This dissertation explores postcolonial fiction that reflects the structural situation of a genocidal number of third-world women who are being trafficked for sexual purposes from postcolonial countries into the global north—invariably, gender, class and race play a crucial role in their exploitation. Above all, these women share a systemic disposability and invisibility, as the business relies on the victim’s illegality and criminality to generate maximum revenues. My research suggests that the presence of these abject women is not only recognized by ideological and repressive state apparatuses on every side of the trafficking scheme (in the form of governments, military establishments, juridical systems, transnational corporations, etc.) but is also understood as necessary for the current neoliberal model to thrive undisturbed by ethical imperatives. Beginning with the turn of the twentieth century, then, I analyze sexual slavery transnationally by looking at James Joyce’s “Eveline,” Therese Park’s A Gift of the Emperor, Mahasweta Devi’s “Douloti the Bountiful,” Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon, Chris Abani’s Becoming Abigail, and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, concentrating on the political, economic, and social discourses in which the narratives are immersed through the lens of Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial theory. By interrogating these postcolonial narratives, my project reexamines the sex slave-trafficker-consumer triad in order to determine the effect of each party’s presence or absence from the text and the implications in terms of the discourses their representations may tacitly legitimize. At the same time, this work investigates the type of postcolonial stories the West privileges and the reasons, and the subjective role postcolonial theory plays in overcoming subaltern women’s exploitation within the current neocolonial context. Overall, I interrogate the role postcolonial literature plays as a means of achieving (or not) social change, analyze the purpose of artists in representing exploitative situations, identify the type of engagement readers have with these characters, and seek to understand audiences’ response to such literature. I look at authors who have attempted to discover fruitful avenues of expression for third-world women, who, despite increasingly constituting the bulk of the work force worldwide, continue to be exploited and, in the case of sex trafficking, brutally violated.

This dissertation explores postcolonial fiction that reflects the structural situation of a genocidal number of third-world women who are being trafficked for sexual purposes from postcolonial countries into the global north—invariably, gender, class and race play a crucial role in their exploitation. Above all, these women share a systemic disposability and invisibility, as the business relies on the victim’s illegality and criminality to generate maximum revenues. My research suggests that the presence of these abject women is not only recognized by ideological and repressive state apparatuses on every side of the trafficking scheme (in the form of governments, military establishments, juridical systems, transnational corporations, etc.) but is also understood as necessary for the current neoliberal model to thrive undisturbed by ethical imperatives. Beginning with the turn of the twentieth century, then, I analyze sexual slavery transnationally by looking at James Joyce’s “Eveline,” Therese Park’s A Gift of the Emperor, Mahasweta Devi’s “Douloti the Bountiful,” Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon, Chris Abani’s Becoming Abigail, and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, concentrating on the political, economic, and social discourses in which the narratives are immersed through the lens of Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial theory. By interrogating these postcolonial narratives, my project reexamines the sex slave-trafficker-consumer triad in order to determine the effect of each party’s presence or absence from the text and the implications in terms of the discourses their representations may tacitly legitimize. At the same time, this work investigates the type of postcolonial stories the West privileges and the reasons, and the subjective role postcolonial theory plays in overcoming subaltern women’s exploitation within the current neocolonial context. Overall, I interrogate the role postcolonial literature plays as a means of achieving (or not) social change, analyze the purpose of artists in representing exploitative situations, identify the type of engagement readers have with these characters, and seek to understand audiences’ response to such literature. I look at authors who have attempted to discover fruitful avenues of expression for third-world women, who, despite increasingly constituting the bulk of the work force worldwide, continue to be exploited and, in the case of sex trafficking, brutally violated.

