Feminine Self Research Articles

Spaces of Self and Madness: Autobiography, Autofiction, and Animation in Signe Baumane's "Rocks in My Pockets" and "My Love Affair with Marriage"

This article analyses the two feature-length films by Signe Baumane, Rocks in My Pockets (2014) and My Love Affair with Marriage (2022). For this purpose, this article discusses theories of autofiction and its representation in different forms and media and pays particular attention to the potential of animation to represent fictionalized selves. Drawing on genre and gender theories, as well as the study of memory and self, this article shows how Baumane dissects the constructedness of female and feminine selves and criticizes the oppressive nature of the individual and collective discourses around mental health and womanhood.

Postmodern Feminism in John Fowles's the French Lieutenant's Woman: From Madness to Liberation

Historically, women are associated with inferiority, weakness, passivity, and emotionality, while men are linked with superiority, power, activeness and rationality. These binary oppositions between the two genders are reflected in the social hierarchy. Whenever women have tried to reclaim authorship, feminine freedom, and control over their own lives, they have been labelled as hysteric or mad. Nonetheless, from the second part of the twentieth century, postmodern feminists set out to deconstruct these false man-made conceptualizations and definitions imposed on women by embracing hysteria and madness. Ironically, they celebrate madness and turn it against itself as a way to agency and liberation. This article will argue that John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman’s heroine, Sarah, represents the postmodern female author who deconstructs the patriarchal ideal of femininity or “the eternal feminine” and constructs a new feminine self in the Victorian era. Ultimately, it will demonstrate that Sarah deconstructs the myth of the eternal feminine by embracing madness and storytelling. Moreover, she creates and contracts her feminine identity and shows authorial control over her own life story which influences others, such as Charles.

Postfeminist technologies of authenticity: Examining the construction of authentic feminine selves in the neoliberal workplace

This paper examines how the neoliberal injunction to be authentic as addressed to working women operates at the level of the individual. Drawing on Foucault’s framing of self-construction, the paper conceptualizes the quest for the authentic feminine self as a technology of the self which enables women to work upon transformation of their subjectivity to attain a state of authenticity. The developed conceptual framework is applied in an in-depth structural and content analysis of work-life narratives of authenticity related by women training and development professionals. These narratives are a part of the field material collected during a two-year ethnographic study of the sector. Derived from theoretical and empirical analysis, the paper develops the notion of postfeminist technologies of authenticity which demonstrate the quest for the authentic feminine self as aligned with postfeminism, a neoliberal sensibility under which individualized and retraditionalized notions of femininity are constructed. Authenticity is therefore shown as a gendered form of control which works upon women’s self-construction in regressive ways contributing to the reproduction of gendered work, organizations, and power relations.

The Influence of Patriarchal Society on the Reconstruction of Feminine Identity in the Selected Novels of R. K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand: A Comparative Study

The study compares how patriarchal culture affects the reconstruction of the feminine self in several novels by top Indian authors R.K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand. The writers examine social dynamics and cultural influences to highlight the difficulties women face when redefining themselves in patriarchal societies. In The Guide and The Dark Room, R.K. Narayan portrays women within Indian culture. Rosie and Savitri show how women struggle to escape cultural norms. Rosie breaks patriarchal norms by becoming a dancer, and Savitri's journey from modest housewife to confident woman illustrates women's challenges. Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable and Two Leaves and a Bud graphically show how patriarchy affects women. Female tea plantation workers, Bakha's sister, and other Anand characters represent women's oppression and exploitation due to class hierarchies and societal norms. The characters' fight for equality and dignity is shaped by class and gender relations. The study uses secondary and qualitative research methods and pragmatism to understand the reconstruction of the feminine character in these two authors' novels. As the discussion and analysis section shows, both authors wanted to show women's efforts to escape their misery by empowering them because they could not make independent decisions. Both authors discuss how patriarchal ideas and social norms shape feminine identity and women's struggles for self-discovery, independence, and empowerment. Narayan and Anand's female protagonists challenge social norms and fight for equality.

