published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Tulsa, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-159).

Zugl.: Santiago de Compostela, Univ., Diss., 2003

Caryl Churchill, the most widely performed female dramatist in contemporary British theatre, is a playwright preoccupied with the dissection of the traditional relations of power. She challenges social and dramatic conventions through her innovative exploration of the male gaze, the objectification of women, the performativity of gender, and women as objects of exchange within a masculine economy. In so doing, Churchill locates her concerns in the area of `materialism and gender'. Churchill explicates a socialist-feminist position by pointing directly at the failure of liberal feminism. The lack of a sense of community among women, highlighted by Churchill's portrayal of women such as Marlene in `Top Girls', forms a critical aspect of Churchill's work. Her drama re-iterates how meaningful change is impossible while women continue to oppress one another, and while economic structures perpetuate patriarchy. Altered consciousness, aligned to socio-political re-structuring, is necessary for both the oppressors and the oppressed, in a society where too much emphasis has been placed on individualism. The outspoken hope for a transgression of the conventional processes of identification and other omnipresent, oppressive socio-political phenomena, is a strong aspect of Churchill's work. Her plays reveal how signs create reality rather than reflect it, and she uses Brechtian-based distancing methods to induce a critical examination of gendered relations. Time-shifting, overlapping dialogue, doubling and cross-casting are used by Churchill to manipulate the sign-systems of the dominant order. Cross-gender casting, Churchill's most widely reviewed dramatic device, is employed to destabilise fixed sexual identities determined by dominant heterosexual ideology. She calls into question the traditional sign `Woman' - which is constructed by and for the male gaze - and addresses the marginality of the female experience in a non-linear framework. Although dealing with serious issues, Churchill's plays are often executed in a style that is at once amusing and thought-provoking to exclude the possibility of didacticism. With her skilful use of language and innovative techniques as her highly effective instruments, Churchill accomplishes her broader purpose with originality. In its originality and complexity, her drama is in itself a `new possibility' for different forms. / English Studies / M. A. (English)

Caryl Churchill, the most widely performed female dramatist in contemporary British theatre, is a playwright preoccupied with the dissection of the traditional relations of power. She challenges social and dramatic conventions through her innovative exploration of the male gaze, the objectification of women, the performativity of gender, and women as objects of exchange within a masculine economy. In so doing, Churchill locates her concerns in the area of `materialism and gender'. Churchill explicates a socialist-feminist position by pointing directly at the failure of liberal feminism. The lack of a sense of community among women, highlighted by Churchill's portrayal of women such as Marlene in `Top Girls', forms a critical aspect of Churchill's work. Her drama re-iterates how meaningful change is impossible while women continue to oppress one another, and while economic structures perpetuate patriarchy. Altered consciousness, aligned to socio-political re-structuring, is necessary for both the oppressors and the oppressed, in a society where too much emphasis has been placed on individualism. The outspoken hope for a transgression of the conventional processes of identification and other omnipresent, oppressive socio-political phenomena, is a strong aspect of Churchill's work. Her plays reveal how signs create reality rather than reflect it, and she uses Brechtian-based distancing methods to induce a critical examination of gendered relations. Time-shifting, overlapping dialogue, doubling and cross-casting are used by Churchill to manipulate the sign-systems of the dominant order. Cross-gender casting, Churchill's most widely reviewed dramatic device, is employed to destabilise fixed sexual identities determined by dominant heterosexual ideology. She calls into question the traditional sign `Woman' - which is constructed by and for the male gaze - and addresses the marginality of the female experience in a non-linear framework. Although dealing with serious issues, Churchill's plays are often executed in a style that is at once amusing and thought-provoking to exclude the possibility of didacticism. With her skilful use of language and innovative techniques as her highly effective instruments, Churchill accomplishes her broader purpose with originality. In its originality and complexity, her drama is in itself a `new possibility' for different forms. / English Studies / M. A. (English)

M.A. (English) / Victorian studies is a field much-studied and, during the century that has passed since the end of Queen Victoria‘s reign, literary criticism on the subject has been extensive. In the main, however, criticism has tended to focus on the protagonists of Victorian novels, whether to argue that their journeys are immoral, or represent a warning against immorality, or to examine their behaviour and so arrive at conclusions regarding identity. Through a close reading of Oscar Wilde‘s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Robert Louis Stevenson‘s The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and Bram Stoker‘s Dracula (1897), and by focussing on the reactions and responses of Victorian society (as the texts represent it) to the novel‘s transgressive characters rather than on those characters themselves (as has been the trend) this dissertation moves away from readings of duality and moral judgment and towards a greater understanding of the intricacies of late-Victorian society itself. In addition, and through this process, this dissertation interrogates the bifurcated and contradictory nature of the Victorian moral structure and destabilizes the binary oppositions of character judgment that were so fundamental in its creation. Furthermore, through a discussion of the historical context of the text‘s chosen for this study, this dissertation challenges the formulation and authenticity of Victorian morality by considering the manner in which power informed the behaviour and decisions of middle-class Victorians at the turn of the century. To this end, I will consider how the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, especially those pertaining to power and morality, are invaluable in problematizing the binary system of categorization that so dominated the late-Victorian cultural space. Finally, I argue that the texts I have elected to study represent a climate of unrest and dissatisfaction with the Victorian moral climate at the fin de siècle (or turn of the century) and that they are instrumental in our understanding of that moral climate and the subsequent changes to it.

