Texte remanié de: Th. Ph. D.--Pretoria--University of South Africa, 1995. Titre de soutenance : A critical appraisal of Fay Weldon's fiction. / Bibliogr. p. 177-190. Index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Texas Technological College. / Facsimile, microfilm-xerography. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1976. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 534-544).

Down Among the Women (1972), Female Friends (1974), and Remember Me (1976), three of Fay Weldon’s early novels, share similar themes, narrative voices, and stylistic elements. Although the novels explore different aspects of women’s lives, the similarities call for a study of Weldon’s early techniques and contribution to twentieth-century literature. I study Weldon’s early works to reveal her belief that feminism evolved through small, individual changes rather than general societal upheaval. I center my study on motherhood and wifehood in Down Among the Women, friendship in Female Friends, and motherhood in Remember Me. In each novel, women make changes in these specific areas of their lives, and through these changes, Weldon rewrites traditional women as newly defined feminists. My readings of each novel support my contention that although the women are not reformed in every facet of their lives, Weldon defines them as feminists because they have actively redefined at least one firmly rooted feminine role to benefit themselves.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine what Joseph Weldon Bailey, a speaker of recognized ability, did in his congressional and campaign speeches to persuade people to his point of view.

In this study of several novels each by Barbara Pym, Fay Weldon, and Margaret Atwood, I focus on two areas: the ways in which female protagonists break out of their victimization by individuals, by institutions, and by cultural tradition, and the ways in which each author uses a structural pattern in her novels to propel her characters to solve their dilemmas to the best of their abilities and according to each woman's personality and strengths.

Contemporary British novelist Fay Weldon negotiates the postmodern "culture industry" as the self-conscious heir to a traditon of women writers dating back to the Middle Ages. Like her predecessors, Weldon defensively and offensively negotiates ideological constructions of womanhood, including injunctions to chastity, modesty, and silence; prohibitions against formal education for women; disdain for the literary production and commercial success of women writers; and the application of double standards in the critical reception of their works. Modernizing the strategies traditionally deployed by women writers, Weldon engages with the advertising industry and the mass-oriented literature of radio and television, using them to construct a career and a public identity for herself while advancing an alternative history of women in the twentieth and early twenty-first century. She exploits the distinctions between high culture, popular culture and mass culture in order to provoke critical reflection; partly for this reason, her work deliberately resists academic criticism. The novels Praxis, Puffball, The Cloning of Joanna May, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, and The Bulgari Connection explore the phenomenon Walter Benjamin described as the nullification of "aura" in the age of mechanical reproduction; they interrogate the connections between several kinds of reproduction associated with human gestation, women's bodies and social identities, and language and literature. Weldon's interrogative fictions experiment with the novel form, and their reception has been mixed, often splitting along gender lines. Feminists have not always embraced Weldon because she questions everything. Because her prolific output is ongoing, Weldon's achievement as Woman of Letters cannot yet be fully assessed.

vi, 63 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / In 1927, James Weldon Johnson published God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, a book of poems based on sermons heard in the African American Church. There are eight accompanying illustrations by Aaron Douglas. These images visually interpret the subject matter of the poems in a style that blends Cubism, Orphism, and Art Deco. Douglas depicted all the figures in these images, human and supernatural, in the form of shadow silhouettes, a stylistic practice he continued throughout his artistic career. The shadow is an ancient archetype in human mythology and psychology. This thesis looks at the depiction of shadows in a Jungian context. I explore the possibility that the use of the shadow allows deeper communication between the audience and the image by accessing the collective unconscious. I also examine the shadow as a metaphor for the socio-political oppression of African Americans rampant in the period between the wars. / Committee in Charge: Dr. W. Sherwin Simmons, Chair; Dr. Kate Mondloch; Dr. Karen Ford

The problem of this study is to demonstrate the use of Wells's criteria for evaluating the administration of the elementary school by evaluating the administration of two elementary school principals.

La presente tesis doctoral "Deconstrucción literaria de los trastornos de la alimentación y de la cirugía estética en las novelas de Margaret Atwood y Fay Weldon" intenta hallar una respuesta a la acusada diferencia de género que presentan los trastornos de la alimentación: anorexia, bulimia y sobreingesta compulsiva. La mera explicación por parte del discurso médico y socio-cultural de que estas patologías son el resultado de la interiorización por parte de las adolescentes del mensaje mediático de que la delgadez es sinónimo de belleza, no satisfacían el interrogante ante la continua proliferación de mujeres anoréxicas y bulímicas. Este trabajo consta de tres capítulos: el primero introduce y establece la genealogía de los trastornos de la alimentación. La teoría freudiana y lacaniana en que se basa este primer capítulo ejemplifica que la mujer ha sido creada dentro de un sistema falócrata como "la otra". El hecho de que Foucault subraye que a través del lenguaje se construyen los objetos y que se necesitan los binomios para que uno de los elementos adquiera significado, corrobora la construcción patriarcal que necesita convertir a la mujer en pasiva para que el hombre adquiera preponderancia. Las novelas The Edible Woman (1969) y Lady Oracle (1976) de Atwood; The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983) y The Fat Woman's Joke (1967) de Weldon son analizadas en este primer capítulo desde las perspectivas freudiana y lacaniana con el propósito de ejemplificar cómo el sistema patriarcal es el que convierte a la mujer en un sujeto pasivo carente de poder, y donde la herramienta utilizada para este cometido es el logos falócrata.Tras la presentación en el primer capítulo de la carencia de las mujeres de un discurso propio, se analiza la novela The Edible Woman, desde una perspectiva postestructural feminista. El corpus teórico de este segundo capítulo es la deconstrucción que Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva y Hélène Cixous hacen de las teorías freudianas y lacanianas. Irigaray pone en tela de juicio la esquematización del orden simbólico hecha por Lacan y otorga a las mujeres la posibilidad de ascender a la parte superior de la pirámide simbólica; lugar desde donde éstas procederán a la construcción de un logos diferente. Cixous enfatiza la necesidad de deconstruir los binomios imperantes y Kristeva señala la necesidad de una unión "empoderante", es decir, de una "sororidad" entre mujeres. Este trabajo ha intentado verter dichas teorías en la novela de Atwood por medio del análisis de sus personajes. Marian, personaje principal, carece de un lenguaje propio y su anorexia se convierte en la respuesta subversiva que expresa su yo auténtico, aparentemente carente de voz y, por tanto, de poder, pero que es, como se demuestra a lo largo de este segundo capítulo, un potente lenguaje de resistencia. A través de la literatura y pese a utilizar necesariamente un discurso falócrata, Atwood es capaz de hacer ver a sus lectoras la falacia del sistema y la necesidad de un logos femenino propio. Es en este punto de la tesis donde se cuestiona el significado de "cultural dope" asociado a las anoréxicas y bulímicas. El objetivo de esta investigación, ofrecer una explicación alternativa a la acusada diferencia de género en los trastornos alimentarios, queda así establecido. El propósito del tercer capítulo es el de utilizar el mismo marco teórico, pero en otro ámbito: el de la cirugía estética. La novela de Weldon The Life and Loves of a She-Devil es el marco idóneo para ejemplificar la teoría explicada en este tercer capítulo puesto que es una sátira feminista de la calología que subraya la opresión femenina y la tiranía patriarcal. Esta novela ofrece una nueva perspectiva de la cirugía estética como lenguaje feminista reivindicativo a la vez que subvierte el discurso falócrata.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University of Pennsylvania. / Includes bibliographical references.