Woman’s Revolt: Revolt in Women’s American Prose of the End of the 19th Century

• Název práce v češtině: Vzpoura ženy: Vzpoura v ženské Americké próze konce 19. století
• Název v anglickém jazyce: Woman’s Revolt: Revolt in Women’s American Prose of the End of the 19th Century
• Klíčová slova: Revolta|Patriarchát|Identita|Kate Chopin|Edith Wharton|Ženská Americká próza
• Klíčová slova anglicky: Revolt|Patriachy|Identity|Kate Chopin|Edith Wharton|Women's American Prose
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2016/2017
• Typ práce: bakalářská 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: 11.09.2017
• Datum zadání: 11.09.2017
• Schválení administrátorem: zatím neschvalováno
• Datum potvrzení stud. oddělením: 18.09.2017
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 17.06.2019 09:00
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 27.05.2019
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 17.06.2019
• Odevzdaná/finalizovaná: odevzdaná studentem a finalizovaná
• Oponenti: PhDr. Hana Ulmanová, Ph.D.

Zásady pro vypracování

Woman’s Revolt: Revolt in Women’s American Prose of the End of the 19th Century
Bachelor’s Thesis Proposal

In my bachelor’s thesis, I would like to research the subject of woman’s revolt in late 19th-century and early 20th-century American women prose. I have been prompted to do this by a series of inspiring lectures on American literature provided to me by Charles University and especially by those discussing the work of Kate Chopin, Charlotte G. Perkins and Edith Wharton. The arguably most famous works of these authoresses — namely “The Awakening,” “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and “The House of Mirth” — all deal with a woman’s revolt against the patriarchal structures that are oppressing them. Their revolts succeed only to a varying degree and what is most important, they all end in madness or death of the main protagonist. Such a price for a revolt against the patriarchal rules made me wonder about a couple of problems involved in the relationship between women of late 19th and early 20th century and their society at large. First I would like to disclose the nature of these revolts — who was rebelling against what, why did they rebel and how? Secondly, I would like to answer the question, if the revolt that the heroines of the previously mentioned books succeeded and if not, if it was even possible to succeed (giving the prevailing patriarchal ideology of that time). My objective is to provide sufficient answers to these questions. The core of my argument and thesis is that there was a very high price, for women living during the turn of the last century, for revolting against the patriarchal institutions, often leaving them no room for a meaningful and enjoyable life in their community and leading them to various neuroses, in the better case, and to madness and death, in the worse. I will show this on a close reading of the three above mentioned books and construct my views in accordance with the larger theoretical discussion of the topics.
My approach to the work will be mainly influenced by psychoanalytical feminism with figures like Kristeva, Mitchell and Moi (among others) providing the theoretical background for my work. Other purely feminist and psychoanalytical writing will also serve me in my efforts and I will not eschew from a material critique as well but these approaches will prove marginal.
So far I have managed to read “The Awakening,” “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and “The House of Mirth”, a large number of peer-reviewed essays discussing these works, the principal works of Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, Moi, Žižek and other thinkers associated with psychoanalytical or feminist thought as well as some feminist essays and books related to my thesis. There is more than enough material available for my work. One of the serious obstacles for my research might be that although there are many sources dealing with the analysis of patriarchy, ideology, revolt and so on; there are not many sources that would utilize all of these topics or approaches on the books that I chose as the subject of my thesis.

Expected time of the submission of the thesis: May/June of 2018

Seznam odborné literatury

Preliminary literature:

Anastasopoulou, Maria. “Rites of Passage in Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening’.” The Southern Literary Journal. Spring, 1991: pp. 19-30.

Bak, John S. "Escaping the Jaundiced Eye: Foucauldian Panopticism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper’." Studies in Short Fiction. Winter 1994: pp. 39–46.

Barnett, Louise K. “Language, gender and society in The House of Mirth.” Connecticut Review. Summer 1989: pp. 54-63.

Clark, Zolia. "The Bird that Came Out of the Cage: A Foucauldian Feminist Approach to Kate Chopin's The Awakening." Journal for Cultural Research. 2008: 335-347.

Crewe, Jonathan. "Queering 'The Yellow Wallpaper'? Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Politics of Form.” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. Fall 1995: pp. 273–293.

Dimock, Wai-Chee. “Debasing Exchange: Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.” PMLA. Oct., 1985: pp. 783-792.

Treichler, Paula. "Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in 'The Yellow Wallpaper’.” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. Spring - Autumn, 1984: pp. 61-77.

Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan. The Madwoman in the Attic. New York: Yale University Press, 1980.

Gray, Jennifer B. “The Escape of the "Sea": Ideology and "The Awakening”.” The Southern Literary Journal. Fall, 2004: pp. 53-73.

Kennard, Jean E. “Convention Coverage or How to Read Your Own Life.” New Literary History. Autumn, 1981: pp. 69-88.

Kolodny, Annette. “A Map for Rereading: Or, Gender and the Interpretation of Literary Texts.” New Literary History. Spring, 1980: pp. 451-467.

Kristeva, Julia. The Sense and Non-sense of Revolt. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Lanser, Susan S. "Feminist Criticism, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ and the Politics of Color in America." Feminist Studies. Fall, 1989: pp. 415–437.

Malzahn, Manfred. “The Strange Demise of Edna Pontellier.” The Southern Literary Journal. Spring, 1991: pp. 31-39.

Massie, Virginia Zirkel. "Solitary Blessings: Solitude in the Fiction of Hawthorne, Melville, and Kate Chopin." Louisiana State University, 2005.

Moddelmog, William E. “Disowning "Personality": Privacy and Subjectivity in The House of Mirth” American Literature. Jun., 1998: pp. 337-363.

Moi, Tori. The Kristeva Reader. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1990.

Parvulescu, Anca. “To Die Laughing and to Laugh at Dying: Revisiting "The Awakening”.” New Literary History. Summer, 2005: pp. 477-495.

Quawas, Rula. "A New Woman's Journey Into Insanity: Descent and Return in The Yellow Wallpaper." Journal of the Australasian Universities Modern Language Association. Oct. 2012: pp. 35+.

Ramos, Peter. “Unbearable Realism: Freedom, Ethics and Identity in "The Awakening”.” College Literature. Fall 2010: pp. 145-165.

Schweitzer, Ivy. “Maternal Discourse and the Romance of Self-Possession in Kate Chopin's the Awakening.” boundary 2. Spring, 1990: pp. 158-186.

Showalter, Elaine. “The Death of the Lady (Novelist): Wharton's House of Mirth.” Representations. Winter, 1985: pp. 133-149.

Taylor, Walter and Jo Ann B. Fineman. “Kate Chopin: Pre-Freudian Freudian.” The Southern Literary Journal. Fall, 1996: pp. 35-45.

Treu, Robert. “Surviving Edna: A Reading of the Ending of "The Awakening”.” College Literature. Spring, 2000: pp. 21-36.

Wolff, Cynthia Griffin, Lily Bart and the drama of femininity in Carol J. Singley, ed. Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, A Case Book. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. “Thanatos and Eros: Kate Chopin's the Awakening.” American Quarterly. Oct., 1973: pp. 449-471.

Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 1989.