This paper examined how Esther Summerson, Dickens’s ideal good mother, can be understood as a woman who has maternal agency and identity both as a character and as a narrator, and how she contrasts with other maternal characters in the novel, both major and minor. While more transgressive mothers, such as Lady Dedlock, Mrs. Jellyby and even Krook’s cat, are doomed to death, ineffectiveness and madness, Esther moves from a frozen, “unsexualized” state into a space of life and sexual possibility. In addition, Esther has agency and identity as a narrator since she shares the narration with a third-person male narrator. Esther becomes the one who speaks rather than the one who is spoken of, and her maternal, nurturing voice provides a balm for the often harsh, judgmental voice of the male narrator. As the narrator’s patriarchal voice dies away at the end, it is Esther’s maternal voice that survives.

This thesis examines how Dickens positions education between self-help and philanthropy in "Bleak House" and "Little Dorrit." The first chapter examines Dickens’s own education as well as his education-related charitable activities to provide context for the following analysis of "Bleak House" and "Little Dorrit." The second chapter focuses on education in "Bleak House" as a locus both for Dickens’s critique of the government’s irresponsible failure to educate the poor and for Dickens’s depiction of social responsibility motivating individuals to teach others. Finally, the third chapter considers the role of education in "Little Dorrit" by studying Amy Dorrit as an exemplar and teacher of social responsibility who stands in contrast to the prevailing irresponsibility that characterizes her family and “Society.”

This paper explores how Charles Dickens’s use of a female narrator in Bleak House (1853) fundamentally problematizes and undermines his use of the fairy tale’s cultural cachet, motifs, and characters to prop up and project his fantasies of the feminine ideal. More specifically, it examines the effects of the thematic presence of several tale-types and stock fairy tale figures on Dickens’s ability to prescribe ideal feminine behaviors, such as incuriosity and selfless obedience, to both his characters and his female audience. Because Esther’s ability to write and her interest in either discovering or constructing her own identity establish her as competitor to the males who attempt to script her life, Dickens tries to control and circumscribe her ability to know and act through her own and other characters’ resemblance to traditional fairy tale character types, especially Bluebeard and Griselda. Esther’s narrative, however, betrays these unnatural delimitations in telltale interruptions and denials as Dickens attempts to circumvent the constraints he has placed on her voice. Esther’s narrative therefore resists but imperfectly overcomes the Victorian male author’s scripting of femininity. / text

The dissertation thesis focuses on predator ecology in artificial water bodies. Paper I deals with the importance of chemical cues for predator-prey interactions in an aquatic environment. Here, I demonstrate that the ability to detect chemical cues represents a survival benefit for prey species. Paper II points out gillnet methodological bias, which may have subsequent repercussions in field evaluation of a predator's presence and assessment of larger fish abundance in general. Papers III and IV focus on asp Leuciscus aspius spawning grounds. In Paper III, I demonstrate how males maximize their spawning chances by early arrival and in Paper IV, I evaluate the predation pressure of asp prey, Alburnus alburnus, directed on asp eggs.

This work argues that the dynamics of the oral and of the literate consciousness play a vital role in the characterization of Bleak House. Through an application of Walter Ong's synthesis of orality/literacy research, Krook's residual orality is seen to play a greater role in his characterization than his more frequently discussed spontaneous combustion. Also, the role orality and literacy plays in understanding Dickens's satire of "philanthropic shams" is analyzed. This study concludes that an awareness of orality and literacy gives the reader of Bleak House a consistent framework for evaluating the moral quality of its characters and for understanding the broader social message underlying Dickens's topical satire.

Dedicated to recording, portraying, and indicting the social inequities that he witnessed in nineteenth century Victorian England, one of Charles Dickens' many concerns was the roles assigned to women both in the public and private spheres. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the narratives of Amy Dorrit and Miss Wade in Dickens' Little Dorrit and Esther Summerson in Bleak House to explore the ways in which each woman conforms to, subverts, or rejects her socially prescribed roles as she seeks to create her own identity while simultaneously complying to the duties and roles assigned her. This study focuses on the oral and written narratives of these women exploring their words, stories, and symbolic imagery. It also contextualizes their narratives while answering the critical question: How does individual identity emerge amid rigorously circumscribed social roles? / Graduation date: 1995

Thesis (M.A) -- Brigham Young University. Dept. of History, 1953.

The sexual segregation, defined as different use of space by sexes is widespread phenomenon in the animal tree of life. As a result of segregation there is a different use of resources such as habitat, prey items or different threat by predation. Nevertheless it is not well studied in fish taxa except in marine environment. The common and widespread freshwater species such as a bream (Abramis brama), a bleak (Alburnus alburnus) and a roach (Rutilus rutilus) so far have not never been studied from the perspective of sexual segregation too. This thesis aims to examine the sexual segregation of these species and to test premises of sexual segregation such as sexual size dimorphism, age composition and differences in food. Afterwards the different space use of sexes in the Římov reservoir was tested. The gillnet sampling was used to collect data. Gillnets were installed to four localities in longitudinal gradient of reservoir in epilimnion where is the highest abundance of fish. Sampling was performed in August from 2009 to 2016. Results of this thesis show that females and males have different life histories and that bleak and roach are significantly bigger and older than males. The size dimorphism in bream was confirmed but not age difference between sexes. Sexes of bream had different diet. Males...

My collection of short stories is set in the fictional town of Lockswood Gap, Tennessee, and centers around the lives of four women. Through various points of view and story lengths, I interweave several story lines to span over a time period of about twenty years. Themes of change and regret are prevalent in these stories, as each of these four women must make, or refuse to make, choices that will impact their lives. I modeled my collection after Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, using individual short stories that share the same group of characters to tell a novel-length story. The ten stories included in my thesis will comprise about threeourths of the novel, and I will add several more to it following my graduation.

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