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Shaming the love plot: inconvenient women navigating conventional romance

The love plot is one of the most widely consumed genres of fiction for women. Romance often dictates a woman's identity and her "story" or narrative, leaving little room for other avenues of self-development. However, when romance fails, even in the realm of fiction, women are left with shame. Shame might suggest a catastrophic aftereffect of the failure of women's initial investment of the love plot; however, I argue that shame functions in place of the love plot and helps to provide a critique of the oppressive and patriarchal nature of conventional romance. Using affect theory, I look at both Mrs. Henry Wood's East Lynne and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea as they rewrite the love plot typified by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses1990-2015-2482
Date01 May 2013
CreatorsWilkey, Brittan
PublisherSTARS
Source SetsUniversity of Central Florida
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceHIM 1990-2015

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