Browsing by Author "Leila May, Committee Chair"

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Challenging Gender Roles in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and Virginia Woolf's Orlando
(2005-07-08) Jones, Joanna Medlin; Sharon Setzer, Committee Member; Leila May, Committee Chair; Laura Severin, Committee Member
Clothing reinforces gender roles culturally assigned to men and women by emphasizing individuals' biological sex and encouraging them to behave in specific ways based on their sex. However, individuals can manipulate their clothing to challenge the gender roles assigned to them. The primary characters in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and Virginia Woolf's Orlando wear gender-deviant clothing to point out the constructed nature of gender and to assert their own identities independent of specific gender roles.
Lesbian Texts and Subtexts: [De] Constructing the Lesbian Subject in Charlotte Bronte's Villette and Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca
(2006-08-07) Swift, Lindley N.; Cat Warren, Committee Member; Antony Harrison, Committee Member; Leila May, Committee Chair
The conflict between essentialist and constructionist standpoints constitute the primary division between proponents of lesbian literary theory and queer theorists. While essentialists view identity as fixed and innate, constructionists consider identity to be the unstable effect of social conditioning. Lesbian theorists argue that the destabilization of all identity categories, accomplished by queer theory, serves to undermine the importance of "lesbian" as a political identity. However, the success of queer theorists, such as Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, in challenging the hegemonic power structures that reinforce compulsory heterosexuality should not be underestimated. For the purpose of this thesis, I intend to bridge lesbian studies and queer theory by focusing on what I perceive as their similar aims, primarily the act of reading between the lines of heterosexual narratives. In order to do so, I have chosen to explore Villette by Charlotte Brontë and Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier from these two competing perspectives. I first examine Villette through the lens of lesbian theory in order to rethink binary oppositions, such as private/public and secrecy/disclosure, as they appear in the text to reveal the forbidden and thus transgressive expression of female same-sex desire or lesbianism and its subsequent repression to the metaphorical realm of the closet. I then use queer theory to deconstruct gender and sexuality in Rebecca in the hopes of demonstrating how representations of lesbian desire may serve to subvert naturalized, hegemonic definitions of both.
Sexuality and Coming of Age in Two Works by George MacDonald
(2003-04-16) Ware, Stephanie Lynne; Tony Harrison, Committee Member; Leila May, Committee Chair; Sharon Setzer, Committee Member
This study attempts to follow George MacDonald as he engages in the strange juggling act by which he simultaneously idealizes women and releases them from the grasp of idolizing males, proclaims their purity and concerns himself with their healthy maturation into sexuality. A comparison of Phantastes and Adela Cathcart reveals the complicating role of sexuality in the coming of age process of both males and females. The male protagonist of the fantasy work Phantastes is asked to learn to control his sexuality and to abandon selfishness in love, and he does so in part by understanding that women, too, have sexual natures. In Phantastes, however, MacDonald hesitates between idealizing, and thus desexualizing, women and accepting sexuality as part of women's nature, as Anodos's continuing celibacy upon his return from Fairy Land illustrates. The realistic setting of Adela Cathcart compels MacDonald to address women's sexuality. The novel demonstrates that a woman can fulfill her traditional angelic role even while confronting the demands of her sexuality. Women are fallen angels who must be taught how to live in their fallen bodies without compromising their angelic calling. In order to become the 'angel in the house,' the moral center of the home, individual women must undergo a coming of age process similar to that of the males who struggle so much with handling their sexuality. To mature successfully, and to stave off the selfishness that is threatening to manifest itself in her, Adela, like Anodos, embarks on a journey through fantasy, though she will be borne there through the imagination and words of others. Taken together, these two works by MacDonald manifest both the importance of the image of women's natural innocence in the nineteenth century and a growing awareness of the inadequacy of that image.