Disempowered Women? A Feminist Response to female Characters in Malory, Tennyson and Bradley takes an in-depth look at Elayne, Gwenyvere and Morgan of the Arthurian legend. The characters are examined within their contemporary context and from our modem perspective as portrayed in Malory, Tennyson, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Patriarchy, closely connected with the Christian doctrines, is singled out as the main means of propagating women's disempowerment. The inquiry considers different ways in which fictional texts have contributed to creating false perceptions amongst our contemporary audience, about the reality of women's lives in the Middle Ages. It further examines the validity of the assumption that literary women are not real, but mere representations of male ideals about women's role and place in society. Issues of gender equality are raised and the author concludes that the literature studied assigns definite, gender-specific roles to men and women. The work also debates the perceived misogyny of the male authors: is it a conscious act or a reflection of their contemporary society's concerns? / English Studies / M. A. (English)

This study explores the triple imbrications of race, power and gender in the selected novels of Bessie Head. A critical analysis of Maru (1971) and A Question of' Power (1974) is undertaken with a view to identifying the subordinating and the marginalising tropes that result in silencing of female subjectivities in Head's protagonists. Linked to a critical reading of the novels, this study examines the role of cultural and psychological forces in maintaining patriarchal hegemony, which is based upon hierarchy and domination of women rather than equality. Furthennore, this dissertation suggests that Head's depiction of narrow ethnic and racial bigotry serves a broader etiological purpose of accounting for "the state of thingsff within the South African context. Thus this study oscillates between the abstract constructs and the concrete social experiences within which Bessie Head's literary imagination subsists. In this study, particular attention is paid, in addition to critiques of individual texts, to some of Head's biographical elements with a view on the one hand, to highlighting the moments, events and issues which are reflected as " contexts of her-story" and on the other, to amplifying how Head's formative experiences contribute to her critique of the exploitative racially structured narratives. By using Foucault's theories within the social constructionist model, this dissertation aims to demonstrate the insidious intersections between racism and sexism and how these constructs are implicated in the conception and construction of power. Specifically, this study argues that due to their arbitrary applications, racial and sexual difference be viewed as dynamic and contested, rather than fixed. A synthesis is reached which accords literarure a role within the framework of socio-cultural practice in general. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

Selves and Others: The Politics of Difference in the Writings of Ursula Kroeber Le Guin has two founding premises. One is that Le Guin's writing addresses the political issues of the late twentieth century in a number of ways, even although speculative fiction is not generally considered a political genre. Questions of self and O/other, which shape political (that is, powerinflected) responses to difference, infuse Le Guin's writing. My thesis sets out to investigate the mechanisms of representation by which these concerns are realized. My chapters reflect aspects of the relationship between self and O/other as I perceive it in Le Guin's work. Thus my first chapter deals with the representations of imperialism and colonialism in five novels, three of which were written near the beginning of her literary career. My second chapter considers Le Guin's best-known novels, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and The Dispossessed (1974), in the context of the alienation from American society recorded by thinkers in the 1960s. In my third chapter, the emphasis shifts to intrapsychic questions and splits, as I explore themes of sexuality and identity in Le Guin's novels for and about adolescents. I move to more public matters in my fourth and fifth chapters, which deal, respectively, with the politicized interface between public and private histories and with disempowerment. In my final chapter, I explore the representation of difference and politics in Le Guin's intricate but critically neglected poetry. My second founding premise is that traditional modes of literary criticism, which aim to arrive at comprehensive and final interpretations, are not appropriate for Le Guin's mode of writing, which consistently refuses to locate meaning definitely. My thesis seeks and explores aporias in the meaning-making process; it is concerned with asking productive questions, rather than with final answers. I have, consequently, adopted a sceptical approach to the process of interpretation, preferring to foreground the provisional and partial status of all interpretations. I have found that postmodern and poststructuralist literary theory, which focuses on textual gaps and discontinuities, has served me better than more traditional ways of reading / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

Disempowered Women? A Feminist Response to female Characters in Malory, Tennyson and Bradley takes an in-depth look at Elayne, Gwenyvere and Morgan of the Arthurian legend. The characters are examined within their contemporary context and from our modem perspective as portrayed in Malory, Tennyson, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Patriarchy, closely connected with the Christian doctrines, is singled out as the main means of propagating women's disempowerment. The inquiry considers different ways in which fictional texts have contributed to creating false perceptions amongst our contemporary audience, about the reality of women's lives in the Middle Ages. It further examines the validity of the assumption that literary women are not real, but mere representations of male ideals about women's role and place in society. Issues of gender equality are raised and the author concludes that the literature studied assigns definite, gender-specific roles to men and women. The work also debates the perceived misogyny of the male authors: is it a conscious act or a reflection of their contemporary society's concerns? / English Studies / M. A. (English)