This study consists of an analysis of the novel Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters, in terms of cross-dressing as self-representation. The study aims to emphasise how cross-dressing can be significant when expressing one’s gender identity, by examining the gender identity and sexual orientation of the male impersonator Nancy Astley/Nan King and how she reacts to her own queerness. With the use of queer literary theory, Judith Butler’s theories on gender performativity, and ideas of gender as social constructs, this study argues that the novel is a powerful representation of the fluidity and inconsistency of gender and the non-existence of the gender binary. Throughout the novel, the main character disrupts the expected gender roles of the British Victorian era, and through the use of cross-dressing, uses masculinity and masculine femininity to discover and express her gender identity.

This thesis argues that Ella Ferris Pell's 1890 painting, Salome, provides a unique interpretation of the ideals of the New Woman, specifically in terms of reclaiming female power through Salome's confidence in her sexuality. By examining the cultural context in which Pell exhibited her painting, as well as her background as an artist, I hope bring to the light the significant ways in which Pell's Salome participates in the construction of the New Woman in late nineteenth-century culture. Since Pell was an American woman who trained and exhibited in both the United States and France, this paper explores the significance of the New Woman in both countries. Through the examination of these ideas, we can better appreciate the way in which Pell approached her painting and why it was not well received in Paris—despite its popular subject matter, technical execution, and relevance to the popular topic of the women's movement. Drawing upon the rich visual culture of this era, I offer a comparative study of how both images of women and actual women embraced sexuality and femininity as a means of exerting influence over men, and by so doing, carved out a sphere of influence in a male-dominated society.

In the chapters of my thesis, I explore how "soft" consciousness-raising novels of the first, second and third-waves of feminism practice underground feminism by covertly exposing women's socio-political issues outside of the confines of feminist rhetoric. In moving away from the negative connotations of political language, the authors enable the education of female audiences otherwise out of reach. Working from and extending on various theorists, I construct a theoretical model for what I term underground feminism. Running on the principal of conducting feminist activism without using feminist rhetoric, underground feminism challenges the notion that "subtle" feminism means weak feminism. In illustrating how underground feminism works in novels and in physical activism, I hope to encourage the recognition of the political utility of women's writings that do not fit the strict archetypes of feminist authorship. Analyzing the effectiveness of covert feminist conversion narratives, I discuss one soft consciousness-raising novel for each wave. The novels - Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins (1893), Dorothy Bryant's Ella Price's Journal (1972), and Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary (1996) - accused by scholars of employing weak feminist politics, are investigated as feminist literature that disidentifies with the feminist label with the possibility of facilitating a wide spread conversion process in "would be" feminists. After analyzing how the novels place women's issues at the center of discourse by discussing female education, women's voice, and narrative control, I consider how the underground feminism implicit in the texts extends to activism outside of literature. I also end by arguing that these novels enable a more intricate conversation about women's issues in which the voices of both self-identified and non-identified feminists are recognized.

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This study investigated issues of gender discrimination in the Cacadu district of the Eastern Cape and the possible role that Community Learning Centres could play in mitigating gender disparities in this particular district. The aim of the study was to recommend ways in which Community Learning Centres could assist people in mitigating gender disparities in the Cacadu district of the Eastern Cape. The study examined scholarly and professional publications, both theoretical and empirical, that support or challenge the proposed focal area. The study was underpinned by post-colonial feminism. Contrary to Western feminism, post-colonial feminism is primarily concerned with the representation of women in once colonized countries.The paradigm deemed to be the most appropriate in undergirding this study was a post-colonial indigenous paradigm which can be seen as context based and inclusive of all knowledge systems. The research approach was qualitative and the research design adopted for the study was phenomenological. Two Community Learning Centres (Xola and Zodwa) located in a rural and an urban area respectively in the Cacadu district of the Eastern Cape were selected by purposive sampling. Data gathering was conducted through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. Three adult educators volunteered to participate in individual interviews and twenty-four adult learners volunteered to participate in focus group discussions. Findings indicated that Community Learning Centres in their attempt to promote equity and redress do not help people mitigate gender disparities in their daily lives in the Cacadu district of the Eastern Cape. Based on the findings, it was found that gender disparities emanate not only in the home, but also in Community Learning Centres in the Cacadu district of the Eastern Cape. Finally, strategies were identified in the form of educational practices, processes and developments to assist people to mitigate gender disparities in their daily lives in the Cacadu district of the Eastern Cape. Such educational strategies should be characterised by fairness, equality and the values embedded in social justice with reference to the role of women in society. / Educational Foundations / D. Ed. (Socio-Education)

