This collection of short stories explores themes of contemporary gender performance through the lens of the fairy tale. The stories examine both the reverberations canonical tales continue to have in American society today, and the new iterations of fairly tales we encounter in modern culture, particularly those which we burden young women through film and television. Within the collection of stylistic conceits and narrative concerns specific to the fairy tale, these stories feature isolated narrators and themes of journeying through the forest. Each of these tales presents a female character or characters going into a metaphorical woods; the stories also often invoke the literal woods. The idea of "the handsome prince" figures here as well, in different explorations (most often lampoons) of contemporary masculinity. Many of these stories also foreground the particular dynamics and complexities of relationships between women: friends, rivals, lovers, teachers and students, mothers and daughters.

Bibliography: leaves 421-464.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2006. / Title from title page screen, viewed on April 27, 2007. Dissertation Committee: C. Anita Tarr (chair), Roberta Seelinger Trites, Jan Christopher Susina. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 197-208) and abstract. Also available in print.

Representations of "madness" in literature written by women have been the focus of feminist studies in the western world since the Victorian Era. When Charlotte Gilman Perkins wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" in 1892, she "met with consternation of disapproving males ...[and] it was virtually ignored for thirty years" (Kasmer 1). Glman herself had gone through a "rest cure" which had brought her "perilously close to having a nervous breakdown" (Kasmer 1). Kasmer holds that the treatment of "rest cure" was commonly prescribed to women diagnosed with hysteria, to help them through "reintegration [into her proper] position as wife by forcing her to focus only on her home and children" (Kasmer 1). Adrienne Rich calls for re-visionary readings of all feminist texts. "Revision--the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction" (483) is, for women, an act of survival. When we re-read female texts and re-write ourselves, we see "how our language has trapped as well as liberated us, how the very act of naming has been until now a male prerogative, and how we can begin to see and name--and therefore live--afresh" (Rich 483). Gilbert and Gubar, in their revision of Gilman's text, hold that the narrator "effects" her own liberation from the "textual/architectural confinement" of patriarchal constructs by tearing down the wallpaper when she discovers her double behind it, enabling the double to escape to freedom" (91). Thus, when female authors write about madness, they are "naming" themselves in their own language--the language of the body, which leads to freedom from the patriarchal construct and discourse. When women enter into this medium, they break free from the symbolic order, and only women who speak the same language, and listen with "another ear," (Irigaray) can interpret them. Interpreting this language through our bodies "involves a recognition of difference, a force different from the patriarch. This force points towards liberation" (Kasmer 13). My discussion of the representation of madness in Anita Desai's Cry. The Peacock and Bharati Mukherjee's Wife supports feminists' reading of madness. In both the books, the heroines break free from the patriarchal construct into another world where they can choose to name themselves. They rewrite and rename their experiences which leads them to liberation. This escape from the patriarchal construct and discourse is named "madness," but feminists claim this experience as empowering by questioning the very construct of madness. They claim that madness is actually a liberation from the patriarchal construct that keeps us in a subordinated and oppressed position in society. / Graduation date: 1994

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 253-271). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