Esta tese é resultado de um estudo sobre O Primo Basílio (1978) que estabelece a composição da personagem Basílio de Brito como centro da investigação. A leitura deste romance evidencia uma série de lacunas e, no intuito de preencher as mais ligadas a Basílio, buscou-se resgatar o panorama histórico de onde Eça de Queirós colheu informações para dar movimento à trama em que essa figura atua, efetuando-se, assim, uma engenharia reversa. É premissa deste trabalho que o romance queirosiano de adultério – sem negligenciar o estatuto ficcional – contém informações que comunicam fatos da história de Portugal e do Brasil, as quais estão acomodadas em camada subjacente do texto devido ao afastamento temporal da época em que foi escrito. O ponto de partida das pesquisas aqui apresentadas foi um dado do romance sobre o qual não foram encontrados estudos: Basílio acumulou fortuna no Brasil no mercado de ações ligado aos negócios da borracha do alto Paraguai. A partir dessa informação, foram investigadas as condições econômicas luso-brasileiras da segunda metade do Oitocentos, incluindo um estudo detalhado sobre a emigração portuguesa para o Brasil e também sobre o imaginário de Eldorado associado à antiga América Portuguesa. Objetivou-se discutir as escolhas autorais de Eça de Queirós que o levaram a atribuir caracteres a Basílio não usuais na representação de outros torna-viagem (“brasileiros”) da dramaturgia e da literatura produzida em Portugal no século XIX. Essa discussão evidenciou que Basílio foi criado segundo um modelo de representação francês, uma vez que a abordagem de Eça de Queirós situa os dilemas socioeconômicos portugueses em um contexto mais abrangente, não limitado à histórica inter-relação entre Portugal e Brasil. Além disso, apresenta uma chave de leitura distanciada daquelas que costumam enquadrar a atuação de Basílio apenas como o pivô da ruína de um matrimônio burguês. / This thesis, which is the outcome of a study about the book O Primo Basílio (1978), centers its inquiry at the constitution of the character Basílio de Brito. The reading of this novel distinctly shows a series of gaps, and, in order to fill the ones closer to Basílio, it became paramount to research the historical background from which Eça de Queirós gathered the information to move forward the plot in which the character acts, thus, bringing about a reverse engineering. It is the premise of this work that Queirós´s novel of adultery – without neglecting the fictional statute - contains information that communicate historical facts about Portugal and Brazil, which are placed at the underlying level of the text, due to the chronological distancing at the time it has been written. The starting point of the presented researches has been a data from the novel about which no studies have been found: Basílio built a fortune in the Brazilian stock market of rubber at the upper Paraguay region. Starting with this information, the economic conditions of Portugal and Brazil during the second half of the 1800s were investigated, including a thorough study about Portuguese emigration to Brazil, and about the imaginary of Eldorado associated to the ancient Portuguese America. The goal was to discuss Eça´s writing choices that made him give Basílio unusual traits in the representation of other remainders – “Brazilians” – in Portuguese Drama and Literature of the 19th Century. This discussion made clear that Basílio was created in accordance with a French representation model, since Eça de Queirós´s approach places the Portuguese socioeconomic dilemmas in a broader context, not limited to the historical inter-relation between Portugal and Brazil. Besides, it opens a key for reading distanced from the ones that frame Basílio´s role solely as the pivot of the ruin of a bourgeois matrimony.

This project recovers and revises late nineteenth and early twentieth-century narratives of mobility which invoke female protagonists who move from stifling, patriarchal domestic settings in the rural and suburban United States to the more symbolically emancipated settings of New York City and even Europe to reveal both the limitations and possibilities for women’s lives in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. By challenging popular American fiction’s preoccupation with urban white slavery myths and the lingering proscriptive standards for women’s behavior of the Victorian era, the Introduction argues the selected works of this dissertation mark a significant, but perhaps fleeting moment in American history when women were on the verge of profound gains toward equality. Chapter Two reads Gertrude Atherton’s late nineteenth-century interrogation of intimate and professional mobility in Patience Sparhawk as a significant precursor, if not prototype, of the recently recognized middlebrow moderns of the 1920s. Chapter Three examines Edith Wharton’s competing views of mobility and motherhood in The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, and Summer. Chapter Four aims to recover David Graham Phillips’ posthumously published novel, Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise, as a complicated engagement with unconventional views of mobility and prostitution in early twentieth-century America, and Chapter Five argues that Jessie Redmon Fauset’s oft-maligned, sentimental novel, Plum Bun, warrants more critical attention for its revolutionary efforts to imagine an alternative cultural aesthetic whereby young, aspiring African-American women can acquire intimate and professional fulfillment through an empowering transnational mobility. Recognizing how stories of fallen womanhood in American literature traditionally overemphasized and criminalized a woman’s desire for intimacy, while stories of New Womanhood often scripted characters ultimately devoid of desire and companionship, I argue Atherton, Wharton, Phillips and Fauset examine and challenge these categories of womanhood in important, often overlooked, depictions of mobility. Too often dismissed or excused for their conservativism, these authors warrant more attention from modern literary scholars for their shared, varied, and intentionally “moving” experiences for women in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century America.

