This study investigates and characterises the ways place and space occur in Eavan Boland's Object Lessons, May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude, Anne Dillard's The Writing Life, and a selection of journal material accompanied by poetry. The author's purpose in doing this is to gain insight into the creative processes of these writers and the nature of their engagement with the ongoing venture that Anne Dillard has termed 'the writing life'. This phrase, while evoking a sense of duration and commitment as regards writing, also invites questions about how such a vocation takes shape within the life of a writer. Both the terms 'place' and 'space' come trailing. Each may describe inner experiences, as well as pertaining to the realm of physical perception. Each is also a current focus of critique and contestation in various disciplines - for example, those of anthropology and geography - and by feminist thinkers.The author's introduction refers to some of these revisionings. Findings are summarised in the conclusion. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This collection of short stories is about being a twenty-something in the 90s, trying to get by, have a little fun and make somewhat of a mark in the process. It’s about the process of growing up, and the seemingly desperate need to hold onto all those youthful pursuits. It’s about finding out that life as an adult tries to suck the life out of you, rather than allowing you to suck the life out of it. That constant struggle, the battle of wills between attending to your needs or just satisfying your wants. This is a time for you when your needs and wants are siblings, bickering in the back of the car on a long drive up the coast. The characters in these stories are having their good time while it lasts. Avoiding the inevitable: maturity, responsibility, adulthood. And so they should. After all, these aren’t called ‘the best years of our lives’ for nothing. The stories celebrate your life as a twenty-something. / Master of Arts (Hons) Writing

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Also available in print.

Representations of "madness" in literature written by women have been the focus of feminist studies in the western world since the Victorian Era. When Charlotte Gilman Perkins wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" in 1892, she "met with consternation of disapproving males ...[and] it was virtually ignored for thirty years" (Kasmer 1). Glman herself had gone through a "rest cure" which had brought her "perilously close to having a nervous breakdown" (Kasmer 1). Kasmer holds that the treatment of "rest cure" was commonly prescribed to women diagnosed with hysteria, to help them through "reintegration [into her proper] position as wife by forcing her to focus only on her home and children" (Kasmer 1). Adrienne Rich calls for re-visionary readings of all feminist texts. "Revision--the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction" (483) is, for women, an act of survival. When we re-read female texts and re-write ourselves, we see "how our language has trapped as well as liberated us, how the very act of naming has been until now a male prerogative, and how we can begin to see and name--and therefore live--afresh" (Rich 483). Gilbert and Gubar, in their revision of Gilman's text, hold that the narrator "effects" her own liberation from the "textual/architectural confinement" of patriarchal constructs by tearing down the wallpaper when she discovers her double behind it, enabling the double to escape to freedom" (91). Thus, when female authors write about madness, they are "naming" themselves in their own language--the language of the body, which leads to freedom from the patriarchal construct and discourse. When women enter into this medium, they break free from the symbolic order, and only women who speak the same language, and listen with "another ear," (Irigaray) can interpret them. Interpreting this language through our bodies "involves a recognition of difference, a force different from the patriarch. This force points towards liberation" (Kasmer 13). My discussion of the representation of madness in Anita Desai's Cry. The Peacock and Bharati Mukherjee's Wife supports feminists' reading of madness. In both the books, the heroines break free from the patriarchal construct into another world where they can choose to name themselves. They rewrite and rename their experiences which leads them to liberation. This escape from the patriarchal construct and discourse is named "madness," but feminists claim this experience as empowering by questioning the very construct of madness. They claim that madness is actually a liberation from the patriarchal construct that keeps us in a subordinated and oppressed position in society. / Graduation date: 1994

This dissertation describes my recovery of the life and writing of a relatively unknown late nineteenth-century Canadian woman writer. In the fall of 1888, Lily Lewis, a young journalist from Montreal, embarked upon a journey around the world in the company of another young woman, Sara Jeannette Duncan. Duncan has since been increasingly recognized for both her journalism and her fiction and Lewis has been almost entirely forgotten. I have recovered some of Lewis's work subsequent to the tour with Duncan, identified some earlier work not previously attributed to her, and become acquainted with a surviving relative, and in my dissertation I examine Lily Lewis [Rood]'s life and texts from the theoretical perspective of life writing. I find Marlene Kadar's theory of "life writing as critical practice" as she explains it in her introductory chapter to Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice especially enabling for this project. The process of recovering early writers, Kadar insists, must includean exploration of precisely how they became lost, and must not exclude the contexts of the reader and critic. To explicate fully my own critical contexts, I summarize theories of life writing by several Canadian scholars, including Kadar. I include, as well, outlines of some pertinent work on travel writing, and a brief overview of the new historicist critical 'milieu ' in which my study situates itself. In an attempt to understand the "forgetting" (Kadar 10) that has almost effaced Lily Lewis from Canadian literary history, I examine circumstances today, in Lewis's time, and in the time between that have contributed to her erasure. In an attempt to reclaim for Lily Lewis a place among Canadian women writers of her time, I read and analyse her work contextually and intertextually in conjunction with writing by several of her contemporaries, notably Duncan, and, to a lesser extent, the Canadian journalist, travel writier, and novelist, Alice Jones. I focus upon evidence that supports my contention that a contributor to the Toronto paper The Week, previously known only as "L. L.," was Lily Lewis. I look at Lily Lewis Rood's complex involvement in cultural and literary stereotypes, and I discuss her participation in discourses about the New Woman in both Canadian and international contexts. I hope with this work to contribute to our knowledge of Canada's literary past and also, by encouraging a careful examination of our current critical values and practices, to contribute to Canadian literary scholarship and to the theorizing of life writing.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-196). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.), Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2000. / Four Canadian women included are Lee Maracle, Joy Kogawa, Dianne Brand and Gail Scott. Bibliography: p. [354]-377.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Feb. 3, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 72-78).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2004. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-232). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on Feb 17, 2010). The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Dissertation advisor: Dr. Andrew Hoberek. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.