The Third Generation Poetry that existed in the 1980s’ Chinese literary circle has usually been regarded as the rebellion of the prevailing Misty Poetry. The Third Generation poets began to experiment with colloquial poems which were emphasizing on individual expressions and advocating for the importance of “self”, including the ego and sub-consciousness of both male and female. Through the gender perspective, it could be observed the Third Generation Poetry was rich in gender flavor. The poets especially those of the Female Poetry and the Boorish Fellows Poetry had respectively expressed the awareness and concerns of their own with poem writings. The Female Poetry, featured with the structure of group poems, the rhetoric of metaphor and symbol, the connotation of the nocturnal consciousness and the lyric of confession, was a showcase for female perception. The issues regarding ego, private space, social identity, pain and love as well as "body writing" had been narrated and depicted by most of women writers. In the meantime, the poetry written by male turned to the descriptions of the lack of masculinity, or the flaunting of male power, or groaning with bitterness. Besides, the desire to vent, the memories of growth and even the detestation on the phenomenon of female being butchered had also been illustrated. Therefore an alternate inspection of the male poets’ views on female and vice versa would help to have a better understanding of gender concepts and the changing relationship between men and women in the last few decades of Chinese society. Apart from thinking of gender differences and sexual identities the Third Generation Poetry not only focused on the relationship between parents and their children, but also on the connotations of the traditional idea of reproduction and the infant imagery, and even on portraying the rare image of the ego of androgyny. In addition, The Third Generation poetry also presented abundant interlinked gender imagery, such as natural things and body, the darkness and death, the space and items etc., which had been created for the enrichment of the symbolic meanings and the aesthetic significance of the poems. In short, the social and cultural significance of various gender issues in line with the artistic techniques of the Third Generation Poetry had been scrutinized deeply in the chapters. / published_or_final_version / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / English / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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This study examined male and female characters in award-winning English language Canadian children's literature for evidence of gender equality. The sample consisted of seventy-eight books that had been winners or runners-up of national awards between 1982 and 1992. Qualitative and quantitative methods of content analysis were used to collect data from which the ratio of male characters to female characters was calculated for the titles, cover illustrations, text, illustrations in the body of the books, and main and supporting characters. A list of eighteen activities, categorized as active/mobile or passive/immobile, was used to identify the activities engaged in by the main and supporting characters. A list of four locations was used to determine the location of each activity. Careers/occupations were listed for all characters. Results indicated more references to females than males in the titles of the books, and an equal number of males and females portrayed on the cover illustrations. However, results from the text and the illustrations in the body of the books revealed twice as many male characters as females. There was a higher ratio of male to female main and supporting characters as well. Results of data collected on activities/locations indicated that female main and supporting characters dominated the passive/immobile activities. Active/mobile activities were dominated by female main characters and male supporting characters. Females dominated the home and outdoors locations, while males dominated place of business and school locations. Male characters performed a greater diversity of careers/occupations than did female characters, and were involved in 66% of the total number of careers/occupations. Findings of this study support the trend toward a reduction in gender bias found in earlier studies. However, the overall results suggest some gender biases in the representation and portrayal of male and female characters.

Drawing on insights from feminist scholarship and gender studies, this thesis offers a new reading of selected medieval German texts with a special emphasis on the negotiation of gender and power. All three parts of the thesis demonstrate how the use of modern theories helps us to re-examine a medieval text's implications and ethical values, and to reconsider traditional views of the text. Part One focuses on the discussion of gender boundaries. Didactic and fictional texts, such as Thomasin von Zerclaere's Der welsche Gast and Ulrich von Liechtenstein's Frauendienst, show that violations of gender boundaries and the questioning of the traditional power relationship between the genders are crucial to the textual negotiation of masculinity and femininity. As I demonstrate in Part Two, the unequal relationship between men and women is especially important for the system of male homosocial bonding underlying medieval society. Examples of the physical and symbolic exchange of women and their favours are offered by didactic texts, such as Marquard vom Stein's Der Ritter vom Turn, and fictional texts, such as the Nibelungenlied. Aspects of this exchange are not solely related to medieval marriage practices, but are also reflected in courtly rituals, such as "frouwen schouwen" (watching the ladies). The importance of the conventionally beautiful female body as an object of exchange becomes obvious in Part Three, where I examine encounters between Christian knights and women defying the norms of feminine beauty. Here I focus on female figures that are defined as "doubly Other": both in their relationship to the masculine Self, and in their relationship to the ideal of medieval Christian femininity. Texts such as Wolfdietrich B and Der Strieker's Die Konigin vom Mohrenland show how the negotiation of gender and power assumes a new dimension in light male encounters with Wild Women, heathen women, "supernatural" women and old women, where the male partner often has to struggle to uphold his privileged masculine position.