Change and stability on identity and family self indicators, first studied in 1989, are documented among 54 women aged 47.26 (SD=8.44) years; 26 of these women were interviewed in 1997 as well. The present study examined daughters' perceptions of relationships with parents and their influences on women's identities, self-perceptions, and vulnerabilities to distress. Categorizing women by parents' alcoholism status and respondents' concurrent therapeutic activities explained a modest proportion of variance on identity and family self in 1989. By 1997 there were no longer significant differences between alcoholics' daughters and nonalcoholics' daughters. Variance attributable to 1989 group categorization was considerably reduced. Phenomenological themes revealed among daughters' reflections included the importance of parents' time and attention with striking differences on relating with parents in alcoholics' families and nonalcoholics' families. Essential features of perspective taking experiences explain similarities and differences in daughters' felt closeness to parents influencing women's identities, self-perceptions, and therapeutic activities. Incongruity between sociocultural ideals and lived experience evidently exacerbate women's existential struggles. / Ph. D.

One of the fundamental stories in fairy tale studies is "Cinderella": folkloric designation ATU 510A, the Persecuted Heroine. As Fairy tale and Folklore studies continue to evolve, authors beyond Basile, Perrault and Grimm are added into the Cinderella canon to lend a more nuanced approach to the study of this fairy tale. Yet "Cinderella" is still often interpreted as a tale of feminine submissiveness, in which the heroine is little more than a passive ornament or else a likeable social-climber. These interpretations stem largely from the focus of "Cinderella" stories written by men. Though studies of "Cinderella" are expanding, "Cendrillon", "Aschenputtel", and Walt Disney's Cinderella remain the foundational tales that are thought of when "Cinderella" is mentioned. This research addresses the problem that female writers of "Cinderella" remain marginalized within analyses of the tale. This research considers five versions of "Cinderella" from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century, from women authors, mediated in five different formats: literary fairy tale, novel, short story, and poetry. Mme D'Aulnoy's "Finette Cendron" and Mlle L'Héritier's "L'Adroite Princesse ou les Aventures de Finette," protofeminist literary fairy tales from seventeenth-century France, present Cinderellas who hail from the birth of the modern fairy tale but show personalities that most do not associate with the princess. D'Aulnoy and L'Héritier's Finettes are dutiful to their family and kingdom, but aggressively pursue their ambitions and secure for themselves both high-status as well as fulfilling futures. Jane Austen's eighteenth-century novel Persuasion brings a sharp contrast to traditional views of the fairy helper. Louisa May Alcott's "A Modern Cinderella: or, The Little Old Shoe" is an American Romantic short story originally published in a little magazine which paints a different perspective on the desires of a nineteenth-century Anglo-women in a Prince. Austen's and Alcott's stories give voice to how they perceive the place women are given in the world and their hostility to the patriarchal structures of their society allude to the rise of 'Defense of Women' literature during their period. Austen and Alcott highlight the restrictions that women face, but do not resign women to the fate of subjugation; instead they insist that women should decide their own fate and never settle for less than they are owed. "…And Then the Prince Knelt Down and Tried to Put the Glass Slipper on Cinderella's Foot," a poem by Judith Viorst from the 1980s, challenges the traditional expectations of the Cinderella cycle. At the sunset of the twentieth century, the poem challenges the typical Cinderella motifs and recursive narrative devices with a second-wave feminist perspective on women's perceptions of their ideas on romantic love and self-love and offers a Cinderella who speaks with her own voice. This research looks at women's culture using the lens of socio-cultural and historical approaches, feminist theory, and global studies to provide insight into each tale. Women authors use the Cinderella tale-type to express the idealized woman, reject literary stereotypes about women, and reveal women's attitude toward love and marriage in their respective cultures. Women who add to the Cinderella cycle use the heroine of their story to assert that women are capable of managing their own affairs and determining their future. Cinderella is adapted to present the image of a woman who successfully navigates her society to seize a fulfilling future. The concept of a 'fulfilling future' is one that begins in magnanimity and evolves into Cinderellas who expect 'princes' to show caring natures or who reject princes who do not meet their expectations. Feminine identity is embodied through retellings of Cinderella in relation to her sisters, her Fairy, her Prince and women's attitudes about their social identity and voice. By considering these previously overlooked contributors to the Cinderella narrative, this research provides different perspectives into women's perceptions of power, autonomy, and love and asks important questions about how women use "Cinderella" to claim their voice.

