"In its original form this book was approved as a thesis for the Ph. D. degree of the University of Bristol in 1974"--Pref. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 434-441).

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The term "feminist," when applied to Wilkie Collins, implies he was concerned with rectifying the oppression of women in domestic life as well as with promoting equal rights between the sexes. This study explores Collins the "feminist" by analyzing his portrayals of women, particularly his most powerful feminine creations: his villainesses. Although this focus is somewhat limited, it allows for a detailed analysis of the development of Collins's attitudes towards powerful women from the beginning to the end of his career. It examines the relationship between Collins's developing moral attitudes and social beliefs, on the one hand, and the ideas of Victorian feminists such as Josephine Butler and feminist sympathizers such as John Stuart Mill, on the other. This interaction, while never overt, reveals the ambivalence and complexity of Collins's "feminist" attitudes. Of the five novels in this study, Antonina (1850), Basil (1852), Armadale (1866), Jezebel's Daughter (1880), and The Legacy of Cain (1889), only one was published at the zenith of Collins's career in the 1860s. Each of the villainesses in these novels, their ideas and experiences, are crucial to understanding Collins's "feminist" impulses. Looking at them as powerful women who detest domestic oppression, one becomes aware that Collins feared such powerful women. But at the same time, he found something fiercely attractive about them. One also realizes that he was never fully capable of breaking the prevailing literary conventions which dictated that wickedness be punished and virtue rewarded (The Legacy of Cain is perhaps an exception, depending on how one views Helena's feminist revolution). The reading of Collins's novels offered in this study presents a broad, eclectic approach, utilizing the tenets of a number of different theoretical approaches such as new historicism, psychoanalytic criticism, and deconstruction, as well as feminist criticism. It contextualizes Collins's novels and his "feminist" concerns within the framework of other contemporary feminist ideas and the critical responses his works received.

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A relevância das animações infantis no processo de ensinar papéis específicos, valores e ideais é amplamente reconhecida pelos estudiosos da cultura. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo central desvelar e analisar criticamente a sutil estratégia discursiva presente em alguns destes artefatos midiáticos endereçados prioritariamente às crianças, que consiste em reiterar o status de normalidade das formas de identificação por gênero hegemônicas a partir da atribuição de teor de negatividade a identidades desviantes em relação às normativas sócio-historicamente constituídas de \"masculinidade\" e \"feminilidade\". Para tanto, lançamos mão da semiótica greimasiana, de modo a analisar a presença de elementos de transgressão dos papéis de gênero concebidos como \"naturais\" nas representações dos vilões Úrsula, Jafar e Scar, das animações Disney A Pequena Sereia (1989), Aladdin (1992) e O Rei Leão (1994), respectivamente. Enfatizamos a análise de elementos presentes no nível discursivo do texto, destacadamente os figurinos dos personagens, seus códigos de gestualidade e suas conformações físicas. Em combinação com a semiótica, empregamos alguns conceitos da linha de pesquisa genericamente conhecida como Análise de Discurso, visando discutir a relação dialógica que se estabelece entre os textos constituintes do corpus de análise e os discursos políticos e sociais conflitantes, próprios dos contextos sócio-históricos dos quais os filmes emergiram. Buscamos ainda propor discussões acerca do papel que essa associação entre desvio das normas de gênero e a figura dos antagonistas desempenha no reforço da heteronormatividade e de preconceitos em relação a determinados grupos sociais, problematizando as animações enquanto instrumentos de educação moral não-formal. Concluímos que o padrão de representação dos vilões analisados, no tocante às suas performances de gênero, cumpre com a função ideológica de implicitamente avaliar negativamente as formas de ser e agir que frustram as tradicionais expectativas de \"masculinidade\" e \"feminilidade\", inequivocamente associando-as com maldade, crueldade, egoísmo e ganância. Por fim, procuramos compreender as identidades de gênero desviantes dos vilões em questão sob a luz de alguns elementos da Teoria Queer / The relevance of childrens animated films in the process of teaching specific roles, values and ideals is widely recognized by culture scholars. The present work aims to unveil and critically analyze the subtle discursive strategy present in some of these media artifacts primarily addressed to children, which consists in reiterating the normality status of hegemonic forms of gender identification by attaching negativity content to devious identities in relation to socio-historic rules of \"masculinity\" and \"femininity\". Therefore, we make use of the Greimasian semiotics approach in order to analyze the presence of transgression elements of \"natural\" conceived gender roles in the representation of the villains Ursula, Jafar and Scar, from the Disney animation movies \"The Little Mermaid\" (1989), \"Alladin\" (1992) and \"The Lion King\" (1994), respectively. We emphasize the analysis of the elements present on the text discursive level, namely the characters costumes, their body language codes and physical conformations. Together with semiotics, we use some of the concepts from the research line generically known as \"Discursive Analysis\", aiming to discuss the dialogical relation established among the \"corpus\" of analysis and the political and social conflicting speeches, proper to the socio-historic contexts from which the movies emerged. Furthermore, we aim to propose discussions over the roles that this association between deviation of gender norms and the antagonists figure play on the support of heteronormativity and pre-concepts regarding certain social groups, problematizing the animation films as non-formal education teaching tools. We conclude that the representation patterns of the studied villains, on their gender performances, comply with the ideological function of implicitly and negatively evaluate ways of being and acting which frustrate traditional expectations of \"masculinity and femininity\", unequivocally associating them to evil, cruelty, selfishness and greed. Finally, we attempt to understand the devious gender identities from the studied villains under some Queer Theory elements.