Ce mémoire de recherche-création composé de deux parties s’intéresse à l’usage du récit dans la dramaturgie québécoise contemporaine, plus particulièrement à la réactualisation du procédé de la teichoscopie en tant que « vision à travers le mur » et à sa relation avec les images. Prenant comme point de départ un évènement réel, la pièce Nuage de cendres raconte, sur le ton de l’ironie tragique, l’éruption du volcan islandais Eyjafjallajökull en 2010 vécue à distance par un volcanologue islandais et une Québécoise en fuite. Envisageant la teichoscopie à la fois comme procédé de montage et opération de conversion du « dire » en « voir », la pièce explore les questions du deuil, du silence, de la cendre et de la fascination pour les images. La deuxième partie est un essai intitulé Voir à travers les murs : la teichoscopie dans Yukonstyle de Sarah Berthiaume. Pour comprendre la circulation à relais de la faculté d’omniscience chez les personnages qui font le récit de leurs « visions à travers le mur », l’étude propose le concept de personnage-voyant. En étudiant la reprise de la figure amérindienne primordiale du corbeau, elle croise les concepts d’« espassetemps » (Dominique Legros), d’anachronisme et de survivance (Georges Didi-Huberman) afin d’analyser la construction, par la teichoscopie, d’un territoire qui résiste aux délimitations. La « vision à travers le mur » marque ainsi le franchissement de toutes les frontières : celles du temps, des lieux, des êtres. L’essai s’attache enfin à montrer que, contrairement à la tendance générale de la dramaturgie québécoise contemporaine où le récit exprime le repli sur soi et l’incommunicabilité entre les personnages, la teichoscopie rend possibles, dans Yukonstyle, une ouverture à l’autre et une transmission. / Composed of a play and an essay, this M.A. thesis examines the use of narration in contemporary theatre in Quebec. It focuses specifically on the renewal of the device known as teichoscopia, considered as “vision through the wall”, and its relationship with images. The play, Nuage de cendres, begins with a true event: it relates, with a tone of tragic irony, the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, experienced remotely by an Icelandic volcanologist and a young woman escaping from her life in Quebec. Considering teichoscopia both as an editing process and a means of converting words into vision, the play explores the issues of loss, silence, ashes and fascination for images. The second part of the thesis consists of an essay titled Voir à travers les murs : la teichoscopie dans Yukonstyle de Sarah Berthiaume. In order to analyze the relay of omniscient ability between the characters who narrate what they see through the wall, the essay proposes the concept of the character-seer. It studies how the play integrates the Native American figure of the crow, and how the concepts of “everywhen” (Dominique Legros), anachronism and survival (Georges Didi-Huberman) intersect. Teichoscopia thus builds a territory that resists delimitation: the “vision through the wall” marks the crossing not only of spatial and temporal boundaries, but those between beings as well. Finally, this essay shows how, in Yukonstyle, contrary to other contemporary plays that often use narration to express withdrawal into oneself and lack of communication, teichoscopia makes possible true openness and transmission.

This thesis examines cultivation in the lives of Sarah and Columbia Bennett between the years 1852 and 1874. The Bennett women's letters convey an intimate sense of the agro-economic preoccupations (and gardening pleasures) of these slave-owning white women, and the centrality of cultivation in mid-nineteenth-century rural Louisiana within a landscape of country stores, plantations, and people. As the lives of the Bennett women illustrate, white women's gardening knowledge and practice formed a cornerstone of central Louisiana society. The Bennett women's gardening knowledge and skill were primary components in the creation of a self-sustaining plantation household. By cultivating produce and other foodstuffs for consumption, the Bennett women made possible the family's participation in the lucrative market for cotton and other cash crops, a market that also tied their household to plantation economies elsewhere in the transatlantic world.

