This thesis explores the dynamics of intersubjectivity and relationality in a corpus of contemporary literature by twelve Indigenous women writers in order to trace modes of subject-formation and communication along four main axes: violence, care, language, and memory. Each chapter establishes a comparative discussion across the Tasman Sea between Indigenous texts and world theory, the local and the global, self and community. The texts range from 1984 to 2011 to cover a period of growth in publishing and international recognition of Indigenous writing. Chapter 1 examines instances of colonial oppression in the primary corpus and links them with manifestations of violence on institutional, familial, epistemic, and literary levels in Aboriginal authors Melissa Lucashenko and Tara June Winch’s debut novels Steam Pigs (1997) and Swallow the Air (2006). They address the cycle of violence and the archetypal motif of return to bring to light the life of urban Aboriginal women whose ancestral land has been lost and whose home is the western, modern Australian city. Maori short story writer Alice Tawhai’s collections Festival of Miracles (2005), Luminous (2007), and Dark Jelly (2011), on the other hand, deny the characters and reader closure, and establish an atmosphere characterised by a lack of hope and the absence of any political or personal will to effect change. Chapter 2 explores caring relationships between characters displaying symptoms that may be ascribed to various forms of intellectual and mental disability, and the relatives who look after them. I situate the texts within a postcolonial disability framework and address the figure of the informal carer in relation to her “caree.” Patricia Grace’s short story “Eben,” from her collection Small Holes in the Silence (2006), tells the life of a man with physical and intellectual disability from birth (the eponymous Eben) and his relationship with his adoptive mother Pani. The main character of Lisa Cherrington’s novel The People-Faces (2004) is a young Maori woman called Nikki whose brother Joshua is in and out of psychiatric facilities. Finally, the central characters of Vivienne Cleven’s novel Her Sister’s Eye (2002) display a wide range of congenital and acquired cognitive impairments, allowing the author to explore how the compounded trauma of racism and sexism participates in (and is influenced by) mental disability. Chapter 3 examines the materiality and corporeality of language to reveal its role in the formation of (inter)subjectivity. I argue that the use of language in Aboriginal and Maori women’s writing is anchored in the racialised, sexualised bodies of Indigenous women, as well as the locale of their ancestral land. The relationship between language, body, and country in Keri Hulme’s the bone people (1984) and Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (2006) are analysed in relation to orality, gesture, and mapping in order to reveal their role in the formation of Indigenous selfhood. Chapter 4 explores how the reflexive practice of life-writing (including fictional auto/biography) participates in the decolonisation of the Indigenous self and community, as well as the process of individual survival and cultural survivance, through the selective remembering and forgetting of traumatic histories. Sally Morgan’s Aboriginal life-writing narrative My Place (1987), Terri Janke’s Torres Strait Islander novel Butterfly Song (2005), as well as Paula Morris and Kelly Ana Morey’s Maori texts Rangatira (2011) and Bloom (2003) address these issues in various forms. Through the interactions between memory and memoirs, I bring to light the literary processes of decolonisation of the writing/written self in the settler countries of Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. This study intends to raise the profile of the authors mentioned above and to encourage the public and scholarly community to pay attention and respect to Indigenous women’s writing. One of the ambitions of this thesis is also to expose the limits and correct the shortcomings of western, postcolonial, and gender theory in relation to Indigenous women writers and the Fourth World.

