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Representations of the Female Voice in US Prose Fiction
Landerová, Petra ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
The present MA thesis explores the concept of a female body and voice and their transformations as presented by various American writers. The chosen male authored works include Washington Square by Henry James, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, and The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, for these writers delineate their heroines Catherine Sloper, Lady Brett Ashley, and Oedipa Maas in a turbulent period of their lives when they attempt to break with the obsolescent roles of passive and obedient daughters, partners, and wives. These fictional agents use different kinds of resistance, but as women, they are, nevertheless, mediated through the dominant male and masculine discourse that pervades the fictionalized societies in which these female agents appear. As for fictional work by female writers, without the assumption that the gender of the writer makes any literary work more or less "feminine", I have chosen The Awakening by Kate Chopin, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, a short-story "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor, and Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker. The female heroines of the selected literary works bear a number of traumas women have had to endure under the patriarchal order and this thesis will address those traumas, their manifestation in the female psyche, and how...
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Representations of the Female Voice in US Prose Fiction
Landerová, Petra ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
The present MA thesis explores the concept of a female body and voice and their transformations as presented by various American writers. The chosen male authored works include Washington Square by Henry James, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, and The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, for these writers delineate their heroines Catherine Sloper, Lady Brett Ashley, and Oedipa Maas in a turbulent period of their lives when they attempt to break with the obsolescent roles of passive and obedient daughters, partners, and wives. These fictional agents use different kinds of resistance, but as women, they are, nevertheless, mediated through the dominant male and masculine discourse that pervades the fictionalized societies in which these female agents appear. As for fictional work by female writers, without the assumption that the gender of the writer makes any literary work more or less "feminine", I have chosen The Awakening by Kate Chopin, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, a short-story "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor, and Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker. The female heroines of the selected literary works bear a number of traumas women have had to endure under the patriarchal order and this thesis will address those traumas, their manifestation in the female psyche, and how...
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