Margaret Mitchell’s one and only novel, Gone with the Wind, was an instant hit when it waspublished in 1936. The novel is a romantic tragedy that takes place in a very traditional society inthe state of Georgia in the United States before, during, and after the Civil War. Keeping the oldtraditions is one of the priorities for the Southerners, particularly the ones that have to do withgender roles. However, the war brings changes of which most prominent families highlydisapprove. A few seize the opportunities during Reconstruction, while most of them remain inpoverty in order to keep the old traditions. My essay will focus on the four main characters in thenovel, Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler, Ashley Wilkes, and Melanie Hamilton. Rhett represents theNew South and is attracted to Scarlett who is a mixture of the old and the new. She is madly in lovewith Ashley, who represents the Old South. Ashley is attracted to Scarlett but choses to marryMelanie, who is more like him. The purpose of this essay is to look at gender roles and social norms in the novel, notjust in relation to individuals but also how society as a whole treats those who refuse to follow theunwritten rules. How does this affect the lives and relationships of the four main characters? Whatsocial norms define the society these characters live in, and what are their individual attitudes tothese norms? Southern society is secure as long as the established social norms are not challenged,and these include traditional gender roles. The characters in Gone with the Wind are heavilyinfluenced by gender roles and social norms, and some to such an extent that their conduct andreputations can matter more than the actual person. It is possible to rebel against the system only ifone has the self-sufficiency and financial means to do so, as is the case with Scarlett and Rhett.They break away from the traditional gender norms, but their freedom has serious consequences.Ashley Wilkes, on the other hand, has the financial means to succeed but he is so affected by hisrole as a perfect Southern gentleman that he dares not apply new ideas in his life in order to survivefinancially, and this makes him feel unfulfilled. His wife Melanie Hamilton fulfills her role as agreat lady, which means she is socially and financially dependent on her husband. In analyzing theconstraints and consequences of gender roles, I will make use of feminist theory, with particularfocus on Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of the Other and her definition of narcissism, and Hilary M.Lips’ explanation of social-cultural theories and prescriptive gender stereotypes. In Gone with theWind, traditional gender roles, like the old South, are imaginative, unattainable and ultimatelydestructive. The most conventional characters cannot fully attain or embody the gender roles, whilethe most non-conformist characters nevertheless long for them, and everyone suffers for it.

E.L. Doctorow implements ideas of intertextuality and metafiction in his 2007 novel, The March, which is most notably apparent through its resemblance to the 1939 film, Gone with the Wind. Using Michel de Certeau's theory of spatial stories and Linda Hutcheon's of historiographic metafiction, this thesis discusses the layering of Doctorow's The March from the film seen in the character of Pearl from the novel and Scarlett from the film and Selznick's version of the burning of Atlanta and Doctorow's burning of Columbia.

Denna autoetnografiska studie handlar om genuskonstruktion i PC-spel. Studien bedrivs med feministisk ansats och syftet var att undersöka handlingsutrymmet gällande performativa och subversiva genushandlingar i fyra olika spel. Frågeställningen för denna studie är: Hur uttrycker spelare och spelkaraktärer traditionella och subversiva genushandlingar i relation till den förprogrammerade koden i spel? Fyra spel från olika genrer med enbart kvinnliga protagonister valdes ut; Tomb Raider, Child of Light, Life is Strange och Gone Home. Dessa spel analyserades med hjälp av Butlers teorier gällande genuskonstruktion, och Malabys teorier om spel som en performativ process. Tidigare forskning tar upp kvinnors underrepresentation i spel, spelsexismens utveckling, kvinnliga karaktärers utveckling och transgressive play i online-världen. Under analysen återberättades spelen och forskarens subjektiva upplevelse av dem för att sedan kunna analyseras. De faktorer som togs under beaktning vid analysen var; genusperformativa, subversiva genushandlingar och den heterosexuella matrisen. Resultatet visade att det fanns möjlighet till både genusperformativa och subversiva genushandlingar, samt att man antingen kunde understryka eller ifrågasätta den heterosexuella matrisen, vilket vi visar med hjälp av utvalda delar från spelen. Slutsatsen vi ankommer till är att trots att vi som spelare tillåts att utföra både performativa och subversiva genushandlingar begränsas vi av spelets kodning, och vissa genusuttryck är ofrånkomliga och utförs oberoende av spelaren. I diskussionen talar vi om sexism i spel på en mer allmän nivå, att homosexualitet i någon form förekommer i ¾ av vårt urval vilken kan vara ett bevis på mångfald eller en slump. Vi bemöter också våra egna fördomar gällande urvalet. Som vidare forskning föreslår vi liknande studier men med andra metoder än den autoetnografiska. Vi anser att denna studies samhällsrelevans ligger i hur vi belyser hur spel, som en växande medieform, både begränsar och möjliggör alternativa förståelser för genus. PC-spel är, liksom övrig media, inte immuna mot att reflektera skadliga normer som sexism och behöver därför ges tillbörlig akademisk tyngd.