This thesis explores how writers mobilise what I call the “social-scientific imagination” to think through the welfare state during its “golden age.” Given the ongoing rollback of welfare programmes in Britain and elsewhere, the study offers timely insight into the history of the welfare state and its possible future. To that end, the chapters concentrate on postwar writers’ indirect and mediated representations of the welfare state in the form of a “social-scientific imagination” manifested in both cultural ideology and literary style. The term “social-scientific imagination” describes these writers’ engagements with the language and technique of social scientific disciplines like sociology, psychiatry, criminology, sexology and the science of city planning in their fiction, and how they imagine these disciplines as shaping the construction and maintenance of the British “welfare state” and its institutions. The texts I explore here capture the tension between care and control, between freedom and security, that is fundamental to the operation of social welfare programmes and that complicates women’s orientation to the welfare state; it is a relationship characterised by ambivalence, even though, as Jane Lewis has argued, women during the war and since perceived they would be – and have been – the welfare state’s primary beneficiaries. This, then, is the central problem examined in this thesis: that the novels represent welfare policies as integral to women’s security at the same time as they point up their coercive tendencies.

Where We Belong: Spatial Imagining in American Women’s Life Narratives, 1859-1912, studies three marginalized and disadvantaged American women’s self-life narratives during a transitional period in American history. In this dissertation, I am taking an interdisciplinary approach. Where We Belong borrows from social geography, new materialism, and autobiography studies in order to complicate critical discussions of women’s space and place in nineteenth-century women’s self-life narratives. Each chapter of Where We Belong presents a case study with the goal to provide a broader understanding of women’s strategies of belonging due to and despite their spatial exclusions. The overarching emphasis in each chapter remains on the female body’s spatial movement. Exploring Eliza Potter’s A Hairdresser’s Experience in High Life (1859), Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes; Or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (1868), and Mary Antin’s The Promised Land (1912), I claim that material spaces and these women’s corporeal bodies are inseparable. The three cases I present in this project exemplify how marginal women develop strategies of belonging in spaces from which they have been excluded. These women demonstrate ways of belonging (where they are assumed not to) enacted by self-life narratives. Belonging is not a passive way of being: it is activism that disrupts strict categories and definitions, such as blackness, in American literary scholarship. It contains paradoxes of acquiescence and self-declaration.

This thesis studies the progressive nature of women’s writing and the various factors that helped and hindered the successful publication of women’s written works in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The thesis interrogates culturally encoded definitions of the term “success” in relation to the status of these women writers. In a time when success meant, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “attainment of wealth or position”, women could never achieve a level of success equal to the male elite. The dichotomous worldview, in which women were excluded from almost all active participation in the public sphere, led to a literary protest by women. However, the male-privileged binary system is seen critically to affect women’s literary success. Hence, a redefinition of success will specifically refer to the literary experience of these women writers and a long-lasting recognition of this experience in the twentieth century. An examination of literary techniques used in key works from Catherine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen suggests that there was a critical double standard with which women writers were constantly faced. The literary techniques, used by the earlier writers, fail in overcoming this critical double standard because of their emphasis on revolution. However, the last two women writers become literary successes (according to my reinterpretation of the term) because of their particular emphasis on amelioration rather than revolution. The conclusion of the thesis suggests that despite the “unsuccessful” literary attempts by the first three women authors, there is an overall positive progression in women’s journey toward literary success. Described as the ‘generational effect’, this becomes the fundamental point of the study, because together these women represent a combined movement which challenges a system of patriarchal tradition, encouraging women to continue to push the gender relations’ boundaries in order to be seen as individual, successful writers.

