Thesis (M.A.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English Language and Literature, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 173-192).

Thesis (B.A.Hons.1978) - Dept. of History, University of Adelaide.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz 2003. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 302-315).

Zugl.: Gießen, Universiẗat, Diss. / Zugl.: Gießen, Univ., Diss.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005.

Doris Lessing and Tsitsi Dangarembga write fiction set in Zimbabwe, the former Southern Rhodesia. Although Lessing grew up as a white settler and Dangarembga, a generation later, as part of the colonized African population, the women sometimes address similar issues. Both write of young girls trying to find a speaking position; under colonialism, what they want to say cannot be said. Lessing's first-person stories differ from her more distant third-person works, which show how white settlers either refuse to recognize their own complicity within the colonial system or accept living a compromised life. Her younger narrators are as yet innocent; the stories often focus on the character's discovery of her own responsibility as a member of the white ruling class. However, these girls have varying levels of self awareness; some seem unaware of the implications of their stories, while others catch glimpses of their own complicity, yet are unable to act. Although Lessing herself is highly critical of colonialism, her stories sometimes risk textually replicating and thus reinforcing the values she criticizes. Dangarembga's first-person novel Nervous Conditions (1988) portrays Tambu, a girl from a poor African family, and her more modern cousin Nyasha. Tambu narrates the story as an adult, Although Nyasha resents colonialism and her patriarchal family, Tambu proceeds with her education, attempting to ignore the injustice around her. Because of the use of an adult narrator, the reader sees what Tambu the child cannot see. Nyasha is unable to voice her concerns; her protest surfaces as anorexia. Both Lessing's and Dangarembga's characters have difficulty speaking because colonialism does not include a space for what they want to say; even if they spoke, their words could make little difference. Lessing' s characters can "speak" only by leaving the country, as Lessing herself did. Dangarembga's Tambu may or may not have "escaped" her situation; by the book's publication, Rhodesia had overcome white rule, and it may be this political change that allows Tambu to tell her story. / Graduation date: 2002

This thesis traces the self-creation and autonomy of the woman artist figure in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, and Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye. The first chapter conveys the progression of autonomy and self-creation in Western-European philosophy through contemporary thinkers such as Charles Taylor, Robert Pippin, Alexander Nehamas, and Richard Rorty. This narrative culminates in a rift between public and private, resulting from the push--especially by Nietzsche--toward a radical, unmediated independence. Taylor and Rorty envision different ways to resolve the public/private rift, yet neither philosopher distinguishes how this rift has affected women by enclosing them in the private, barring them from the public, and delimiting their autonomy. The second chapter focusses on each woman artist's resistance to socially scripted roles, accompanied by theories about resistance: Woolf with Rachel Blau DuPlessis on narrative resistance, Lessing with Julia Kristeva on dissidence, and Atwood with Stephen Hawking and Kristeva on space-time. The third chapter contrasts the narratives of chapters 1 and 2 and reveals how the woman artist avoids the problematic public/private rift by incorporating the ethics developed within the private into her art; she balances her creative goals with responsibility to others. Drawing on the work of women moral theorists, this thesis suggests that women's self-creation and autonomy result in an undervalued but nevertheless workable solution to the public/private rift.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 304-315). / Microfiche. / x, 315 leaves, bound 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Flinders University of South Australia, 2000. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 9, 2005). Includes bibliographical references (p. 307-379).

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