Dramatic literature and film are often political and work to deconstruct and dismantle some of the assumptions of a dominant ideology. Tomson Highway’s Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, and Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game, show how gender roles are used in oppression and show that other social categories like race, class, and sexuality are interrelated and constructed. This shows the hollowness of the so-called inherent categories that cause “naturalized” divisions between people and groups. Through exploring these works I hope to draw attention to how these artists use theater and film to educate their audiences, as well as challenge them to take control over complicated issues surrounding power and oppression. These writers encourage their audiences to employ social criticism and to re-evaluate the social order that is often naturalized through dominant ideology and discourse. / v, 104 leaves ; 29 cm.

This study examines Mary McCarthy's three major female-protagonist works of fiction--The Company She Keeps (1942), A Charmed Life (1955), and The Group (1963)--in terms of the author's attitude towards femaleness. It confronts Elizabeth Janeway's assessment in Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing (1979) that McCarthy's works need not be reviewed in a survey essay on "Women's Literature" because they are "essentially masculine even if not conventionally so" (345). The thesis is that McCarthy's fiction receives a pattern of criticism faulting its lack of imagination and its inability to create "living" characters precisely because she maintained a high degree of self-censorship and control over parts of her awareness that were not male-identified. She was not free to imagine in areas that might unleash the horrors beneath what Norman Mailer has called "the thin juiceless crust" upon which McCarthy's "nice girls" live their lives.Each novel finds the protagonist at a different stage of modern womanhood and using a variety of male-identified responses. Meg Sargent of Company is a young New York sophisticate dealing with divorce, employment, travel, social life, political activism, casual sexual encounters, and the resolution of childhood trauma through psychoanalysis. Martha Sinnott of Charmed is a married woman returning with her second husband to the bohemian artists' community of her first husband in order to resolve the conflict of literary mentorship and patriarchal dominance that had marked the old relationship. In The Group Kay Strong and eight other Vassar Class of '33 females serve as literary embodiments of the social ailment that Betty Friedan cited in her 1963 polemic, The Feminine Mystique.McCarthy's three autobiographies--Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), How I Grew (1985), and Intellectual Memoirs (1992)--illuminate many reasons for and consequences of her male-identified approach to living and writing. Social context for such a fate stems in part from having come of age in the 1930s, being a member of what Elaine Showalter refers to as "The Other Lost Generation." McCarthy's texts provide literary illustration of a common response to patriarchy. / Department of English

The subject of this thesis is the unusual nature, in the presentation of courtship and marriage, of Trollope's depiction of women as compared with that of other novelists of the first part of the Victorian age. To demonstrate Trollope's remarkable objectivity and realism, I consider first the treatment by him and by three other male novelists of the period of the motivations towards marriage of women. In the first chapter I sketch out the concept of marriage that actually prevailed and suggest thereby the importance of its achievement for women; and also give a rough idea of the restrictions imposed on the treatment of the subject by the critical consensus of the times. In the next four chapters I illustrate the artificiality, according with these restrictions, with which Dickens, Thackeray and Kingsley deal with the subject of courtship, and contrast with this the sympathetic understanding towards women that Trollope exhibits. I examine in detail in the sixth chapter critical reactions to the works of these writers, in an attempt to show to what extent the distinctions I have made were noted by the Victorians and by more recent critics. In the second part of the thesis I deal with the treatment of relations in marriage itself. Having first considered the singularly few instances in the novelists discussed earlier of the workings of marriage treated on an independent basis, I examine the approach of George Eliot who, along with Trollope, expands upon the subject at length. Arguing that a dogmatic view of the marital relation vitiates her treatment, in the final chapter I explore the contrast offered by Trollope's realistic presentation of the topic.

From the 1740s to 1800 there was a great increase both in the output of novels, and the number of women novelists. At the same time, an idealized view of femininity was prevailing in society. The relationship between these two features of eighteenth-century life helps us to assess the contribution of some eighteenth-century women to the development of the novel. In this period women's novels show some distinctive features, particularly in their portrayal of women. The idealized eighteenth-century view of women saw them as naturally virtuous, chaste, and full of the sensibility which was increasingly seen as an important positive quality. Therefore an idealized woman is the central figure in many sentimental novels. This idealized figure, used especially by women novelists, is of ambiguous significance. She raises women's status by demonstrating female superiority, but does so by modesty and submissiveness, qualities which eighteenth-century feminists perceived as inimical to women's emancipation. Women's novels often contain contradictions between explicit support of female emancipation, and idealized portraits of submissive heroines. Chapter 1 discusses the reasons for the rise of the woman novelist. Chapter 2 discusses her role and the reviewers' part in defining that role. Chapter 3 discusses women novelists in relation to feminism. The following chapters focus on particular writers. Sarah Fielding is a didactic writer with a certain feminist consciousness. The novels of Frances Brooke and Elizabeth Griffith epitomize the idealization of the heroine. The comic attack on the heroine is described with reference to Charlotte Lennox's work. The"relationship between sentimental- ism, didacticism and feminism is studied with reference to Clara Reeve and Harriet Lee. Chapter 8 introduces the 1790s, when politics dominates fiction and sentimentalism is attacked, and chapters on Jane West, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Charlotte Smith suggest the variety of women novelists' responses to these developments.

In this study I hope to clarify some misconceptions about the female characters which appear in the novels of Miguel de Unamuno. The female agonista follows a slightly different pattern than does the male. Unamuno always includes evidence of social limitations which hinder the female agonista's quest for perpetuation. While she may be as ambitious, egoistic and wilfull as her male counterpart, this does not always ensure success. She must also defy conventional thinking in order to achieve her goals. By studying the agonistas and some of the secondary female characters, I hope to prove that Unamuno's characterization of women is deliberate. The two contrasting types, secondary characters and agonistas, are extremes and should be read as such. The repeated inclusion in the narrative of the female social condition indicates that Unamuno is aware of and concerned by gender distinction. The fact that his agonistas, who challenge convention, are granted conditional success is proof that Unamuno validates their attempts.

Bibliography: leaves 421-464 / ix, 464 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English Language and Literature, 1988

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2000. / Advisers: Sheila Emerson; Modhumita Roy. Submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 229-249). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (M.A.)--Cleveland State University, 2007 / Abstract. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on May 8, 2008). Includes bibliographical references (p. 41-42). Available online via the OhioLINK ETD Center. Also available in print.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2005. / "May, 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-143). Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Women's Studies, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 127-134).