Submitted by Jordan (jordanbiblio@gmail.com) on 2017-02-13T15:59:32Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISS_2015_Natália Salomé de Souza.pdf: 3085936 bytes, checksum: 7977f55038ff9f4443c4b9cd5aa5c33e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Jordan (jordanbiblio@gmail.com) on 2017-02-13T15:59:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DISS_2015_Natália Salomé de Souza.pdf: 3085936 bytes, checksum: 7977f55038ff9f4443c4b9cd5aa5c33e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-02-13T15:59:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISS_2015_Natália Salomé de Souza.pdf: 3085936 bytes, checksum: 7977f55038ff9f4443c4b9cd5aa5c33e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-12-07 / CAPES / Na busca de uma escrita que falasse do corpo feminino pela própria mulher, encontrei a lírica de Maria Teresa Horta. Em seus poemas, a eu-lírica dá voz a um corpo, de forma a desamarrá-lo de um jugo patriarcal. Há, portanto, uma voz e uma escrita feminina que partem de uma imanência, analisadas, a princípio, a partir de um movimento interior que nos responderá perguntas essenciais, tais como: o que torna esta escrita verdadeiramente feminina? Em quais aspectos ela diverge de uma escrita masculina? Esta escrita é uma manifestação biológica ou seu conceito não se funda nesta perspectiva? Na concepção de Hélène Cixous e Luce Irigaray, teóricas do feminismo da diferença, há um ser mulher que foi constantemente apagado pela lei do pai e do logos, portanto a escrita e a fala feminina precisariam subverter o falogocentrismo e deixarem-se fluir através do próprio corpo feminino. Seria a retomada da linguagem semiótica de Kristeva, essencialmente feminina e circular, que não se prende na denominação e estaticidade do nome. Numa linguagem poética e erótica, encontramos esta fala do corpo que em si ultrapassa uma ordem imposta à sociedade, e isto nos leva ao segundo movimento – um movimento exterior. As implicações de uma retomada do corpo feminino pelas mulheres fora da soberania patriarcal levariam a uma mudança completa da sociedade, em que homens e mulheres não ocupariam espaços verticais; antes disso, suas posições sociais dar-se-iam num eixo horizontal em que não haveria hierarquia, logo as mulheres não seriam subalternas aos homens e vice-versa. Haveria respeito mútuo dentro da diferença e politicamente a diferença de gênero não seria motivo de discriminação e subalternidade. A poesia representa, portanto, a possibilidade de subversão da ordem patriarcal, da ordem do falo, desde que, quando produzida por mulheres, seja uma escrita do corpo feminino, uma escrita feminina que se diz a partir da voz de uma eu-lírica. Da mesma forma que do devir mulher surge uma lírica feminina, emerge também a ginocrítica – teoria literária que marca uma tradição feminina nos estudos da literatura que rejeita a crítica tradicional. / In the search for writings by women that talked about the female body I found Maria Teresa Horta’s lyric. In her poems, the eu-lírica gives voice to a body as a way to untie it from the patriarchal domain. Thus, there is a woman’s voice and a woman’s writing that derive from an immanence. They are analyzed, at first, from an internal movement that will answer some essential questions, such as: what makes this writing truly feminine? In what aspects is it different from a masculine one? Is it a biological manifestation or is this concept not founded in such perspective? According to the ideas of Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray, theoreticians of the difference feminism, there is a ‘woman being’ that has constantly been erased by the “father”’s and the logos’s laws, therefore women’s writing and speech need to subvert phallogocentrism and let themselves flow through female body. It would be the return of the semiotic language of Kristeva, essentially feminine and circular, which is not tied to the denomination and immobility of the name. In a poetic and erotic language, we find this speech of the body that surpasses an imposed social order, thus leading us to a second movement – an external one. The implications of a recovery of the female body by women outside the patriarchal sovereign would lead to a complete change in society, in which men and women would not occupy vertical spaces; on the contrary, their social positions would be established in a horizontal axis with no hierarchy, so women would not be subordinated to men and vice-versa. There would be mutual respect inside the difference. Politically, gender difference would not be a reason for discrimination and subordination. Hence, poetry represents the possibility of subversion of the patriarchal order from the phallus, as long as, when produced by women, it is the writing of a female body, a woman’s writing that voices the eu-lírica. From the becoming of a woman, women’s lyrics is born. Similarly, there comes gynocritics– a literary theory that marks a women’s tradition in the literary studies that rejects traditional criticism.

