Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-256). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

The research field of this thesis is framed by the major political and legal women's movement campaigns from the 1840s to the 1870s: the debates over the Married Women's Property Act; over philanthropy and methods of addressing social ills; the campaign for professional opportunities for women, and the arguments surrounding women's suffrage. I address how these issues are considered and contextualised in major works of Victorian fiction: Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1855), Charlotte Bronte's Villette (1853), and George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871--2). / In works of fiction by women, concepts of social justice were not constrained by layers of legal abstraction and the obligatory political vocabulary of "disinterest." Contemporary fiction by women could thus offer some of the most developed articulations of women's changing expectations. This thesis demonstrates that the Victorian novel provides a distinct synthesis of, and contribution to, arguments grouped under the rubric of the "woman question." The novel offers a perspective on feminist politics in which conflicting social interests and demands can be played out, where ethical questions meet everyday life, and human relations have philosophical weight. Given women's traditional exclusion from the domain of legitimate (authoritative) speech, the novels of Gaskell, the Bronte's, and Eliot, traditionally admired for their portrayal of moral character, play a special role in giving voice to the key political issues of women's rights, entitlements, and interests. Evidence for the political content and efficacy of these novels is drawn from archival sources which have been little used in literary studies (including unpublished materials), as well as contemporary periodicals. Central among these is the English Woman's Journal. Conceived as the mouthpiece of the early women's movement, the journal offers a valuable record of the feminist activity of the period. Though it has not been widely exploited, particularly in literary studies, detailed study of the journal reveals close parallels between the ideological commitments and concerns of the women's movement and novels by mid-Victorian women.

This thesis explores the various manifestations of irony in prose-fiction by women in Quebec from 1960 to 1980. Traditionally used by men, irony is gradually becoming more widespread in women's writing, which in itself is an interesting reversal: more often "objects" of irony, women now reverse the rules of the game and become ironizing "subjects". The first part of the thesis investigates explicit irony; that is, irony which is duly identified and already decoded for the reader; for example, the author might emphasize an ironic fate or destiny for her characters, or might invest a character with an attitude, a smile, or remarks that are ironic. Explicit irony most often appears in works published during the first decade of our corpus; use of this form of irony constitutes a critical initial phase in women's writing because it enabled women authors to learn about the resources of irony and employ them in their work. / Explicit irony, therefore, operates within the text and requires minimal competence in the reader for its decoding; the decoding of the text will play a central role in implicit irony, which will be focus of part two of the thesis. Implicit irony manifests itself in the text in three principal forms: rhetorical, structural, and chromosomic. Rhetorical irony emerges from knowledge of the language and requires the reader to identify occurrences of antiphrases, innuendoes, metaphors, and other types of word-games in the text; structural irony depends upon the inner-workings of the text and demands an aptitude for discerning instances of parody, structural paradox, or intertextuality; that form of irony which we have named chromosomic requires a specific decoding that is effected in function of the author's feminine gender. / Following part two, which highlights the reader's role in the process of interpreting irony, the third and final part reveals the principal targets of irony in these women's writings. This tableau of "victims" completes our study by identifying the types of persons, institutions, or ideas that provoke the criticism of women writers. Such a broad range of types, comprising the clergy, education, the family, and foreigners, among others, tends to point toward a common denominator: Power. The authors scrutinize power relationships in all their forms; inspired by their "collective destiny", that persists, even today, in excluding them from positions of decision-making, women now propose a different vision of the world. Irony in the feminine permits an original reading of their struggle and their demands.

Inaug.-diss.--Greifswald. / Lebenslauf. At head of title: Englisch. "Literaturverzeichnis": p. 105-109.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [242]-256). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [242]-256). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 207-219). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 207-219). Also available on the Internet.

"It may be said that one of the most important characteristics of the professional librarian is his familiarity with bibliographic methods. This is due to the fact that the librarian is responsible for the accessibility of the knowledge found within the library's collections, and that in carrying out his responsibility, he must utilize bibliography. As one authority has put it, bibliography leads the inquirer, 'through channels as well-defined as are the entrances to harbors, to the particular record or records of communication which contain the information or other matter which he seeks.' Because it was felt that she needed practice in acquiring skill in this 'art of communication,' the writer decided to undertake as a graduate paper a study which would involve bibliographic investigation, a study in the form of a bio-bibliography. In choosing an author as the subject of the bio-bibliography, it was necessary to select one who might be claimed as being within the province of librarianship. Miss Daphne du Maurier, the prominent English novelist, was chosen as the subject of the paper for several reasons"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1956." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Ruth H. Rockwood, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-74).

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