Elizabeth Dodd / This thesis analyzes the protagonists’ pursuit of alternatives to traditionally patriarchal value through economic and ecofeminist critical lenses. The female protagonists in Prodigal Summer resist being identified through the social legacy of coverture that is still present in the small Appalachian town they live. Lusa, Deanna, and Nannie demonstrate that their socio-economic independence, acquired mainly due to their educational background, allows them not only to disconnect themselves from societal beliefs that the woman should be in the margins of the male presence, but also to interact with nature differently from others. The women’s separation from the institution of marriage and their embrace of motherhood as a matriarchal structure that mirrors the example of the coyotes’ families are studied as main examples of how they distance themselves from the other characters’ attitudes in the novel. This rejection of old ideologies of womanhood in terms of patriarchal structures and their fight for new spaces in society is also present in their struggle to physically inhabit spaces long considered male domains. Defeating the notion that women belong to the domestic space of the house, the protagonists pursue a feminist identity in much wider settings, including forests and farms. The characters’ choice to consider nature as their home demonstrates that they welcome the concept of ecology and recognize the interconnectedness present in nature. This study shows that because of the protagonists’ feminist views, they can imagine different ways to both manage the land and their families. The land ethics they acquire thus refers to humans and non-humans equally.

I explore how the structure of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible invites the reader to accept narrators’ authority in different ways depending on their temporal situatedness. I examine how a retrospective, extradiegetic perspective contrasts with limited, homodiegetic and intradiegeitc perspectives among female narrators. I analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, as well as how they shape one another. I discuss how the intersection of these voices develops the identity and enhances the authority of each narrator. Kingsolver employs polyvocality to bring female voices out of marginalization in order for readers to hear and respect their testimonies.

Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Flight Behavior (2012) describes the impacts of climate change in a realistic contemporary setting. This thesis analyses the representation of the anthropocene,  the epoch in which human impact on the planet's ecological systems are significant, in Flight Behavior from an ecocritical perspective. The main themes focused upon are climate change, biodiversity and the relationship between human and nature in an anthropocene context. Social and economic contexts, such as economic inequality, of the anthropocene, as well as competing climate change narratives, are also examined.                       In the thesis I offer readings and interpretations on multiple temporal and spatial scales. This methodological approach is inspired by Timothy Clark’s multi-scalar analyses in Ecocriticism on the Edge (2015). The result of the study shows that an intentional focus on multiple scales, results in a reconsideration of what is important in the text. The analysis also shows that even if Flight Behavior is situated in a specific time and place, the narrative contains numerous connections to other spatial and temporal points of reference. Moreover, my multi-scalar reading of Kingsolver’s novel shows how intertwined the concepts of nature and culture are in an anthropocene context.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 1998. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 183 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 174-182).

Analyzing novels by Sheri Reynolds, Lee Smith, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Sue Monk Kidd, I argue that these authors challenge religious structures by dramatizing the struggle between love and resentment that brings many women to the point of crisis but also inspires imaginative and generative processes of appropriation and revision, emphasizing not destination but process. Employing first-person narration in coming-of-age stories, Smith, Reynolds, and Kingsolver highlight the various narratives that govern the experiences of children born into religious cultures, including narratives of sexual development, gender identity, and religious conversion, to portray the difficulty of articulating female experience within the limited lexicon of Christian fundamentalism. As they mature into adulthood, the girl characters in these novels break from tradition to develop new consciousness by altering and adapting religious language, understood as open and malleable rather than authoritative and fixed. Smith, Kidd, and Naylor incorporate the Virgin Mary and divine maternal figures from non-Christian traditions to restore the mother-daughter relationship that is eclipsed by the Father and Son in Christian tradition. Identifying the female body as a site of spiritual knowledge, these authors present a metaphorical return to the womb that empowers their characters to embrace divine maternal love that transgresses the masculine symbolic order, displacing (but not necessarily destroying) the authority of God the Father and His human representatives. Reynolds and Walker portray physical pain, central to the Christian image of crucifixion, as destroying the ability of women to speak, denying them subjectivity. Through transgressive sexual relationships infused with religious significance, these authors disrupt the Christian moral paradigm by presenting bodily pleasure as an alternative to the Christian valorization of sacrifice. The replacement of pain with pleasure inspires imaginative work that makes private spirituality shareable through artistic creation. The novels I study present themes that also concern Christian and non-Christian feminist theologians: the development of feminine images of the divine, emphasis on immanence over transcendence, the apprehension of the divine in nature, and the necessity of challenging the reification of religious images and dualisms that undermine female subjectivity. I show the reciprocal relationship between fiction and theology, as theologians treat women's literature as sacred texts and fiction writers give life to abstract religious concepts through narrative.

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