Specificity of Authorial Strategy in 19th Century Women’s Travelogues: A Study of E.A. Sverbeeva’s Travel Diary

The article is dedicated to the interpretation of the phenomenon of women’s writing and its representation in the genre of travelogue. For the first time, the ‘Diary of E.A. Sverbeeva for 1833’ is studied in the context of the evolution of women’s documentary travelogue in the 19th century, focusing on the issue of authorship. It is established that E.A. Sverbeeva’s travel diary expresses the main tendencies of the evolution of ‘women’s writing’ in the 1830s. It is revealed that Ekaterina Alexandrovna’s diary demonstrates a focus on the self, on modes of self-expression, self-analysis, and self-discovery. At the same time, the self is clearly expressed as a feminine self, which is manifested in the selection of objects from real life for describing the journey and in the ways they are characterized. As an individual authorial strategy, a combination of elements of a personal diary and a travelogue can be identified, while more often female travelers differentiated these types of entries, even designating the fundamental difference between them in the text of the travel diary. The analysis of the biographical basis of the diary and the ways in which the self is expressed in the narrative structure allows for the identification of a combination of different perspectives — that of a society lady, a ‘sensitive heroine,’ a mother, a married woman — reflecting the main tendencies in the development of ‘women’s writing’ in the historical-literary process of the 19th century.

The Poetic Nature of Titles and the Formation of the Feminine Self in Modern Jordanian Poetry

The Poetic Nature of Titles and the Formation of the Feminine Self in Modern Jordanian Poetry

Woman, Mother, and the Other: Unraveling the Matrix of Feminine Self

A woman as a mother in Indian society is a subject of great reverence. The mother is considered an embodiment of the divine mother goddess. But due to the pronatalist Indian social structure, a woman has less value outside of marriage and motherhood. The question arises here—as a personified goddess, is she equally valued in her real life and free to make her procreative choices as an independent Self? There is continued inequality and persistent sexism between men and women that structure the way they are viewed in society. Men construct the idea of women from their own perspective instead of what women are in reality, expressing themselves as the subject and women as “the other.” Ancient scriptures state that a woman is created to facilitate men in the act of procreation. For this, society further imposes various restrictions on her subjectivity through social practices to control her sexuality and maternal body. This paper explores and examines the social layers of a woman in general, and the way mythology perpetuates the idea and influences her life even today. Illustrations of various mythological texts glorify her position solely as subjugated procreator and caregiver, not as a woman as self but as mother and the other. In the contemporary social context of globalization and the consequential challenges presented to the traditional ways of life, the contentious issues in relation to these texts will be taken up for discussion and analysis. This paper concludes with caution that a real woman cannot be seen as the personification of goddesses in relation to the oppressive elements of a patriarchal society. Her pseudo-glorification merely unravels her enslaved otherness, and cannot be her empowered Self.

'GASLIGHT, GATEKEEP, GIRLBOSS': MEMEFIED FEMININITIES AND DISIDENTIFICATION IN TIKTOK YOUTH CULTURES

Catchcries of empowerment and enterprise have been documented and critiqued by a range of scholars, and continue to be invoked within the postfeminist mainstream (Negra 2014, Winch 2013, Adkins and Dever 2016, Banet-Weiser 2015, Dobson 2014). Yet, on the social media platform TikTok, a number of alternative feminist trends have emerged. Young users are increasingly disidentifying with, or even zealously rejecting, postfeminist ideals. This emerging form of online feminist consciousness, however, intertwines with existing regimes of femininity and girlhood, producing a fraught environment within which establishing a young, feminine identity is particularly precarious. Expanding on scholarship examining teenage girlhood on TikTok (Kennedy 2020) and the ‘memeified’ politics of Gen Z (Zeng and Abidin 2021), we consider how young girls on TikTok have developed ‘remixed’ feminine identities by positioning figures such as the ‘girlboss’, the ‘pick me girl’ and ‘that girl’ as imagined others. Throughout our analysis, we highlight a range of tensions and contradictions that are evoked within normative frames of youthful femininity. These include performing ‘wokeness’ (Sobande 2019); compulsory irony (Chateau 2020); navigating digital literacies (Nissenbaum and Shifman 2017); manufacturing relatability (Kanai 2019) and compliance with hegemonic feminine norms. Ultimately, we argue that through practices of humour, irony and disidentification, the ‘girlboss’, the ‘pick me girl’ and 'that girl' are evoked as feminine Others, producing a collective feminist politics that lacks positive identity markers, where the feminine self must precariously navigate practices of identification, disidentification, opposition and rejection.