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“If This Shop Could Talk: A Discursive Analysis of The Liberatory Function and Development of African American Beauty Salons and Culture” explores the intersection of political consciousness, aesthetics, and community development engendered in quintessential and atypical locales of African American beauty culture with an emphasis on the African American beauty salon as a discursive space. As it seeks to expand limited understandings of African American beauty culture, this analysis employs Afrocentric, Black Feminist, and Womanist theoretical perspectives as it traverses temporal and geographic boundaries. As proclamations of Black pride and beauty are juxtaposed in present day society against a multitude of headlines that detail stories of discrimination based upon hair, this work addresses matters of how and why Africana women assert such prideful proclamations amidst injustice. How do African American women know that there is power in beauty? Why do African American women believe such a thing? Why do African American women engage in beauty culture and beauty salons? This work focuses on 20th through 21st century America, by exploring Black beauty culture concepts and byproducts including trends, styles, community activism, and consciousness as connected to African history in Kemet, African history in West Africa prior to the Transatlantic slave trade, and African history in America between the 16th and 21st centuries. This work employs discourse analysis and Afronography to reveal and assert the existence of a unique epistemology within Africana women’s beauty culture that has been employed in the subversion of oppression and the assertion of Black female identity in America. An Afronographic research study accompanies this analysis and represents qualitative findings from interviews conducted with women who identify as persons of African descent and members of intergenerational family beauty practice, where women in their families preceded them in beauty service provision. The researcher’s perspective is also included throughout the work as she is a licensed cosmetologist and member of an intergenerational family of beauty practice. Ultimately, this work suggests that there is a unique, significant, and sacred agency that exists in the phenomena, traditions, history, and locations of African American beauty culture which has generated aesthetic creations in hair, skin and nails that rhetorically shift paradigms, in addition to words, actions, and feelings that foster an epistemology that can aid in the liberation of Africans in the United States and abroad. / African American Studies

<p>The dissertation describes a crucial step in the development of a modern writer's identity in Sweden. It applies the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of the autonomous ”literary field” to the development in eighteen-eighties, one of the most important periods in Swedish literary history.</p><p>During this decade a large group of authors appeared, with August Strindberg in the front. In accordance with the dominating esthetical view of the nineteenth century, ”ideal realism”, the writers had an ethical responsibility. But they differed from their predecessors by not being loyal to the bourgeois society and its values, as codified in the concept of ”decency”, that contained, among other things, rules for what could be said in public. On the contrary, the new generation of authors attacked the bourgeoisie in novels, dramas and articles, especially in the singularly most controversial area, the regulation of sexuality and the ideals of bourgeois women.</p><p>This study argues that the new authors in their radical criticism aimed at the position of power in society traditionally upheld by the State church, which supervised education and ethical values. They did this by creating a role for themselves as young and oppressed, something that made it possible to deny any responsibility for the present state and furthermore to speak up, despite their own bourgeois background, for other oppressed groups like the working classes, the poor and women. But this also meant that they could not be successful in their ambitions to gain influence without loosing their identity. This was especially the consequence of the fact that an autonomous ”literary field” did not yet exist. That is, there were no internal literary institutions that, seemingly independent of the rest of society, decided what was ”good literature.” Instead, the singularly most important judge of interesting literature was the bourgeois public. Strindberg seems to have realised this early, and achieved an identity as ”uncontrolled”. He thereby lost his intellectual credibility, but gained a much bigger freedom to write and also got the attention of the large audience. At the same time, his writing undermined the values of decency by breaking the bourgeois society’s fundamental wall between the private and the public sphere, not least by writing what was regarded as facts about his own private life. </p><p>The conservative reaction accelerated towards the end of the decade while the authors grew more