No description available.

A relevância das animações infantis no processo de ensinar papéis específicos, valores e ideais é amplamente reconhecida pelos estudiosos da cultura. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo central desvelar e analisar criticamente a sutil estratégia discursiva presente em alguns destes artefatos midiáticos endereçados prioritariamente às crianças, que consiste em reiterar o status de normalidade das formas de identificação por gênero hegemônicas a partir da atribuição de teor de negatividade a identidades desviantes em relação às normativas sócio-historicamente constituídas de \"masculinidade\" e \"feminilidade\". Para tanto, lançamos mão da semiótica greimasiana, de modo a analisar a presença de elementos de transgressão dos papéis de gênero concebidos como \"naturais\" nas representações dos vilões Úrsula, Jafar e Scar, das animações Disney A Pequena Sereia (1989), Aladdin (1992) e O Rei Leão (1994), respectivamente. Enfatizamos a análise de elementos presentes no nível discursivo do texto, destacadamente os figurinos dos personagens, seus códigos de gestualidade e suas conformações físicas. Em combinação com a semiótica, empregamos alguns conceitos da linha de pesquisa genericamente conhecida como Análise de Discurso, visando discutir a relação dialógica que se estabelece entre os textos constituintes do corpus de análise e os discursos políticos e sociais conflitantes, próprios dos contextos sócio-históricos dos quais os filmes emergiram. Buscamos ainda propor discussões acerca do papel que essa associação entre desvio das normas de gênero e a figura dos antagonistas desempenha no reforço da heteronormatividade e de preconceitos em relação a determinados grupos sociais, problematizando as animações enquanto instrumentos de educação moral não-formal. Concluímos que o padrão de representação dos vilões analisados, no tocante às suas performances de gênero, cumpre com a função ideológica de implicitamente avaliar negativamente as formas de ser e agir que frustram as tradicionais expectativas de \"masculinidade\" e \"feminilidade\", inequivocamente associando-as com maldade, crueldade, egoísmo e ganância. Por fim, procuramos compreender as identidades de gênero desviantes dos vilões em questão sob a luz de alguns elementos da Teoria Queer / The relevance of childrens animated films in the process of teaching specific roles, values and ideals is widely recognized by culture scholars. The present work aims to unveil and critically analyze the subtle discursive strategy present in some of these media artifacts primarily addressed to children, which consists in reiterating the normality status of hegemonic forms of gender identification by attaching negativity content to devious identities in relation to socio-historic rules of \"masculinity\" and \"femininity\". Therefore, we make use of the Greimasian semiotics approach in order to analyze the presence of transgression elements of \"natural\" conceived gender roles in the representation of the villains Ursula, Jafar and Scar, from the Disney animation movies \"The Little Mermaid\" (1989), \"Alladin\" (1992) and \"The Lion King\" (1994), respectively. We emphasize the analysis of the elements present on the text discursive level, namely the characters costumes, their body language codes and physical conformations. Together with semiotics, we use some of the concepts from the research line generically known as \"Discursive Analysis\", aiming to discuss the dialogical relation established among the \"corpus\" of analysis and the political and social conflicting speeches, proper to the socio-historic contexts from which the movies emerged. Furthermore, we aim to propose discussions over the roles that this association between deviation of gender norms and the antagonists figure play on the support of heteronormativity and pre-concepts regarding certain social groups, problematizing the animation films as non-formal education teaching tools. We conclude that the representation patterns of the studied villains, on their gender performances, comply with the ideological function of implicitly and negatively evaluate ways of being and acting which frustrate traditional expectations of \"masculinity and femininity\", unequivocally associating them to evil, cruelty, selfishness and greed. Finally, we attempt to understand the devious gender identities from the studied villains under some Queer Theory elements.

