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Sexual Violence in Selected Works of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Sapphire
Vlasáková, Michaela ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
This thesis focuses on three works of African-American female writers: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, and Sapphire's Push. The primary topic of my analysis is sexual violence, or more specifically, child sexual abuse and the trauma resulting from it. Each selected novel has a protagonist who is a victim of sexual abuse and/or rape. Their victimhood plays a significant role in their psychologies, relationships, development, and their (in)ability to live a "normal" life. This thesis is divided into six chapters. In the introduction, I explain why these aforementioned works are suitable for comparison. What follows is a brief introduction to the topic of child sexual abuse and the trauma which results from it. I also present the theoretical literature I use to support my claims in the upcoming chapters. In addition, I briefly define the terms "happy ending," "realistic ending," and "tragic ending." The first analytic chapter studies the character of Celie in The Color Purple. It follows her development from a fourteen-year-old uneducated victim, to the fully formed independent survivor she becomes. Even though Celie is the only character that is serially victimized, by both her stepfather and her husband, Celie's story is one of hope. Through her abusive marriage to...
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Love in Huxley's Brave New World and Island
Petrová, Diana ; Markus, Radvan (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
Utopia and dystopia are terms that often occur together. Utopia usually refers to a perfect or at least improved society in which all people are happy; dystopia, on the other hand, commonly represents a somehow perverse, undesirable society. The term "utopia" is older, appearing for the first time in Thomas More's book Utopia (1516), although the concept itself existed long before it got its name. "Dystopia" is a much younger term, which was used for the first time in John Stuart Mill's parliamentary speech in 1868. The term "utopia" consists of two Old Greek words that translate as "no place." The meaning of this term directly illustrates the utopian ambiguous nature - while utopia represents a much better world than the present one, at the same time it also points to the improbability of such world. It is typical of utopias that they are sustained by certain rules slightly restricting one's freedom, which could potentially be regarded as direct proof of the impossibility of a complete utopia. Dystopia is then to some extent based on this ambiguity of utopia. The main characteristic of dystopia is its undesirability stemming from the repressive laws that ensure the obedience of the population. Aldous Huxley's most famous novel, Brave New World (1932), is traditionally considered a dystopia and...
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A Comparative Analysis of the New African-American Narratives and Critical Voices of Toni Morrison, Angela Davis, Al Sharpton, and Patrisse Cullors.
Leššová, Júlia ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
The struggle against racism is as old as the United States itself. Although the Civil Rights movement accomplished a significant transformation of the social and political system, it left many things unresolved. For this reason, the main argument of this thesis is that the movement did not really end in the 1960s but still continues to this day. The method used is that of comparison, where I compare the present "new" movement, which spans from the 1970s, with the original one. In this sense, the thesis also focuses on three major activists from the original movement, Martin Luther King Jr, James Baldwin and Malcolm X, to further analyze the attitudes in the original movement and compare them with the current ones later. However, the main focus of the thesis is on four personas who made a significant contribution to the "new" Civil Rights Movement in the era starting from the 1970s and who can be considered as ones of many rightful representatives of it. Firstly, Toni Morrison and Angela Davis are two prominent writers who adapted writing as an instrument for their activism. In the late 20th century, the general readership rapidly changed. Both writers were able to take this opportunity immediately as they focused their writing on portraying the harsh realities of slavery, racism, and its impacts on...
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Czech Immigrants in Minnesota; History and Critical Bibliography
Škopek, Jakub ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
This thesis takes a look at the reasons for the emigration of Czechs from Bohemia to the United States and how this emigration began in earnest after the European revolutionary year of 1848. It also takes a look at the related steps and procedures emigrants took to make this journey possible. A primary focus of this report will be the Czech immigrants that settled in Minnesota; however, the initial part of this work applies generally to Czech immigration to America. The first part of the thesis examines some of the political and social circumstances in Bohemia (as well as in much of Europe generally) that were responsible for the waves of immigration that took place in the second half of the 19th century. The thesis takes a look at how the people learned about America and about the possibilities of traveling there. The thesis also examines how the journey was made from Bohemia to one of the German ports of embarkation, as well as the difficulties and risks awaiting emigrants in such cities. Finally, this section explains the tremendous impact the new changes in sea travel - from sail to steam - had on the rapid rise in the numbers of immigrants coming into the United States. In the following section, the thesis considers some of the general difficulties faced by all new immigrants once they had...
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Representations of the female in the work of Charles Bukowski
Mecner, Michal ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
Women. Coincidentally and yet not coincidentally the title of a Charles Bukowski novel and the main subject of this thesis. Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1994) was a German-born prolific American writer whose poetry and prose revolve about the underground life of Los Angeles. His characters were drunks, hustlers, prostitutes, losers, and social misfits. As inspiration he had countless dead-end factory jobs, love-hate relationships, or afternoons spent in the racetrack. After a hard day's work he cracked open a beer, put on a classical record, and began composing poems until his fingers "began to bleed" from typing or until the police came on account of the neighbors' complaint about his disturbing the peace. Bukowski's work in general is centered around the antithesis of the traditional American dream but to be more precise we should say that Bukowski was largely ignorant of the conventional way of living and the American go-getter ideal. Among the low class which became the most frequent subject of Bukowski's writing there is no such thing as daydreaming and the nights are too wild to be spent on dreaming either. There is simply no place for dreams in the lives of lower classes; there is only the rough reality of life at the bottom of everything. No wonder the author chose "Don't try" as his epitaph, often...
