Representations of the Female Voice in US Prose Fiction

• Název práce v češtině: Ženský hlas ve vybrané americké próze
• Název v anglickém jazyce: Representations of the Female Voice in US Prose Fiction
• Klíčová slova: identita, feminismus, jazyk, psychoanalýza, Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva, ženské tělo
• Klíčová slova anglicky: female body, feminism, identity, language, psychoanalysis, Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva,
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2012/2013
• Typ práce: diplomová práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur (21-UALK)
• Vedoucí / školitel: doc. Erik Sherman Roraback, D.Phil.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno a potvrzeno stud. odd.
• Datum přihlášení: 14.08.2013
• Datum zadání: 14.08.2013
• Schválení administrátorem: zatím neschvalováno
• Datum potvrzení stud. oddělením: 13.09.2013
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 03.02.2016 09:00
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 10.01.2016
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 03.02.2016
• Odevzdaná/finalizovaná: odevzdaná studentem a finalizovaná
• Oponenti: Mgr. Pavla Veselá, Ph.D.

Zásady pro vypracování

In the present MA thesis, I would like to explore the concept of a female body and voice and their transformations as presented by various writers. Firstly, I want to analyze “man’s woman”, a term coined by Luce Irigaray referring to the representations of woman made by man, which has been appearing in literature for centuries and which needs to be refuted before the “new woman” can take her place. It is important to understand the way male writers represent women and how they approach and deal with the gradual changes of woman’s position in the cultural, political and social spheres as man-the other will always be part of woman’s inner world. I’ve chosen ‘Washington Square’ by Henry James, ‘The Sun Also Rises’ by Ernest Hemingway and ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ by Thomas Pynchon as these writers show their heroines Katherine Sloper, Lady Brett Ashley and Oedipa Mass in the turbulent period of their lives when they attempt to break with the obsolescent roles of passive and obedient wives and mothers using different kinds of resistance but who are, nevertheless, mediated through the dominant male and masculine discourse that pervades their fictionalized societies.
In the second part of this thesis, I shall analyze the texts by female writers such as ‘The Awakening’ by Kate Chopin, ‘The House of Mirth’ by Edith Wharton, ‘Three Lives’ by Gertrude Stein and ‘Blood and Guts in High School’ by Kathy Acker. The female body under the reign of men has become an agent of self-betrayal as a body can be owned and can imprison the woman inside. By juxtaposing the male and female perspectives I want to deconstruct the rigid structure of the bodily prison and confront the two sexes. The two part structure will provide me with enough space to analyze the perspectives separately and to clarify the reciprocal effect they have on each other in a process of social and of unconscious interpellation.
The question of the possibility of understanding between male and female characters finds one of its clues in ‘The Body In Pain’ by Elaine Scarry who in her book contemplates the notion of pain and its expressibility. As suggested in the book, the man-torturer cannot meet the woman-prisoner on the same level and understand her position as their hierarchically different roles in the society build a barrier between them based on his lack of sense of the feelings and pain the woman feels and her inability to embrace, besides her own pain and body, the voice, world and self at that moment. The distance between them can be reduced only if they speak the language of equals, therefore, I want to challenge and explore the approach of the women’s writers to their female characters and the approach of the characters to themselves. Using the feminism of Luce Iragaray, Hélèn Cixous and Julia Kristeva I aim to trace the steps of Edna Pontellier, Lily Bart, Anna, Melanctha and Lena and Janey Smith and answer the questions whether they are courageous enough to explore the darker, destructive, yet liberating side of their psyches, and whether they manage to break out of the traditional discourse and repossess their bodies. It is the fragmented self, so often appearing in literature that psychoanalytic feminism sees as “an opportunity to create a new self in the freedom of isolation".


V této diplomové práci se budu zabývat konceptem ženského těla a hlasu a jejich transformace v dílech vybraných amerických spisovatelů a spisovatelek. První část práce se bude zabývat reprezentací ženy v dílech mužských spisovatelů v souvislosti s termínem Luce Irigaray "man's woman". Je důležité sledovat, jakým způsobem se spisovatel - muž staví k vývoji pozice ženy v kulturní, politické a sociální sféře, neboť muž bude vždy součástí ženského nitra. Druhá část diplomové práce bude věnována analýze děl vybraných amerických spisovatelek; jejich zobrazení a přístup k ženským hrdinkám, a jejich přístup k jazyku, který je po staletí budován jako prostředek mužské nadvlády a útlaku. Konfrontace mužské a ženské perspektivy nám poskytne možnost objasnit vzájemný efekt, který na sebe tyto dvě perspektivy mají. Analýza bude prováděna v kontextu francouzské feministické teorie, jež je reprezentována třemi hlavními osobnostmi - Luce Irigaray, Hélene Cixous a Julia Kristeva.

Seznam odborné literatury

Acker, Kathy. Blood and Guts in High School. New York: Grove Press/Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994.

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner, 1954.

James, Henry. Washington Square. Edited by Brian Lee. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986.

Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. New York: Harper and Row, 1990.

Stein, Gertrude. Three Lives. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.

Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. Boston: Bedford Books, 1994.



Butler, Judith P. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. A Thousand Plateaus. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Feldstein Richard, and Roof Judith. Feminism and Psychoanalysis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989.

Fiorini, Leticia Glocer, Deconstructing the Feminine: Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Theories of Complexity. London; New York: Karnac, 2008.

Gallop, Jane. The Daugher’s Seduction: Thinking Through the Body. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986.

Grant, J. Kerry. A Companion to The Crying of Lot 49. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008

Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman. Translated by Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1930.

Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which is Not One. Translated by Catherine Porter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.

Kristeva, Julia. The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt. Translated by Jeanine Herman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.

Lehtinen, Virpi. Luce Irigaray’s Philosophy of Feminine Being: Body, Desire and Wisdom. Finland: Juvenes Print, 2010.

Madsen, Deborah L. Feminist Theory and Literary Practice. London: Pluto Press, 2000.

Roraback, Erik S. The Dialectics of Late Capital and Power: James, Balzac and Critical Theory. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.

Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Sellers, Susan. The Hélène Cixous Reader. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Suleiman, Susan Rubin. The Female Body in Western Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Stone, Alison. Luce Irigaray and The Philosophy of Sexual Difference. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006