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Nine Lives: A History of Cat Women, Subversive Femininity, and Transgressive Archetypes in Film

The intention of this thesis is to identify and analyze the cat woman archetype as a contemporary extension of the transgressive witch archetype, which rampantly appears over the course of cinema history, working as a signifier of a patriarchal society's fear of autonomous and subversive women. The character of Catwoman is the ultimate representation for this archetype on grounds of her visibility, longevity, and ability to return again and again. More importantly, Catwoman and her sisterhood of cat women work against male creators as a means of female empowerment through trickery. Within this thesis, key films of varying genres are drawn from throughout cinema history and analyzed in order to demonstrate the intertextual network of characters that make up the cat woman archetype, and the importance of the Catwoman character in her many forms.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc1707290
Date08 1900
CreatorsBarnett, Katrina
ContributorsLarke-Walsh, George S, Benshoff, Harry, Gilbert, Nora
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formatviii, 116 pages, Text
RightsPublic, Barnett, Katrina, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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