La littérature populaire est considérée comme le genre le plus lu en France et en Iran. Pirzâd et Gavalda font parties des écrivaines contemporaines les plus lues et les plus traduites. Ces deux auteures appartiennent à deux cultures et deux mondes tout à fait différents, néanmoins, elles ont réussi à satisfaire leur public étranger. Pirzâd et Gavalda, comme beaucoup d’autres écrivains contemporains, placent le personnage au cœur de leur intérêt romanesque. Par l’attribution de noms propres mimétiques, l’emploi d’un espace fictionnel familier, ainsi que la mise en scène de l’intériorité des personnages, de leurs dilemmes et de leurs sentiments, elles créent des personnages vraisemblables et transparents. Les protagonistes de leurs romans sont majoritairement des femmes. Leurs statuts, leurs caractéristiques, leurs rôles, ainsi que leurs mondes intérieurs sont développés et approfondis au cours de l’histoire, dans un style simple et souvent dialogique. Les personnages comme représentants de l’individu du monde moderne s’imposent comme personne et deviennent l’élément primordial des écrits de Pirzâd et Gavalda. L’ambition de ces deux romancières est également de brosser la réalité sociale de leur temps. Bien qu’elles écrivent dans le contexte de deux conditions sociales et culturelles différentes, les deux auteures représentent les mêmes préoccupations dans leurs écrits ; les relations humaines, la femme et sa situation dans la société moderne et la confrontation de l’homme et de la femme constituent l’essence de leurs récits. La figure féminine contemporaine que Pirzâd et Gavalda tentent de représenter chez le lecteur n’est pas toujours conforme aux images stéréotypées de la femme orientale ou occidentale. Les hommes aussi prennent une dimension hors du commun. Le lecteur des œuvres de Pirzâd et Gavalda, tantôt surpris, tantôt satisfait, est constamment poussé à renouveler l’image de la femme, ainsi que celle de l’homme. / Popular literature is considered to be the most widely read genre in France and Iran. Pirzad and Gavalda are among the most read and translated contemporary writers. These authors belong to two very different worlds and cultures yet they managed to satisfy their foreign readers. Pirzad and Gavalda, like many other contemporary writers, place the character at the center of interests of their stories. They stage characters that are probable and representative of each individual of the society where they live. The protagonists of their novels are mostly women. Their status, characteristics and roles, as well as their inner worlds are developed and deepened over the course of history, in a simple and often dialogical style. The character is highlighted and the novel exists only through him. The ambition of these two novelists is also to give an outline of the social reality of their time. Although they write in the context of two different social and cultural conditions, the two authors represent the same concerns in their writings. Human relations, the woman and her situation in modern society and confrontation of man and woman constitute the essence of their stories. The contemporary feminine figure that Pirzad et Gavalda try to portray in the reader does not always conform to the stereotypical images of Eastern or Western women. Men also take on extraordinary dimension. The reader, sometimes surprised, sometimes satisfied, is constantly urged to renew the image of the woman.

Twentieth-century American literature is filled with new images of motherhood. Long gone is the idealism of motherhood that flourished during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in life and in writing. Long gone are the mother help books and guides on training mothers. The twentieth-century fiction writer ushers in new examples of motherhood described in novels that critique the bad mother and turn a critical eye towards the role of women and motherhood. This study examines the trauma surrounding twentieth-century motherhood and surrogacy; in particular, how abandonment, rape, incest, and negation often results in surrogacy; and how selected authors create characters who as mothers fail to protect their children, particularly their daughters. This study explores whether the failure is a result of social-economic or physiological circumstances that make mothering and motherlove impossible or a rejection of the ideal mother seldom realized by contemporary women, or whether the novelists have rewritten the notion of the mother’s help books by their fragmented representations of motherhood. Has motherhood become a rejection of self-potential? The study will critique mother-daughter relationships in four late twentieth-century American novels in their complex presentations of motherhood and surrogacy: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), Kaye Gibbons’s Ellen Foster (1990), Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) and Sapphire’s Push (1997). Appropriated terminology from other disciplines illustrates the prevalence of surrogacy and protection in the subject novels. The use of surrogate will refer to those who come forward to provide the role of mothering and protection.