Esta tese é resultado de um estudo sobre O Primo Basílio (1978) que estabelece a composição da personagem Basílio de Brito como centro da investigação. A leitura deste romance evidencia uma série de lacunas e, no intuito de preencher as mais ligadas a Basílio, buscou-se resgatar o panorama histórico de onde Eça de Queirós colheu informações para dar movimento à trama em que essa figura atua, efetuando-se, assim, uma engenharia reversa. É premissa deste trabalho que o romance queirosiano de adultério – sem negligenciar o estatuto ficcional – contém informações que comunicam fatos da história de Portugal e do Brasil, as quais estão acomodadas em camada subjacente do texto devido ao afastamento temporal da época em que foi escrito. O ponto de partida das pesquisas aqui apresentadas foi um dado do romance sobre o qual não foram encontrados estudos: Basílio acumulou fortuna no Brasil no mercado de ações ligado aos negócios da borracha do alto Paraguai. A partir dessa informação, foram investigadas as condições econômicas luso-brasileiras da segunda metade do Oitocentos, incluindo um estudo detalhado sobre a emigração portuguesa para o Brasil e também sobre o imaginário de Eldorado associado à antiga América Portuguesa. Objetivou-se discutir as escolhas autorais de Eça de Queirós que o levaram a atribuir caracteres a Basílio não usuais na representação de outros torna-viagem (“brasileiros”) da dramaturgia e da literatura produzida em Portugal no século XIX. Essa discussão evidenciou que Basílio foi criado segundo um modelo de representação francês, uma vez que a abordagem de Eça de Queirós situa os dilemas socioeconômicos portugueses em um contexto mais abrangente, não limitado à histórica inter-relação entre Portugal e Brasil. Além disso, apresenta uma chave de leitura distanciada daquelas que costumam enquadrar a atuação de Basílio apenas como o pivô da ruína de um matrimônio burguês. / This thesis, which is the outcome of a study about the book O Primo Basílio (1978), centers its inquiry at the constitution of the character Basílio de Brito. The reading of this novel distinctly shows a series of gaps, and, in order to fill the ones closer to Basílio, it became paramount to research the historical background from which Eça de Queirós gathered the information to move forward the plot in which the character acts, thus, bringing about a reverse engineering. It is the premise of this work that Queirós´s novel of adultery – without neglecting the fictional statute - contains information that communicate historical facts about Portugal and Brazil, which are placed at the underlying level of the text, due to the chronological distancing at the time it has been written. The starting point of the presented researches has been a data from the novel about which no studies have been found: Basílio built a fortune in the Brazilian stock market of rubber at the upper Paraguay region. Starting with this information, the economic conditions of Portugal and Brazil during the second half of the 1800s were investigated, including a thorough study about Portuguese emigration to Brazil, and about the imaginary of Eldorado associated to the ancient Portuguese America. The goal was to discuss Eça´s writing choices that made him give Basílio unusual traits in the representation of other remainders – “Brazilians” – in Portuguese Drama and Literature of the 19th Century. This discussion made clear that Basílio was created in accordance with a French representation model, since Eça de Queirós´s approach places the Portuguese socioeconomic dilemmas in a broader context, not limited to the historical inter-relation between Portugal and Brazil. Besides, it opens a key for reading distanced from the ones that frame Basílio´s role solely as the pivot of the ruin of a bourgeois matrimony.