The aim of this thesis was to deepen our understanding of how audiences represent male and female dark fictional characters (DFCs) by exploring how Harry Potter fans discuss four of these characters on Reddit. Drawing on affective disposition theory as a guiding framework as well as previous investigations of gender representation and online fan cultures, I collected and analyzed 117 posts (containing 9,693 comments) about four DFCs from the Harry Potter franchise. I chose two male DFCs (Lord Voldemort and Severus Snape) and two female ones (Bellatrix Lestrange and Dolores Umbridge) for my investigation. The data were analyzed using a productive hermeneutics approach. Fans’ representation of these characters intersected with the extent which the characters’ fictionality was salient, how they were visualized, the online culture of Reddit, and fans’ presumed identification with these characters. Bellatrix was defined by her portrayal by Helena Bonham Carter in the films and her combination of valuable masculine and feminine traits. Moreover, she was a figure of pure fantasy, which allowed fans to love her depravity. Umbridge and Snape, by contrast, were hated for intruding into the fantasy that Harry Potter offered, reminding fans of bullying and overly controlling teachers. Snape, however, was redeemed by his complexity and embodiment of geek masculinity. Voldemort was valued for his intellect and power but also criticized as a peer failing to rise to his intellectual potential; fans at turns identified with and undercut him through humor. Taken together, the results indicate a need to qualitatively explore how DFCs are received by audiences, as it can add further nuance to our understanding of how morality and gender influence media consumption.

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El siguiente trabajo de investigación tiene como objetivo analizar el tratamiento de la sexualidad de las villanas y antiheroínas en los cómics de DC, Marvel e Image Comics, entre los años 2017 y 2020. En consecuencia, la hipótesis sostiene que el movimiento #MeToo, viralizado en el 2017, ha generado un cambio en la representación gráfica de las mujeres en los cómics de superhéroes. Por comprobarla, se ha realizado un análisis de contenido de veinticuatro números en total, seleccionando un personaje por editorial: Poison Ivy, Emma Frost y Jessica Priest, respectivamente. Se tomaron en consideración herramientas del lenguaje visual y su valor dentro del contexto narrativo. Igualmente, se realizaron entrevistas a una ilustradora de cómics, así como una especialista en cómics y estudios de género. Los resultados evidencian que Marvel presenta un tratamiento adecuado de Emma Frost, mientras que DC exhibe un diseño de personaje inconsistente con respecto a Poison Ivy. Por otro lado, la representación de Jessica Priest, por parte de Image Comics, muestra mayor disonancia en cuanto a decisiones artísticas y valor narrativo. Asimismo, la única editorial en la que se observa la inclusión de artistas mujeres en relación a estos personajes es DC, aunque aún no logran la paridad. Es posible concluir que el tratamiento de las villanas y antiheroínas no ha cambiado significativamente desde la aparición del movimiento #MeToo. Esto se debe a que la mirada masculina continúa viéndose reflejada en la libertad artística de las casas independientes y a la falta de la perspectiva femenina. / The following research aims to analyze the treatment of the sexuality of female villains and antiheroines in DC, Marvel and Image Comics between 2017 and 2020. Consequently, the study’s hypothesis holds that the #MeToo movement, that grew in popularity in 2017, has sparked a change in the graphic representation of women in superhero comics. Thus, twenty-four issues were examined using a content analysis method, selecting a character per publisher: Poison Ivy, Emma Frost and Jessica Priest, respectively. Visual language tools and their value within the narrative were considered in the investigation. Similarly, interviews were conducted with a comic illustrator and a specialist in comics and gender studies. The results show that Marvel presents an adequate treatment of Emma Frost, while DC exhibits an inconsistent character design when it comes to Poison Ivy. On the other hand, Image Comics’ handling of Jessica Priest shows greater dissonance in terms of artistic decisions and their narrative value. Likewise, the only editorial in which the inclusion of female artists is observed is DC Comics, although they have yet to achieve equality in job opportunities. In conclusion, the treatment of female villains and antiheroines hasn’t changed significantly since #MeToo went viral. This is evidenced in the way the male gaze continues to be reflected in the artistic choices of independent houses and also, in the lack of a female perspective in the superhero genre. / Trabajo de investigación