and more bitter about the public’s lack of understanding. At this point the author Verner von Heidenstam took the opportunity to declare a new literary era, dissociating his aesthetics from the one of the Eighties and proclaiming the necessity of an aristocratic, ethically indifferent literature (with himself as its leader). </p><p>Confronted with the new concept of what ought to be regarded as “modern”, the established male authors were generally quick to separate themselves from the female authors, and to identify the attacked literature solely with the one that critically discussed the situation of women in society - a description that has been largely adopted in the history of literature. A number of male authors also wrote novels separating themselves from the Eighties. Thus, they could continue into the new period, while female authors in general were silenced or forced to write in less esteemed genres (”popular literature”, children’s books). </p><p>Ultimately the result was a more distinct male domination coupled with a growing contempt for the large audience. This, in turn, created a need for internal institutions that could interpret, value and support literature - scholarships, elitist critics, and a writers’ union. These institutions subsequently were founded or developed during the nineties – all of them steps towards autonomy.</p>

The dissertation describes a crucial step in the development of a modern writer's identity in Sweden. It applies the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of the autonomous ”literary field” to the development in eighteen-eighties, one of the most important periods in Swedish literary history. During this decade a large group of authors appeared, with August Strindberg in the front. In accordance with the dominating esthetical view of the nineteenth century, ”ideal realism”, the writers had an ethical responsibility. But they differed from their predecessors by not being loyal to the bourgeois society and its values, as codified in the concept of ”decency”, that contained, among other things, rules for what could be said in public. On the contrary, the new generation of authors attacked the bourgeoisie in novels, dramas and articles, especially in the singularly most controversial area, the regulation of sexuality and the ideals of bourgeois women. This study argues that the new authors in their radical criticism aimed at the position of power in society traditionally upheld by the State church, which supervised education and ethical values. They did this by creating a role for themselves as young and oppressed, something that made it possible to deny any responsibility for the present state and furthermore to speak up, despite their own bourgeois background, for other oppressed groups like the working classes, the poor and women. But this also meant that they could not be successful in their ambitions to gain influence without loosing their identity. This was especially the consequence of the fact that an autonomous ”literary field” did not yet exist. That is, there were no internal literary institutions that, seemingly independent of the rest of society, decided what was ”good literature.” Instead, the singularly most important judge of interesting literature was the bourgeois public. Strindberg seems to have realised this early, and achieved an identity as ”uncontrolled”. He thereby lost his intellectual credibility, but gained a much bigger freedom to write and also got the attention of the large audience. At the same time, his writing undermined the values of decency by breaking the bourgeois society’s fundamental wall between the private and the public sphere, not least by writing what was regarded as facts about his own private life. The conservative reaction accelerated towards the end of the decade while the authors grew more and more bitter about the public’s lack of understanding. At this point the author Verner von Heidenstam took the opportunity to declare a new literary era, dissociating his aesthetics from the one of the Eighties and proclaiming the necessity of an aristocratic, ethically indifferent literature (with himself as its leader). Confronted with the new concept of what ought to be regarded as “modern”, the established male authors were generally quick to separate themselves from the female authors, and to identify the attacked literature solely with the one that critically discussed the situation of women in society - a description that has been largely adopted in the history of literature. A number of male authors also wrote novels separating themselves from the Eighties. Thus, they could continue into the new period, while female authors in general were silenced or forced to write in less esteemed genres (”popular literature”, children’s books). Ultimately the result was a more distinct male domination coupled with a growing contempt for the large audience. This, in turn, created a need for internal institutions that could interpret, value and support literature - scholarships, elitist critics, and a writers’ union. These institutions subsequently were founded or developed during the nineties – all of them steps towards autonomy.