My thesis consists of a novel in stories, each taking place in or around the fictional town of Rose, Oregon. The thesis tells, in non-chronological order, the story of the Slaughter family, a group of polygamists founded by Blackstone Slaughter, and in particular the family's women: Blackstone's wife, Jestyn, and their son Colt's five wives, Alma, Kayo, Larina, Josephine, and Laddy. An additional story, "Rabbit Starvation," set not within the Slaughter compound but within the town of Rose, adds further perspective.

Women, as feminist and as familist, have been in many varied ways the subjects of study. They have been studied as black women, middle-aged women, sexual women, women in poverty, women in prison, women raped, executives, celebrities, lesbians and homemakers. The classifications and combinations approached infinity. Now older women are becoming a more popular research topic, as their numbers increase with medical attainments. With the increasing participation of older “sisters” in such organizations as the National Organization for Women, and the advent of groups such as the gray panthers, it has become apparent that there are no age barriers to feminism. A series of questions led us to our topic. What will our attitudes on the issues now personally significant be in 40 years, when we have passed “retirement age?” What were women who have reached this age like when they were our age and younger? Is there a connection between their younger years and the attitudes they now possess? In pursing this final question we chose to define the “younger years” as before 25, when socialization influences one’s search of identity, development of autonomy, and development of internal criteria for self-esteem. The age chosen for our population was after the 65 the birthday, when most women are no longer working outside of the home for wages. It has been said that women who have achieved and have been rewarded for their achievements cannot accept traditional roles. Such roles do not gratify their non-nurturant, non-supportive, non-dependent, non-passive aspects of their selves. Our hypotheses were made in accordance: that a woman’s “feminism,” as measured by our scale, would be directly related to her achievement in school and work, her leadership or participation in religious activities, politics, and sports. In addition to the above objectives, we wanted to seek a relationship between the woman’s feminism scores and other aspects of her family background, her inter-relationships with boys, and her opportunities to travel. We approached these issues without hypotheses, but with great receptivity and interest.

This thesis consists of research on women and Buddhism in light of a medieval Japanese Buddhist tales collection called Kankyo no Ｔomo. This collection reveals the predicament in which women in medieval Japan found themselves. As the focus of sexual desire (towards them and by them), they were also inherently polluted due to their connection with blood (kegare).

My thesis is going to include three sections as follows: 1.A brief biography of Zhang Jie 张洁 (1937 - ). Zhang Jie began to publish in the post-Cultural Revolution era, and became well-known in the early 1980s for her fictional depiction of the problems of the urban intellectual women attempting to resolve conflicts between love and career, love and marriage, and ideals and reality. The main part of this section is going to be the deep influence of her eventful fatherless life experience, traditional Chinese culture, as well as that of former Russian literary masters, especially Chekhov and Tolstoy, on her literary creation, characterized by a high sense of morality, spirituality, and social responsibility as well. First, when Zhang Jie was only 100 days old, her father abandoned her and her mother. Lack of paternal love leads to her long-cherished hidden desire for an immaculate father in shining armor, characterized by a combination of integrity and benevolence, a lofty spiritual state of mind/mental outlook and high-ranking position. Moreover, the failure of her first marriage reinforced her longing and worship for father-like males, who become the ideal husband in her novels. That is why Zhang Jie prefers the marriage pattern of so-called lao-fu shao-qi 老夫少妻 [older husband, younger wife]. Second, Zhang Jie’s creation of her love-marriage stories have been extremely influenced by traditional Chinese culture. The Chinese traditional novels dealing with sensual love roughly fall into two categories. One, from the physical perspective, depicts the sensual rivalry with Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅 as its representative; the other tend to present spiritual entanglement, such as the love between Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 and Lin Daiyu林黛玉 in Hong-lou Meng 红楼梦. These two kinds of love have been incompatible just like fire and water. The former has been held in contempt by scholars, while the latter has been admired by them, to which the love depicted by Zhang Jie belongs. For one thing, Zhang Jie is widely read in literature; for another, she overvalues her own choices and emotions, which results in her easily being plunged into her past life experiences. Finally, Zhang Jie’s emphasis on the spiritual aspect of sensual love results from the enormous influence of the former Russian literary masters, especially Chekhov. The geographical location of Russian, which crosses the Asian-European continent, causes the Russian literature to be tinged with Asian literature, and also produces some similarities between the Russian and Chinese nations in cultural values, such as an emphasis on morality. During her childhood, Zhang Jie read many Russian literary works in Chinese. Among those Russian literary masters, Chekhov has been her spiritual mentor and leader of her literary creation. We can say that the major motif of Zhang Jie’s novels, pursuit of the all-round emancipation of human beings’ spirit, is a direct successor of the main theme of Chekhov’s works – Man is supposed to live a dignified life. 2. Zhang Jie’s changing perspectives on love, specifically, sensual love and maternal love. This section mainly focuses on the theme of love. I will examine Zhang Jie’s major writings where the dominant characters are females. They are “Love”, The Ark, Emerald (Zumulu祖母绿, 1984), Gone Is The Person Who Loved Me Most (Shijieshang zui teng wo de nage ren qu le世界上最疼我的那个人去了, 1994), and Without A Word (Wu Zi无字, 1998) – the sixth Mao Dun Literary Prize Winning (2005) masterpiece, with which Zhang Jie is most satisfied. The assemblage of the above-mentioned works thus brings into focus on Zhang Jie with her consistent view of ideal femininity and masculinity, her change of perspective on sensual love and parental love (in her case maternal love), her unbreakable and increasingly strong mother-daughter bond, as well as her own emotional and literary growth and maturity through her creation of a colorful gallery of female images. To be exact, Zhang Jie, in her love/female texts, has expressed her persistent pursuit of the holy, near religious, heterosexual love in “Love” and Emerald, her disillusionment in heterosexual love in The Ark, her despair in heterosexual love in Gone Is The Person Who Loved Me Most, and her detachment from heterosexual love in Wu Zi. Differently put, Zhang Jie’s above-mentioned works with middle-aged women intellectuals as their heroines show her view on women from a female’s perspective and demonstrate the course of her process of searching for or looking up to ideal men, to ridiculing or looking down upon men, and to objectively evaluating or looking squarely at men while dissecting the negative traits of women, including jealousy, gossipiness, and lack of solidarity among themselves. This section is going to include four subtitles, i.e., Pursuit and persistence of holy love in “Love” and Emerald, The disillusionment in love in The Ark, The despair in love in Gone Is the Person Who Loved Me Most, and The detachment from heterosexual love in Wu Zi accordingly. 3. The main part - translation of part of Vol.1 of her three-volume masterpiece entitled Wu Zi.