The present dissertation examines constructions of femininity in the lyrical and didactical works of Elisabeth von Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1510-1558). It shows how this widow ruler and promoter of the reformation transforms and re-interprets contemporary ideas about women and gender according to her own personal interests, and how gender roles are thus negotiated in her texts. In accordance with current theoretical ideas about subjectivity, discourse, and gender, it is shown among other things how Elisabeth von Braunschweig-Lüneburg uses established genres to further her own personal agenda, and how she manipulates contemporary notions of gender in order to create authority for herself as a political force, as an upholder of Christian virtues, and, most importantly, as a writer. The analysis is based on an understanding of subjectivity as dialogical – as a negotiation with the surrounding culture – and of gender as socially constructed. Using the theories presented by Judith Butler and Joan Wallach Scott as a basis, the study shows how Elisabeth works within the various discourses available to her in order to describe established gender roles in a fashion that challenges prevailing notions of femininity and a woman’s place in society. The study focuses on a number of aspects of femininity important in Elisabeth’s texts as well as in the cultural context in which they were written. The textual construction of woman as writer, ruler, preacher, wife, mother, and widow is examined. The dissertation presents not previously acknowledged insights into the ambivalence coloring Elisabeth’s descriptions of women and femininity.

La thèse analyse l’évolution de l’écriture féminine en Sicile aux XIXe et XXe siècles, sur la base d’un corpus de 24 romans de femmes écrivains : Cecilia Stazzone, Rosina Muzio Salvo, Elvira Mancuso, Angelina Damiani Lanza, Adelaide Bernardini Capuana, Maria Messina et Goliarda Sapienza. Dans la première partie, selon une approche socio-littéraire et en utilisant des inédits ou des textes rares mis au jour, nous avons illustré cette production dans l’histoire littéraire et dans la réception (à l’époque et contemporaine), étant donné certains oublis puis redécouvertes ultérieures, grâce surtout à l’activité éditoriale de Leonardo Sciascia (Mancuso et Messina), à la connaissance du rosminien Giuseppe Pellegrino (Lanza) et au succès des traductions françaises (Sapienza). Dans la deuxième partie, nous avons indiqué comment ces femmes écrivains ont différemment représenté la condition féminine de leur époque, en utilisant pendant le Romantisme des modèles romanesques masculins, en développant pendant le Décadentisme des structures et styles personnels qui corrodaient la langue et les schémas constitués, et enfin en créant des formes résolument autres à l’époque contemporaine. Ce sont surtout les romancières de l’époque contemporaine qui ont contribué significativement au développement du genre romanesque au féminin, en particulier Sapienza qui a, de façon unique, modelé au féminin l’autobiographie, le roman-épopée et le roman-enquête. / In this doctoral thesis, we examine the evolution of women’s writing in the XIXth and XXth centuries in Sicily. We based on a corpus of 24 novels by seven women writers : Cecilia Stazzone, Rosina Muzio Salvo, Elvira Mancuso, Angelina Damiani Lanza, Adelaide Bernardini Capuana, Maria Messina and Goliarda Sapienza. In the first part, applying sociological Criticism and using unpublished and rare texts, we show how this production can be understood through the development of textual history and history of reception. There have been some omissions and also rediscoveries, especially thanks to Leonardo Sciascia’s editorial activity for Mancuso’s and Messina’s works, to the Rosminian philosopher Giuseppe Pellegrino for Lanza’s works and to the great success of Sapienza’s French translations. In the second part, we analyze the different forms how these women writers represented the female condition in each phase : during the Romantic age, they followed their contemporary writers’ models, while during the Decadent movement they invented a structure and a personal style so as to erode the linguistic and formal canons. In the contemporary period, they created their own patterns. The women writers of the twentieth century contributed to the development of the female novel, especially Sapienza, who elaborated a personal pattern for female expression in several genres : autobiography, epic and psychological inquiry.

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