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This thesis aims to investigate the patriarchal values and feminist ideas in the novel Emma in Jane Austen. The focus of this thesis is on how patriarchy and feminism is portrayed in the novel Emma. In this thesis, I will primarily use close reading by applying Mary Wollstonecraft's theory of marriage as friendship in her tract A Vindication Of The Rights of Woman. The study concludes that there are concepts of both feminism theory and patriarchy depicted through the situations that the character faces in terms of marriage, social class, and relationships. The result of this paper and my argument is that there is a new emerging society portrayed through the protagonist Emma Woodhouse, in terms of her personal growth, the patriarchal relationship, and independence that stems from her education.

Countering traditional claims that the feminist movement all but vanished during the early nineteenth century, this thesis suggests feminism remained prominent in both the literature and rhetoric of the time. In tracing the development of the "New Rhetoric," a rhetorical movement that aimed to accommodate new principles of the Enlightenment, I focus in part on the rhetorical battle between Edmund Burke, with his Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Thomas Paine, with his Rights of Man. From there, I suggest that Mary Wollstonecraft, writing in the wake of the Burke-Paine debate and drawing upon the rhetorical philosophy of George Campbell, was able to establish a distinctive feminist rhetoric in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman. This feminist rhetoric had traits that equipped it to continue developing into the nineteenth century, particularly in the works of women novelists such as Jane Austen. My final chapter shows how Austen analyzes Wollstonecraft's rhetoric to better explain how feminist goals of increased understanding and moral agency might be attained.

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Nineteenth-century British fiction is often dismissed as necrophillic or obsessed with death. While the label of necrophilia is an apt description of the fetishistic representations of dead women prevalent at the end of the century, it is too narrow to fit literature produced earlier in the century. This is not to say that abnormal attitudes toward death are only a feature of the late nineteenth century. In fact, pathological attitudes toward death abound in the literature, but the relationship between the deceased and the survivor is not always sexual in nature. Rather, there is a clear shift in attitudes, from the chaste death fantasy, or attraction to the idea of death, prevalent in Gothic works, to the destructive, stagnant mourning visible in mid-century texts, and culminating in the perverse sexualization of dead women at the turn of the century. This literary shift is most likely attributable to the concurrent changes in attitudes toward sex and death. As sex became more acceptable, more public, via the channels of scientific discourse, death became a less acceptable idea. This “denial of death” is a direct reaction to the religious uncertainties brought about by industrialization. As scientists and industrialists uncovered increasing evidence against a literal interpretation of the Bible, more people began to doubt the nature of God and the existence of an afterlife. If there was no God, then there was no heaven, which raised questions about what happened to the soul after death. With the certainty of an afterlife gone, death became mysterious, something to fear, and the passing of loved ones was doubly-mourned as their fate was now uncertain.

This narrative inquiry documents the inaugural Performance at the Center summer institute, a professional development program in which teachers worked alongside students to generate an original multimodal performance piece inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Specifically, the study examines text-inspired creation: how readers identify and then create out of the gaps and spaces in a given text through remix and performance. This researcher employs qualitative methods to address the following questions: (1) How do Performance at the Center facilitators set up the conditions for text-inspired creation? (2) How do teacher and student players describe what effect, if any, Performance at the Center has on their reading of Frankenstein? and (3) How do select teacher players describe what effect, if any, Performance at the Center has had on their design and implementation of curriculum? Examining her data through the lens of “the gift” (Marcel Mauss and Lewis Hyde), this researcher finds that facilitators set up the conditions for text-inspired creation by stepping into the role of muse—offering both tangible and intangible “gifts” to prompt production. Teachers and students describe the ways in which Performance at the Center invites sensory entry into Shelley’s text, enabling readers to compose meanings potentially inaccessible through words alone. Select teachers describe the ways in which Performance at the Center catalyzes a reconceptualization of what it means to teach literature, underscoring as it does the profound distinction between dissecting a text and experiencing a text. This investigation suggests that positioning the study of literature within a gift culture—receiving literature as a living gift to be passed on through student text-inspired creation—has the potential revitalize texts, teachers and the classroom itself.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [295]-314). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [295]-314). Also available on the Internet.