<p>This dissertation discusses how reputation, virginity and honour are made topical in the stories of the lives of Arab and Kurdish women and connected with understandings of culture and religion. The dissertation is composed of five articles, which contain the principal analysis, and five chapters that discuss the project as a whole; the development of the main topics, and choices concerning methodological, ethical and theoretical approaches. </p><p>The empirical material of the dissertation consists of interviews with ten Arab and Kurdish women in Sweden, and seven legal cases of honor related violence. The interview material is analysed as a whole – focusing on the importance of reputation in women’s creation of identity, and how this may be related to cultural conceptions of divided femininity (virgin-whore) and honour (article 4). I also conduct an in-depth analysis of one interview, where meaning is created through a story, in which liberty is contrasted with constraint (article 3). In the analysis of the legal cases, I discuss the arguments of verdicts concerning honour related violence, and criticise the courts’ understanding of crimes as demarcated acts (articles 1 & 5). I also analyse the (violent) stories of the actual lives of women found in the legal cases in their contexts (articles 2 & 5).</p><p>Throughout the dissertation, I aim at a constructivist attempt that sees culture and gender as creative frames of interpretation. This attempt is connected with a hermeneutic perspective, which sees a statement or an act as comprehensible only when interpreted in its context (e.g. in a cultural context of honour). It is also connected with a feminist understanding of men’s violence against women, which relates the meaning of an act of violence to culturally accepted forms of control and cultural conceptions of gender.</p><p>In the analysis of the empirical material, I show how culture is created as contrast in the lives of women. ’Arab/Kurdish’ and ’Swedish’ appear as exclusive categories, and are connected with cultural conceptions of divided femininity and honour. Within these categories, a woman is either a virgin or a whore, and a woman that has been branded as a whore will be stained forever. Men’s honour will not be restored until she is extinguished. When these cultural conceptions are used in the life of a woman who lives with these highly normative demands, they may be crucial and signify experiences of violence. A woman with bad reputation may be defined as a ”Swedish whore” be her male relatives, contrasted with being an ”Arab/Kurdish virgin”. The honour of these men will not be restored until she is excluded from the family or dies: to be a virgin or a whore may be a life-and-death matter.</p>

This dissertation discusses how reputation, virginity and honour are made topical in the stories of the lives of Arab and Kurdish women and connected with understandings of culture and religion. The dissertation is composed of five articles, which contain the principal analysis, and five chapters that discuss the project as a whole; the development of the main topics, and choices concerning methodological, ethical and theoretical approaches. The empirical material of the dissertation consists of interviews with ten Arab and Kurdish women in Sweden, and seven legal cases of honor related violence. The interview material is analysed as a whole – focusing on the importance of reputation in women’s creation of identity, and how this may be related to cultural conceptions of divided femininity (virgin-whore) and honour (article 4). I also conduct an in-depth analysis of one interview, where meaning is created through a story, in which liberty is contrasted with constraint (article 3). In the analysis of the legal cases, I discuss the arguments of verdicts concerning honour related violence, and criticise the courts’ understanding of crimes as demarcated acts (articles 1 &amp; 5). I also analyse the (violent) stories of the actual lives of women found in the legal cases in their contexts (articles 2 &amp; 5). Throughout the dissertation, I aim at a constructivist attempt that sees culture and gender as creative frames of interpretation. This attempt is connected with a hermeneutic perspective, which sees a statement or an act as comprehensible only when interpreted in its context (e.g. in a cultural context of honour). It is also connected with a feminist understanding of men’s violence against women, which relates the meaning of an act of violence to culturally accepted forms of control and cultural conceptions of gender. In the analysis of the empirical material, I show how culture is created as contrast in the lives of women. ’Arab/Kurdish’ and ’Swedish’ appear as exclusive categories, and are connected with cultural conceptions of divided femininity and honour. Within these categories, a woman is either a virgin or a whore, and a woman that has been branded as a whore will be stained forever. Men’s honour will not be restored until she is extinguished. When these cultural conceptions are used in the life of a woman who lives with these highly normative demands, they may be crucial and signify experiences of violence. A woman with bad reputation may be defined as a ”Swedish whore” be her male relatives, contrasted with being an ”Arab/Kurdish virgin”. The honour of these men will not be restored until she is excluded from the family or dies: to be a virgin or a whore may be a life-and-death matter.

This paper analyses the characters Mina and Lucy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, showing how they are juxtaposed in terms of femininity. By using feminist criticism and the concepts of the angel in the house, monstrous femininity, and the virgin/whore dichotomy, this paper explores how Mina represents the self-sacrificing, supportive, and wifely angel in the house, while Lucy represents the sexual, disobedient, and powerful monstrous female. This is analyzed through Mina’s interactions with the men, as well as through her view on femininity, and through Lucy’s interactions with the men and with Mina. This paper then explores how these differing gender roles lead to different outcomes for the two women. Mina is excluded but is able to be purified from vampirism while still alive. In contrast, Lucy, being a threat to British Victorian femininity, has to be killed and mutilated before her memory can be purified. How well the women fit into the male community’s view of the Victorian female ideal, with Mina fitting it the best, is found to be the reason for why Lucy suffers a worse fate than Mina.

This study explores the construction of the Gothic female body in three films by the director Tim Burton, specifically Batman Returns (1992), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Dark Shadows (2012). Through a deployment of Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection, the intention is to indicate the degree to which Burton crafts his leading female characters as abject Others and embodiments of Barbara Creed’s ‘monstrous-feminine’. In this Gothic portrayal, the director consistently draws on the essentialised stereotypes of Woman as either ‘virgin’ or ‘whore’ as he shapes his Gothic heroines and femmes fatales. While a gendered duality is established, this is destabilised to an extent, as Burton permits his female characters varying degrees of agency as they acquire monstrous traits. This construction of Woman as monster, this study will show, is founded on a certain fear of femaleness, so reinstating the ideology of Woman as Other. / English Studies / M.A. (English Studies)

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