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Many female characters in Thomas Hardy’s novels clearly illustrate one of the Victorian stereotypes of women: the proper, submissive housewife or the rebellious, independent dreamer. Hardy does not demonstrate how women should be, but rather how society pressures women to conform to the accepted image. Hardy progresses from subtly criticizing society, as seen in The Return of the Native and The Woodlanders, to overtly condemning gender roles and marriage in Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. The characters of Thomasin, Mrs. Yeobright, and Grace Melbury illustrate those who submit to society’s expectations; and Eustacia Vye, Felice Charmond, Tess Durbyfield, Sue Bridehead, and Arabella Donn illustrate the stereotypical seductress. Hardy’s female characters seem to experience especially harsh or condemning circumstances due to the social expectations placed upon them. These unpleasant events earn readers’ sympathy and work to subvert the traditional limiting views of women.

A Simple Story is controversial because of Inchbald's seemingly conflicting statements about women's "proper" education and because the most powerful character in the novel openly defies social norms. Miss Milner, the heroine of the first half of A Simple Story, overtly displays her sexuality and uses it to gain control of men. Her guardian Dorriforth, a Catholic priest, attempts to repress her sexual power. Miss Milner dies in exile, but Inchbald rewards her by saving her from a marriage in which her husband subdues her sexuality. Contrarily, Miss Milner's daughter Matilda represses her sexuality and conforms to eighteenth-century standards of how a woman should behave. Rather than rewarding her with a traditional marriage, Inchbald relegates her to a marriage without passion. Inchbald writes two parallel cautionary tales in order to emphasize that a woman must balance the two extremes and embrace sexuality while embracing intellect.

This anthology of nineteenth-century women’s regional fiction, written in the mode of canon revision, explores how persistent stereotypes of Appalachian women originated. These stereotypes are not merely identified but are also considered in the context of women’s studies. Works by the following six authors are included: Elizabeth Appleton, Rebecca Harding Davis, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Sherwood Bonner, and Mary Noailles Murfree. Topics addressed include nineteenth-century women as authors, the influence of northern literary magazines on regional writing, the image of the Appalachian woman in fiction, and the critical evaluation of primary texts. Original work required for the completion of a master’s thesis comes by way of a thirty-page analytical introduction, six biographical headnote entries, and an extended bibliography of primary works by Appalachian women writers.

This study investigated the following key areas: women in the public sphere, women in the private sphere, and how media portrayals in these areas portray women's progress in obtaining executive positions in corporate America. Topics of interest include wage differences between genders, executive placement, and attainment in board positions throughout Corporate America.

This quantitative investigation focused on women high school principals at Jewish secular schools throughout Israel. Despite challenges, Israeli women have succeeded in obtaining over half of the principal positions at Jewish secular high schools, but the degree to which there is equal gender access to leadership roles in the school system remains unclear. This study examined whether there was clustering of women in high school principal positions in certain geographical areas, the process by which these women obtained principal positions, what obstacles the women overcame, and an analysis if respondents differed by district in terms of their career paths, career breaks, and military experiences. This study showed that although women are in principal positions in equal or greater numbers as men depending on the region, women had a different path than men to obtain this role. The key findings in this research were that 89.5% of women principals were able to return at the same level prior to taking a career break and that 31.8% of female principals had male mentors.