From aesthetic labour to affective labour: feminine beauty and body work as self-care in UK ‘lockdown’

This paper draws on qualitative survey and interview data with 72 participants focusing on feminine body and beauty work practices in the UK’s first Covid-19 ‘lockdown’ in 2020. The data suggest that the affective dimensions of beauty were intensified, accelerated, and expanded during this period. Feminine beauty and body work was deployed to produce desired affects: namely positivity, productivity, and the elimination of stress and anxiety. I argue, therefore, that beauty practices became oriented less around aesthetic labour – the work of improving and maintaining appearance – and more explicitly and substantially a project of affective labour – the deep feeling work of generating and maintaining a disposition that aligns with the needs of capital. Using the lens of affective labour provides insight into the way that the affective harms of the pandemic crisis were individualised and managed by feminine selves through practices of beauty and body work. Participants’ affective labour projects produced two interrelated sets of immaterial outcomes. First, they helped maintain a ‘market ready’ set of positive and productive dispositions that were particularly crucial for those subjects in heightened conditions of precarity, insecurity or isolation. Second, affective labour was key to the deeply gendered, racialised and classed moral formulation of the ‘good’ pandemic citizen who would, and could, follow the directive to ‘stay at home’ in order not only to care for themselves and others, but to use the ‘opportunity’ of lockdown to transform and improve the self.

“I Could Never Hope for Anything More Rewarding”: Pleasure, Selfhood, and Emotional Practices in the Forming of the Highland Folk Museum in the 1930s

AbstractThe actions of Dr. Isabel Grant in creating the Highland Folk Museum in Scotland in the 1930s reflect how pleasure interacted with gendered identities to form modern feminine selves in the mid-twentieth century. In examining the subjectivity of Grant and her associates through material, textual, and visual sources from the museum, I interrogate both emotional and representational aspects of her development of living history. I suggest that, along with a sense of care and duty in such museums, women such as Grant were attracted by the opportunities of imaginative play and that they formed identities that were not reducible to either traditional or modern women's roles; instead, they were drawn to a form of historical engagement that allowed them to work outside such labels, sometimes as eccentrics. Their play was more serious and nonironic than were many other forms of interwar modern culture, and living history initiatives since then have built on this modern-but-not-modern appeal.

“Completion of a Circle”: Female Process of Self-Realization and Individuation in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride and “I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth”

In The Robber Bride and its sequel, “I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth,” Margaret Atwood underscores the complex feminine identity through the femme fatale, who is depicted using mythic Gothic figures, such as the vampire. Atwood contradicts socially-sanctioned roles for women. She shapes newer and more complete social and personal female identities, questioning how inadequately the patriarchal system represents their multiplicity. The author describes how the protagonists challenge the patriarchal definition of the feminine Self on their Jungian journey towards individuation, for which the fatal woman, as the Shadow Self, acts as a catalyst.

What “Real” Women Want: Alt-Right Femininity Vlogs as an Anti-Feminist Populist Aesthetic

This article suggests that one reason for the resurgence of populism we see in the digital age is its resonance as a political<em> aesthetic</em> with the style and aesthetics of online culture. Influencers on social media platforms like YouTube and Instagram rely on style to attract viewers and identify themselves with a community. This makes fertile ground for far-right populist movements like the alt-right, who can package extremist politics in attractive content that appears to represent viewers’ everyday concerns. A growing alt-right community on YouTube known as traditional or “trad” wives create videos about femininity, beauty, and relationships. However, viewers who seek out these channels for clothing or hair styling tips leave with another kind of styling: populist messaging that frames feminism as an elitist threat to the “real” femininity of everyday women. Through rhetorical analysis, I find that trad wife vloggers’ videos stylistically suture alt-right anti-feminism to the broader online influencer culture through repeated aesthetic displays of the feminine self, home, and family. I argue that this visuality acts as an aesthetic mode of veridiction for the anti-feminist message that is uniquely powerful on image-based social media platforms. It creates the appearance of broad support as similar aesthetics are repeatedly performed by many trusted influencers. I conclude by calling scholars of populism and rhetoric to attend to the way multi-layered conventions of aesthetics on social media platforms can spread extremist messaging through ambiguous content within and beyond online communities.