Scholars interested in the popular Victorian periodical Temple Bar have primarily focused on the editorship of George Augustus Sala, under whom the journal paradoxically began delivering controversial content to conservative middle-class readers. But while the Temple Bar's sensation fiction and social realism have already been considered, critics have not yet examined Temple Bar's New Woman fiction, which was published during the last decade of the 19th century and George Bentley's reign as editor-in-chief. While functioning as editor-in-chief, Bentley sought to adhere to the dictates found in the 1860 prospectus, to "inculcate thoroughly English sentiment: respect for authority, attachment to the Church, and loyalty to the Queen." The Temple Bar seems an odd publication venue for the audacious New Woman writer Sarah Grand. And yet, Grand published several short stories in Temple Bar under the editorship of Bentley. Knowing Bentley's infamous editorial hatchet work, we might assume that he would cut from Grand's writing any unsavory bits of traditional New Woman content. Instead, a comparison of Grand's Temple Bar stories, "Kane, A Soldier Servant" and "Janey, A Humble Administrator," with their later unedited, republished versions (found in Grand's Our Manifold Nature) suggests that Bentley had a different editorial agenda. This analysis of Grand's fiction demonstrates that it was not New Woman subjects that Bentley found objectionable but the culpability her texts placed on the upper-middle class for their failure to act on behalf of the lower classes. Examining Bentley's removal of this material thus sheds new light on the dangers of New Woman literature as perceived by its Victorian audiences.

莎拉肯恩《4.48精神異常》以破曉時分為題，描寫一名憂鬱成疾的女性於凌晨甦醒並決定以自殺終結生命的關鍵時刻。劇中呈現精神病患者承受心理治療之苦與面對社會正常化(social normalization)的暴力過程。肯恩早期的劇作強調具體暴力之呈現，有別於此，本劇大量使用影像，並以不連續的片段，文本化(textualize)社會的暴力壓迫。根據亞陶的殘酷劇場(Theatre of Cruelty)，片段式語言搭配影像的使用，能有效幫助個體表達難以言喻之想法與被壓抑之情感。本論文旨在借用亞氏語言觀探討肯恩《4.48精神異常》中詩意語言的使用。肯恩以片段式結構(fragmentary structure)取代角色與情節，傳達精神病患者不見容於社會的破碎思緒，並在病患的語言中採用拼貼式影像(collaged images)，企圖以視覺意象呈現其殘破不堪的心理狀態。本論文分成四章，分析《4.48精神異常》中的語言，將其視為肯恩對社會正常化所展現最終極抗議。首章說明肯恩生平、本劇簡介與評論及本論文理論架構。次章分析本劇的片段式結構，研究肯恩如何使用片段式的詩意文字描繪病人的孤立無援與自相矛盾等心理不適現象。第三章檢視本劇中視覺化(visual)與文字化(textual)的影像，其主要功能為幫助病人表述自我內心痛苦與對社會的控訴。論文末章總結指出亞氏觀點能幫助讀者解讀肯恩暴力劇場中的詩意語言。 / Titled with a crucial moment when a depressed woman awakes before dawn and decides to commit suicide, Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis presents the violent process of a psychotic patient suffering from psychiatric therapy and social normalization. Unlike Kane’s early plays that emphasize the presentation of physical violence, this play is characterized by an excessive use of images and is composed of discontinuous fragments that textualize the violent oppression from society. From Artaud’s theory of Theatre of Cruelty, the use of fragmentary language with images helps to convey one’s inexplicable thoughts and suppressed emotions. Artaud’s view on language sheds new light on the interpretation of Kane’s poetic language in 4.48 Psychosis. Without an explicit indication of characters and plot, Kane uses a fragmentary structure to narrate the patient’s broken thoughts, which are not allowed to be voiced in a normal society. Deprived of the ability of voicing, the psychotic patient strives to communicate with others by incorporating collaged images in her language to visualize the devastated state of her psychological mind. Consisting of four chapters, this thesis examines the language of 4.48 Psychosis and interprets this play as Kane’s ultimate form of protest against the violence of social normalization. Chapter One is an introduction to Kane’s life, the play, the critical opinions, and the theoretical framework. Chapter Two analyzes the fragmentary structure of this play and studies how Kane uses poetic fragments to illustrate the patient’s alienation, psychological discomfort, and self-contradiction. Chapter Three examines the visual and textual images of this play. Both kinds of images assist the patient in her narration of psychological pain and her accusation against society. Chapter Four is the conclusion of the thesis that sums up the Artaudian approach of interpreting Kane’s poetic language in her theatre of violence.