This essay explores the feminist message in Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of an Hour” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “An Extinct Angel” and “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The relationship between space and gender will be examined in connection with theoretical conceptions of female consciousness. The study makes use of feminist theory and is particularly inspired by Virginia Woolf’s conception of the gender-space relationship, along with later feminist critics’ works on gender consciousness. It is argued that the authors, through these short stories, describe the contemporary female experience and propose the claiming of space as the solution to end female repression. The study ultimately shows that these stories convey the authors’ appeal for the awakening of the feminist consciousness - an appeal to kill ‘the angel in the house’.

The main objective of the present thesis is an effort to understand better how Czech women construct their views on feminism and what factors of Czech distance from feminism are, which is clearly visible in the post-1989 era. The thesis starts with the description of feminism, its development and inner differentiation. Then the author focuses on development and current situation in the Czech Republic, which is specific for its historically contingent connotation. The following section presents the analytical results of the qualitative research. By applying the technique of semi-structured interviews, the author brings up the questions of how Czech women perceive and understand feminism and how do they interpret the current situation of women. One of the main objectives of the empirical part was also to find out whether it is possible to apply Aronson's typology of feminism of the situation in the Czech Republic. Due to the specificity of the Czech environment, the author comes to the conclusion that there can be identified four different approaches to feminism. Within this framework, the analysis of interviews led to identification of several important factors that affect the construction of feminist consciousness among Czech women.

Vilka erfarenheter har enskilda medlemmar av den svenska separatistiska facebookgruppen Heja Livet? Ur ett feministiskt perspektiv har vi genomfört kvalitativa personliga intervjuer vilket gav ett resultat som visar att gruppen bidrar med något betydelsefullt. Det personliga är politiskt och genom att ta del av andras berättelser kan enskilda kvinnor få ett högre feministiskt medvetande som kan bidra till feministiska handlingar. Det visar sig också att gruppen kan fungera som ett stöd i olika frågor för enskilda kvinnor i deras vardag. Vi presenterar ett teoretiskt resultat, omdefinierar innebörden av ett högre feministisk medvetande och argumenterar för att Heja Livet kan ses som en medvetenhetshöjande grupp. Faktumet att de flesta av våra intervjupersoner inte delar med sig av sina erfarenheter i facebookgruppen hotar dock konstruktionen av Heja Livet som en subalternativ offentlighet som utmanar dominerande offentligheter. Den vita medelklass cis-kvinnan är idealet i gruppen och det bristande intersektionella perspektivet gör att vi kritiserar Heja Livet som ett ett lyckat feministiskt projekt. / What experiences do individual members have of the Swedish separatist Facebook group Heja Livet? We have conducted qualitative personal interviews from a feminist perspective and have come to the conclusion that the group is contributing with something meaningful. The personal is political and by reading other women’s stories, individual women can achieve a higher feminist consciousness which can contribute to feminist actions. Another finding is that the group can also function as a support in different matters for individual women in their everyday lives. We are presenting a theoretical result, we redefine the meaning of a higher feminist consciousness and argue that Heja Livet can be seen as a consciousness raising group. The fact that most of the interviewed did not share their own experiences in Heja Livet, threatens the construction of the group as a subaltern counterpublic that challenges dominant publics. The white middle class cis-woman is the norm in Heja Livet and we criticize it for not being a successful feminist project because of the lack of an intersectional perspective.

This thesis is a feminist reading of the work of Henry Handel Richardson (1870-1946), which considers her four major novels: Maurice Guest (1908), The Getting of Wisdom (1910), The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1930), and The Young Cosima (1939). It proposes that Richardson foregrounds the work of gender ideology in her novels, and that her work is also conscious about its own fictional procedures. This thesis argues that Richardson consciously examines the ideological aspect of narrative modes, such as naturalism, the Bildungsroman, and popular romance. Moreover, it illustrates her attempts to invent narrative strategies which subvert the conventional assumptions about gender inherent in those forms. ???Gender Ideology and Narrative Form??? draws on recent theoretical approaches to narrative, ideology, subjectivity, and dialogism, to argue that Richardson makes the ideological shaping of her stories most visible through manipulations of genre, plot, narrative voice, and point of view. Aspects of ideology examined include the Victorian and late-Victorian equation of masculinity with public rationality, mind, public achievement, and genius: and, on the other hand, the association of femininity with the body, passion, and private or domestic spaces. The thesis also considers some of the values and assumptions about gender implicit in nineteenth-century scientific thinking. Henry Handel Richardson has been viewed as a conservative writer, in both aesthetic and political terms. By contrast, I suggest that she resists the moral and representational codes of the realist or naturalist form, and that her uncompromising oppositional strategy achieves a number of radical results. It exposes and criticises the masculinist bias of certain representational methods; it offers new ways of representing female experience; and it insists that the private sphere must be treated also as a political space in which crucial power relationships are at work. My approach to Henry Handel Richardson???s fiction opens new ways to see her work as the product of a distinctive feminist consciousness.

This thesis is a feminist reading of the work of Henry Handel Richardson (1870-1946), which considers her four major novels: Maurice Guest (1908), The Getting of Wisdom (1910), The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1930), and The Young Cosima (1939). It proposes that Richardson foregrounds the work of gender ideology in her novels, and that her work is also conscious about its own fictional procedures. This thesis argues that Richardson consciously examines the ideological aspect of narrative modes, such as naturalism, the Bildungsroman, and popular romance. Moreover, it illustrates her attempts to invent narrative strategies which subvert the conventional assumptions about gender inherent in those forms. ???Gender Ideology and Narrative Form??? draws on recent theoretical approaches to narrative, ideology, subjectivity, and dialogism, to argue that Richardson makes the ideological shaping of her stories most visible through manipulations of genre, plot, narrative voice, and point of view. Aspects of ideology examined include the Victorian and late-Victorian equation of masculinity with public rationality, mind, public achievement, and genius: and, on the other hand, the association of femininity with the body, passion, and private or domestic spaces. The thesis also considers some of the values and assumptions about gender implicit in nineteenth-century scientific thinking. Henry Handel Richardson has been viewed as a conservative writer, in both aesthetic and political terms. By contrast, I suggest that she resists the moral and representational codes of the realist or naturalist form, and that her uncompromising oppositional strategy achieves a number of radical results. It exposes and criticises the masculinist bias of certain representational methods; it offers new ways of representing female experience; and it insists that the private sphere must be treated also as a political space in which crucial power relationships are at work. My approach to Henry Handel Richardson???s fiction opens new ways to see her work as the product of a distinctive feminist consciousness.