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This thesis explores the construction of masculinity in novels written by New Women authors between the years 1881-1899. The fin de siècle was a period during which gender roles were renegotiated with fervour by both male and female authors, but it was the so-called New Woman in particular who was trying to transform the Victorian notion of femininity to incorporate the demands of the burgeoning women's movement. This thesis argues that in their fiction, New Women authors often tried to achieve this transformation by creating male characters who were designed to justify and to mitigate the New Woman protagonist's departure from traditional structures of heterosexual relationships. The methodology underlying this thesis is the notion that men and women were perceived as binary opposites during the Victorian period. I refer to this as the binary code of the sexes. This code assumes that men and women naturally possess diametrically opposed character attributes, and also that “masculine” attributes are perforce better than “feminine” ones. In the body of this work, I argue that New Women authors attempted to contest both of these assumptions by creating, on the one hand, traditional male characters whose masculinity is corrupted in crucial and recurring ways, and on the other, impaired male characters who cannot assume the traditional role of man. The comparison of the New Woman protagonist with the corrupt traditional man elevates her feminine attributes, while the impaired man's dependency legitimises her acquisition of what were otherwise considered “masculine” attributes and privileges, thereby contesting the notion that men and women possess sex-specific attributes at all. The second part of my thesis examines contrasting examples, in which this way of characterising masculinity – as traditional or impaired – is questioned and manipulated. It examines the limitations of the New Women authors' specific approach to reconstructing the binary code.

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / "Why do women read the romance?" cannot be answered by Anglo-American feminist literary criticism; a critique is brought against feminist definitions of gender and genre, and the question, "Why did women begin to write (novels)?" Gender definition and genre formation are integrally interrelated in the modern period; this can be traced through textual analyses of textual practices in early nineteenth century texts. Analyses of Wuthering Heights, Emma, and Madame Bovary enable critique to be brought against tenets central to feminist criticism: the figure and function of the female author; the definitions of gender, desire and sexuality; the social and the sexual contracts; and the role of Oedipus in feminist-psychoanalytical debates. Moi's Sexual/Textual Politics provides a. critique of feminism, Armstrong's Desire and Domestic Fiction a feminist history of the novel, and Radway's Reading the Romance a feminist account of romance fiction. / Andrew Chakane 2018

La Partition de l’Inde (1947) et la Guerre de libération du Bangladesh (1971) sont deux moments de transition qui exposent la violence de constructions nationales post-coloniales. Les actes perpétrés sur une base ethno-religieuse ont donné lieu à des récits privés pourtant occultés au profit de récits nationaux hégémoniques auto-légitimants. Ces récits attestent tout particulièrement de l’instrumentalisation de figures et de corps de femmes comme lieu de marquage de conflits communautaires. Face au silence imposé par les divers appareils d’État patriarcaux, trois générations de romancières ont cherché à renverser les récits hégémoniques en Inde, au Pakistan et au Bangladesh, par le biais d’une fiction romanesque caractérisée par son incoercibilité et son engagement féministe. Leur écriture de fiction répond à la violence de la fracture de l’Histoire par une poétique de la fragmentation, dont le tout dresse un portrait obscène, monstrueux et carnavalesque de la formation d’États-nations contemporains. Cette écriture romanesque, qu’elle soit sous-continentale ou diasporique, résiste à toute forme de frontières (idéologiques, littéraires, commerciales, etc.), et se consolide par sa prise de position à la fois complexe et engagée. La poétique de fragmentation est amenée par des phénomènes linguistiques, littéraires, sociologiques et politiques. Ce corpus se compose de romans couvrant l’ensemble de la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle, publiés (chronologiquement) par Jyotirmoyee Devi, Anis Kidwai, Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, Attia Hosain, Amrita Pritam, Sophia Mustafa, Bapsi Sidhwa, Anita Rau Badami , Shauna Singh Baldwin Meena Arora Nayak, Sorayya Khan, Kamila Shamsie et Tahmima Anam. / The Partition of India (1947) and the Bangladesh Liberation War (1971) are two transitory moments which reveal the violence of post-colonial nation-building. The acts performed upon an ethno-religious basis have given rise to many private stories, themselves stifled by self-legitimating national master narratives. These stories particularly highlight the instrumentalisation of the idea and the bodies of women in carrying out communal conflict. Three generations of women novelists have sought to break the silence imposed by patriarchal State apparatuses and religious radicalism. They turn to the impetuousness of the literary genre of the novel in order to thwart Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi master narratives. As such they write back to the violent fracture of History, through a poetics of the fragment, and together draw an obscene, monstrous and carnival-like portrait of contemporary Nation-States. Such novels, whether sub-continental or diasporic, resist all forms of borders (whether ideological, literary, commercial, etc.), driven instead by their commitment to contradiction. The fragmentation which defines them is all at once linguistic, literary, sociological and political. Our study comprises novels written (chronologically) by Jyotirmoyee Devi, Anis Kidwai, Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, Attia Hosain, Amrita Pritam, Sophia Mustafa, Bapsi Sidhwa, Anita Rau Badami , Shauna Singh Baldwin Meena Arora Nayak, Sorayya Khan, Kamila Shamsie and Tahmima Anam.

The Long Eighteenth Century was a period in which change was constant and proceeding the Restoration Era; this sense of change continued throughout the era. Charles II created an era in which women were allowed on the theatre stage, and his mistresses accompanied him to court; Charles II set the stage for the proto-feminist ideas of the eighteenth century that would manifest themselves in Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess, Daniel Defoe’s Roxana, and Elizabeth Inchbald’s A Simple Story. These novels showcase the enlightenment of women and some of their male contemporaries and the beginning struggles of female agency. The eighteenth century was a time in which the separate sphere mentality grew ever stronger within the patriarchal society, and yet, women began to question their subservient place in this society—although this struggle would continue to intensify throughout the nineteenth century and eventually come to fruition in the late nineteenth century.

There is no abstract available for this dissertation. / Department of English

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgetown University, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references.

Paul Solanges was one of the most prolific (in correspondence) and enthusiastic fans of Australian author Henry Handel Richardson (HHR). What was it about him that made HHR invest so much time in his translation of her novel, and to what extent can credence be given to the self-portrait in his letters? This thesis reveals his illegitimate royal background, considers his early career as a cavalry officer in North Africa and in the Franco-Prussian War, and describes his long career as manager of the gasworks in Milan. It also portrays in detail his other life as a translator of songs, short stories and operas from Italian to French. Finally, it compares his relationship with Italian novelist Antonio Fogazzaro to his relationship with HHR. A critical edition of Solanges’s correspondence with Fogazzaro and HHR offers the reader a privileged insight into the life and character of this Franco-Italian littérateur.

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