The Embodied Feminine Self: (Re) Constructing the Ageist Discourse in Select Indian Television Advertisements

The Embodied Feminine Self: (Re) Constructing the Ageist Discourse in Select Indian Television Advertisements

Performing the Self through Orientalizing the Kurds in Isabella Bird’s Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan

Abstract This article fleshes out the various ways Isabella Bird performs the self in her travel account, Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan (1891), mainly in her engagement with the Kurdish people. Deploying Judith Butler’s theory of performativity of gender, we argue that travel writing is empowering for Bird because it offers her a viable platform to perform a variety of selves through which she can voice her complicated and nuanced socio-political views and promote her image. Moreover, we contend that Bird’s representation of the Kurds and their region is informed by Orientalist ideology of the time as well as her own complex subject position. The fluidity of Bird’s identity, which is represented through performing a rich diversity of masculine and feminine selves in her account, exposes the constructed nature of gender. Bird not only undermines the prescribed gender boundaries of her time, but also demands the right for herself, as a woman writer, to be both caring and daring by playing the roles of a brave traveller, intellectual explorer, devoted Hakim, shrewd political analyst, religious commentator, and receptive ethnographer in Journeys.

Keats, Housekeeping and the Poetry of Mourning

ABSTRACT Although it has most often been read in the tradition of American Transcendentalism, Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping (1980) bears strong affinities with English Romanticism and forges even stronger ties with the poems of Keats’s 1820 volume and the concepts of Negative Capability and the Chameleon Poet. The novel reimagines these ideas through the prism of its main character, Ruth Stone, who develops a lyrical epistemology attuned to the rhythms of mourning, elegy and loss. Robinson offers us a new way of understanding Keats’s most famous phrases that transmutes such loss into a searching meditation on a feminine self destabilized by nature and disembodied by water and darkness. And it invites us to reconsider how elemental Keats’s own bereavement is to the understanding of his poetic philosophy. If Robinson rethinks Negative Capability and the poetic character by feminizing the essentially masculine project of the “Man of Achievement” and “Men of Genius” and by foregrounding the centrality of transience and loss in Ruth’s conception of identity, she also encourages us to re-envision the role of the major female characters in Keats’s final volume of poetry.

Women with Split Identity; A Literary Analysis based on the selected Female Portrayals in Literature

Female characters in Literature are portrayed through diverse dimensions such as heroic figures, objects of desire, rebellious individuals, icons of female liberation and individuals with fragmented identities. Those potrayals reflect the the feminine self which is surrounded by the awareness of her negated existence, stereotyped images of womanhood, the sense of lack of belonging, and repressed individuality. Thus the study focuses on analyzing the female literary portrayals like ‘Nora Helmer’in ‘The Dolls House’ by Henric Ibsen, ‘Adela’ in ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’ by Federico Garcia Lorca and ‘Emma Bovary’ in ‘Madame Bovary’ by Gustave Flaubert, ‘Maggie Tulliver’ in The Mill On the Floss by George Eliot and ‘Kattrin’ in Mother courage and Her children by Bertolt Brecht with the objective of bringing to the surface the socially determined fatal end and the symbolic disappearance of the feminine figure. In analyzing and elaborating the perspectives which are discussed within the research paper the theoretical perspectives of Simon de Beauvoir (‘The second sex’), Sigmund Freud, (‘Civilization and its Discontents’,)and Slavoj Zizek, (‘Looking Awry’) are referred with a thorough consideration. Consequently the woman figure whose identity is negated and given less vitality is identified as an inferior and vulnerable social figure within the existing social order and thus the literary characters like Adela, Nora, Emma, and Maggie Tulliver portray the antagonism between the social principle of ‘Repression’ and the feminine ‘ Liberation’. In contrast to the characters such as Adela, Emma and Nora who negate the social other in pursuing their determined routes towards the self-satisfaction, the feminine portrayals like Kattrin and Maggie Tulliver adopt the self-denial and renunciation of desires for the betterment of the social other. Thus the characters like Nora, Emma and Adela become capable of gratifying their intense abomination towards the social order while Kattrin and Maggie Tulliver with their self-sacrifice and altruistic motives achieve a serene satisfaction. In that sense it can be identified that their self-annihilation leaves behind a symbol of identity rather than nihilistic reality implying a more psychological vitality without being just a physical deterioration.