Objective: The study examined alcohol consumption among college women ages 18 to 24. It helped to answer who, when, what, why and how much college women drink. It also examined how "girls gone wild" kinds of portrayals influence college women in excessive drinking and "outrageous" behaviors. Theory: A combination of drench hypothesis (Greenberg, 1988) and social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2001) was used as the guiding framework to understand the dynamic relationship of environmental and personal factors in learning and imitating behaviors seen in the media. Method: Two online studies were conducted. The first study was a structured interview conducted with 38 women and 29 men. Study 2 was a survey. A total of 449 college women took part in the survey. Some men (N=174) also took part in the study to provide men's opinions and some perspective on women who drink and behave outrageously. Results: The survey results show that 42% (N=169) of college women in the sample engage in heavy episodic drinking every weekend at house parties. As a result, some have gotten into fights, missed classes, experienced hangovers and vomiting, and have driven drunk. Nearly 14% (N=55) of the women in the study reported being sexually assaulted while they were drunk. In addition, the findings of the study shows that "girls gone wild" kinds of portrayals are perceived in different ways by different college women. Most college women view the behaviors as negative. However, some college women do evaluate the portrayals as positive. These women are likely to engage in similar outrageous behaviors. The "girls gone wild" kinds of portrayals are less likely to influence alcohol consumption among college women. A multiple regression analysis showed that outrageous behavior correlated with self-control, sexual outcome expected, positive evaluation of the "girls gone wild" portrayals and sensation seeking tendencies. Drinking on the other hand correlated only with sensation seeking tendencies and how much value was placed by the respondents on being social. The findings of the study also show that men assess drunken women as vulnerable and "easy." Conclusion: Interventions that include strategies for better self-regulation and explaining of potential negative outcomes are likely to be effective in drinking and drinking-related behaviors. Media literacy programs might help in critical evaluation of media content and thus reduce its negative influence. / Mass Media and Communication

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The aim of this essay is to investigate the meaning and importance of the female friendship within Ellen Moers tradition and theory regarding the female gothic. In this essay, I argue that the female friendship has played an important role in the portrayal of the Gothic fiction as socially critical of women’s position in the society, mainly by examining the two works Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. The essay is also interested in how the female gothic has developed over time and whether the notion can be applied while analysing more contemporary gothic, and thus, considers the works’ different time periods.

Published in 1936, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind achieved massive literary success before being adapted into a motion picture of the same name in 1939. The novel and film have amassed numerous accolades, inspired frequent reissues, and sustained mass popularity. This dissertation analyzes evidence of audience reception in order to assess the effects of Gone with the Wind's version of Lost Cause collective memory on the construction of the Old South, Civil War, and Lost Cause in the American imagination from 1936 to 2016. By utilizing the concept of prosthetic memory in conjunction with older, still-existing forms of collective cultural memory, Gone with the Wind is framed as a newly theorized mass cultural phenomenon that perpetuates Lost Cause historical narratives by reaching those who not only identify closely with it, but also by informing what nonidentifying consumers seeking historical authenticity think about the Old South and Civil War. In so doing, this dissertation argues that Gone with the Wind is both an artifact of the Lost Cause collective memory that it, more than anything else, legitimized in the twentieth century and a multi-faceted site where memory of the South and Civil War is still created. My research is grounded in the field of memory studies, in particular the work of Pierre Nora, Eric Hobsbawn, Andreas Huyssen, Michael Kammen, and Alison Landsberg. In chapter one, I track the reception of Gone with the Wind among white American audiences and define the phenomenon as rooted in Benedict Anderson's conception of the nation. I further argue that Gone with the Wind's Lost Causism provided white national subjects with a collective memory of slavery and the Civil War that made sense of continuing racial tensions during Jim Crow and justified white resistance to African American equality. Gone with the Wind, in other words, reconciled the lingering ideological divisions between white northerners and southerners who then were more concerned with protecting white supremacy. In chapter two and three, I analyze Gone with the Wind's continuing popularity throughout the twentieth century and its significant influence on other sites of national memory. Chapter four uses contemporary user reviews of Gone with the Wind DVD and Blu-ray collector's editions to reveal that the phenomenon remains popular. Throughout this study I analyze the history of black resistance to the Gone with the Wind phenomenon. For African Americans, Gone with the Wind's Lost Causism has always been understood as justification for racism, imbuing the white national conscious with a mythological history of slavery and black inferiority. As I argue, black protestors to Gone with the Wind were correct, as the phenomenon has always resonated most during moments of increased racial tension such as during the civil rights era and following the Charleston Church Massacre in 2015. / Ph. D.