Esta tese é resultado de um estudo sobre O Primo Basílio (1978) que estabelece a composição da personagem Basílio de Brito como centro da investigação. A leitura deste romance evidencia uma série de lacunas e, no intuito de preencher as mais ligadas a Basílio, buscou-se resgatar o panorama histórico de onde Eça de Queirós colheu informações para dar movimento à trama em que essa figura atua, efetuando-se, assim, uma engenharia reversa. É premissa deste trabalho que o romance queirosiano de adultério – sem negligenciar o estatuto ficcional – contém informações que comunicam fatos da história de Portugal e do Brasil, as quais estão acomodadas em camada subjacente do texto devido ao afastamento temporal da época em que foi escrito. O ponto de partida das pesquisas aqui apresentadas foi um dado do romance sobre o qual não foram encontrados estudos: Basílio acumulou fortuna no Brasil no mercado de ações ligado aos negócios da borracha do alto Paraguai. A partir dessa informação, foram investigadas as condições econômicas luso-brasileiras da segunda metade do Oitocentos, incluindo um estudo detalhado sobre a emigração portuguesa para o Brasil e também sobre o imaginário de Eldorado associado à antiga América Portuguesa. Objetivou-se discutir as escolhas autorais de Eça de Queirós que o levaram a atribuir caracteres a Basílio não usuais na representação de outros torna-viagem (“brasileiros”) da dramaturgia e da literatura produzida em Portugal no século XIX. Essa discussão evidenciou que Basílio foi criado segundo um modelo de representação francês, uma vez que a abordagem de Eça de Queirós situa os dilemas socioeconômicos portugueses em um contexto mais abrangente, não limitado à histórica inter-relação entre Portugal e Brasil. Além disso, apresenta uma chave de leitura distanciada daquelas que costumam enquadrar a atuação de Basílio apenas como o pivô da ruína de um matrimônio burguês. / This thesis, which is the outcome of a study about the book O Primo Basílio (1978), centers its inquiry at the constitution of the character Basílio de Brito. The reading of this novel distinctly shows a series of gaps, and, in order to fill the ones closer to Basílio, it became paramount to research the historical background from which Eça de Queirós gathered the information to move forward the plot in which the character acts, thus, bringing about a reverse engineering. It is the premise of this work that Queirós´s novel of adultery – without neglecting the fictional statute - contains information that communicate historical facts about Portugal and Brazil, which are placed at the underlying level of the text, due to the chronological distancing at the time it has been written. The starting point of the presented researches has been a data from the novel about which no studies have been found: Basílio built a fortune in the Brazilian stock market of rubber at the upper Paraguay region. Starting with this information, the economic conditions of Portugal and Brazil during the second half of the 1800s were investigated, including a thorough study about Portuguese emigration to Brazil, and about the imaginary of Eldorado associated to the ancient Portuguese America. The goal was to discuss Eça´s writing choices that made him give Basílio unusual traits in the representation of other remainders – “Brazilians” – in Portuguese Drama and Literature of the 19th Century. This discussion made clear that Basílio was created in accordance with a French representation model, since Eça de Queirós´s approach places the Portuguese socioeconomic dilemmas in a broader context, not limited to the historical inter-relation between Portugal and Brazil. Besides, it opens a key for reading distanced from the ones that frame Basílio´s role solely as the pivot of the ruin of a bourgeois matrimony.