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Bernard Malamud's Selected Fiction in the Context of Black-Jewish Literary Relations
Simonová, Anna ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
Although Bernard Malamud's fiction has been frequently regarded as allegorical and symbolic, Malamud did not avoid the period's social issues in his works, such as the racial question and the changing nature of relationship between American Jews and African Americans. The present thesis aims to discuss Malamud's selected fiction dealing with Black- Jewish relations, namely short stories "Angel Levine," (1955) "Black Is My Favorite Color" (1963) and the novel The Tenants, (1971) and to place them into the context of Black-Jewish relations in the United States and of Black-Jewish literary dialogues and the tensions they express. It thus seeks to evaluate Malamud's role in the discourse of Black-Jewish relations in America. Calling upon a theoretical framework, outlined in chapter 2, based on philosophical and sociological findings of Judith Butler, John Searle, and Michael Omi with Howard Winant, the study examines the role of language and literature in constructing the Self and the Other (understood both as individual and collective identities, including categories of race and ethnicity), suggesting thus that literary texts, such as Malamud's selected fiction, are a part of discursive dialogue through and against which American Jews and Blacks construct their identities. Apart from the approaches to...
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African-American Mothers in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Toni Morrison's Beloved
Piňosová, Michaela ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
This BA thesis examines the concept of a black mother as a key figure in the fight for freedom as depicted in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and further explored in Toni Morrison's Beloved. Stowe's novel presents the idealized concept of motherhood in characters such as Eliza Harris, Aunt Chloe, Mary Bird and Rachel Halliday. These characters represent Stowe's ideology of Christian motherhood, in which the mother acts as a mediator of moral and religious principles in her family and community. To enable the identification of white middle-class female readers with the African-American characters in her novel, Stowe employed a distinctive method of characterization in Uncle Tom's Cabin. One of the main characteristics of her female figures is their ability to perform a maternal role. Mother love is depicted as a universal force, which is common to both white and African-American mothers, and which is equivalent to the love of Christ. Stowe believed that motherhood based on Christian values would free the United States from slavery and rebuild her society. For these reasons, Stowe encouraged white middle-class wives and mothers to present their abolitionist stances in their families and mediate them to their husbands, whose opinions might have been influential in political development in...
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Southern Womanhood: A Story Behind the Southern Belle
Petrušová, Gabriela ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
The present MA thesis focuses on the development of the archetype of the Southern Belle in the selected works of American fiction, namely John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn, William Faulkner's Sanctuary and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. The main task is to explore how the archetype of the Southern Belle was constructed and (if) transgressed at different times in the American literary tradition from the period of antebellum South to the era of the Southern Renaissance. Since the archetype of the Southern Belle is connected with the white upper class society it will be also discussed in this respect. By comparing texts from different historical periods I want to compare the different nature of cultural and social conditions that contributed and informed the meaning and the function of the Southern Belle. Moreover, by selecting Southern woman writer and Southern male writers respectively I want to compare female and male perspective on the literary representation of the Southern Belle. The first chapter briefly addresses the development of the American South as a region with a distinct social structure and cultural values and attempts to position the figure of the Southern Belle within that socio-historical context. Chapters three, four and five introduce and analyze the archetype of the...
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Faith and the Search for Identity in the Works of J. D. Salinger
Pospíšilová, Tereza ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to study four characters in the works of the American Jewish author J.D. Salinger, namely in The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, "Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters," "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "Teddy." The characters chosen for this thesis are Holden Caulfield, Franny Glass, Seymour Glass and Teddy McArdle. All these characters have found themselves at a critical point in their lives faced with questions about the meaning of life. They search for genuineness and struggle against "phoniness," to use Holden's favourite word, and do not feel content with the values set by the postwar American society. This thesis studies the reasons for their crises, their search for identity, together with its outcomes. It determines what role religion, faith and philosophy play in the process. The socio-cultural context of Salinger's work encourages questions about identity not only as a consequence of the confusion in identity and values brought about by the Second World War but also the tensions caused by the Cold War. Salinger's characters studied in this thesis are intellectuals who search for answers to existential questions in this period of change and as a result of not wanting to belong they alienate themselves from the society. This thesis examines the choice of...
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A dream shared: community and politics in selected 19th and 20th century American utopias
Kounovská, Kateřina ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
The tendency to dream of a better tomorrow, a better society and a better world had existed long before utopian writing was defined by Sir. Thomas More in 1516. Utopian ideas are present all throughout history, from Greek and Roman literature, myths and mythology, various festivals or the "Cokaygne" utopias to religious paradise, the belief in infinite progress, utopian science fiction and finally the modern western utopia. This thesis will focus on four selected American literary utopias: Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward: 2000-1887, Jack London's Iron Heel, Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. It seeks to analyze the social notions inherent in the four ideal utopian societies portrayed in these novels, the suggested process of social and historical change leading up to them and to note the development of selected social issues in the nineteenth and the twentieth century through the discussion of these works. The introduction will begin with a brief discussion of the background of utopian writing, include arguments for perceiving the institution of an artist as a cultural force, as well as include the historical and cultural background necessary for the discussion of the novels. Chapters two to five will deal with the proposed literature in a more concrete manner,...
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