The following essay examines the image of "Barbary piracy" created by two prominent political figures, Thomas Jefferson and William Eaton, and by the American public from 1784 to 1805, and how those images shaped the policy of the American-Barbary War. Eaton‟s Orientalist approach to describing piracy and the North African population limited his views of this region, thus reducing the American conflict to the annihilation of animalistic "brutes." Jefferson‟s practical approach to describing piracy and the North African population focused on emancipating the region from the corrupting influence of greed, allowing him the necessary flexibility to solve the conflict by either by military force or with peace treaties, whichever was necessary. I will show the impact that categorizing piracy as either the result of a depraved society or as a corrupting force had on both American perceptions of the North Africa people and on the outcome of the American-Barbary War.

Despite what the title suggests, Saskatchewan had a booming sex trade in its early years. The area attracted hundreds of women sex workers before Saskatchewan had even become a province in 1905. They were drawn to the area by the demands of bachelors who dominated Canada's prairie west. According to Saskatchewan's moral reformers, however, the sex trade was a hindrance to the province's Christian potential. They called for its abolishment and headed white slavery campaigns that characterized prostitution as a form of slavery. Their approach stood in contrast with law enforcement's stance on the trade. The police took a tolerant approach, allowing its operation as long as sex workers and their clients remained circumspect. Law enforcement's approach reflected their own propensity to use the services of sex workers as well as community attitudes toward the trade. Some communities were more welcoming of sex workers, while others demanded that police suppress the trade. Saskatchewan's newspapers also reflected differing attitudes toward the trade. While Regina's Leader purveyed a no tolerance view of the sex trade, Saskatoon's Phoenix and Star held more tolerant views. Saskatchewan's newspapers reveal that as the province's population increased and notions of moral reform gained popularity, police were challenged to take a less tolerant approach. However, reformers' efforts to end the sex trade dwindled with the onset of the First World War and attitudes toward sex workers shifted drastically as responsibility for venereal disease was placed largely on women who sold sex. Using government and police records, moral reform and public health documents, and media sources such as newspapers, as well as intersectional analysis of gender, race, class, and ethnicity, this examination of Saskatchewan’s sex trade investigates the histories and social responses to the buying and selling of sex, revealing the complex and, at times, contradictory place of sex workers and the sex trade in Saskatchewan’s early history.

This thesis examines the regulation of women in public space in Liverpool between 1908 and 1957. It considers the complex relationship between the laws used to police solicitation, governmental debate about female prostitution and local purity campaigners’ concerns with the moral vulnerability of young, working-class, urban women. It is argued that the ways in which prostitution was understood and managed had an impact upon all women’s access to and use of public space, together with wider definitions of female morality and immorality. The thesis adds to historical understandings about the implications of prostitution regulation in the twentieth century, by moving away from London-focused histories to offer a detailed analysis of the ways in which national debates about vice were taken up at local level and with what consequences. I begin by exploring the problems with policing prostitution in the early-twentieth century and argue that increasing concern about the difficulty in differentiating prostitutes from ‘ordinary’ women provoked anxiety amongst law makers and government officials alike. It is argued that the debates canvassed by the 1927 Macmillan Committee indicate the degree to which moral codes about female sexuality informed official approaches to prostitution. The thesis considers the implications of these broad debates in Liverpool. Focusing on the work of the Liverpool Vigilance Association (LVA), it is proposed that fears about the moral threat of prostitution fuelled the organisation’s belief in the necessity of preventative patrol work centred on the moral surveillance of young, working-class women. This thesis shows that in interwar Liverpool, women’s movements were circumscribed first and foremost by their gender. Traditional, nineteenth-century ideas about women’s place within the domestic sphere created a sense among local purity campaigners that female morality was being threatened by women’s visibility in urban spaces. Other aspects of social status, such as class, race and employment experiences, heightened the interest of the LVA in targeting distinctive groups of women. The thesis demonstrates that in their efforts to regulate women’s movements through the city of Liverpool, local purists singled-out working-class and immigrant (especially Irish) women, as they believed them to be the most susceptible to corruption. This thesis draws on a wide range of archival sources, especially Home Office Records relating to the Public Places (Order) Bill and the establishment of the 1927 Macmillan Committee, as well as the LVA archive, in order to show how national and local policies on prostitution were both interdependent and distinct.

No description available.