Descriptive study on subjective experience of genetic testing with respect to relationship, family planning and psychosocial wellbeing among women with lynch syndrome

BackgroundDue to increased risk of endometrial and ovarian cancer, women belonging to known Lynch Syndrome (LS) families are recommended to undergo germline testing. Current practice in Finland is to offer counselling to women with pathogenic variant and advocate risk-reducing surgery (RRS) after completion of childbirth. The present study aimed to clarify the impacts of positive germline testing on family planning and reproductive decisions of these women, which are relatively unknown.MethodsSeventy-nine carriers of germline MMR gene pathogenic variant (path_MMR) were identified from the Finnish LS Registry as having genetic testing performed before the age of 45 years and not having undergone hysterectomy or oophorectomy. These women were sent a questionnaire concerning family planning, intimate relationships and psychosocial wellbeing.ResultsThirty-five women (44.3%) responded. Parity of path_MMR carriers (2.1) was slightly higher than parity among Finnish women in general (1.8). No significant differences were found between parity, number of induced abortions or sterilizations before and after genetic testing. Only minority of subjects reported any influence on family planning (20%) or negative impact on feminine self and body image (14%).ConclusionsThe positive germline testing does not seem to have a major negative impact on family planning, intimate relationships or feminine self and body image. According to the open comments, counselling, supportive and empathic attitude of the professionals seem to have a significant impact on this. These results are a valuable addition to the counselling of LS women at reproductive age.

Confession and the Feminine Self: A Comparative Study in Selected Poems of Wafa'a Abdul Razzaq and Sharon Olds

There is no doubt that any creative writing whatever its form or genre carries aspects of self-revelation and repeats confessions of the self. It also reflects its views about the world and the other. Yet, with feminine literature, confession takes further dimensions because the world of the woman is a world that reveals without declares. It is a world that diagnosis without shows. Confession is a new type of writing. It is the product of many social and cultural transformations, especially what the feminist movement has produced. Therefore; the literary woman becomes capable of defending other women and enhancing their attitudes and perspectives. Female poets become the voice that reveals the inner world of a female because literature in general and poetry, in particular, is the outcome of culture.
 This paper which is entitled Confession and the Feminine Self searches in the relations of communication and absent between the culture of an Iraqi poet; Wafa'a Abdul Razzaq (1952-) and that of an American poet; Sharon Olds (1942-). It clarifies the aspects of differences and similarities in revealing the feminine self. The research consists of an introduction that sets as a background to the feminine self. First section deals with the theme of fear and pain. The second section studies the theme of motherhood while the last section tackles the theme of the body. The researcher depends on an analytical approach in dealing with the subject. The researcher also depends on Arabic references not because English references are not available but in an attempt to reveal the Arab way of thinking. The research ends up with a conclusion that sums up the findings of the study.

"I am not a good enough caregiver, and it is my fault": The complex self-concept of Vietnamese female caregivers in dementia care.

In Vietnam, the majority of dementia caregivers are women. They play multiple social roles, confronting role conflicts, and caregiving burdens with insufficient social supports. Dementia caregiving alters their self-concepts, or who and how good they think they are. This secondary analysis study aims to explore self-concepts of Vietnamese female caregivers of people with dementia. In total, data of 21 face-to-face, semi-structured interviews, including six follow-up interviews, conducted with 13 Vietnamese female caregivers of people with dementia, were drawn from a larger study for analysis following the thematic coding procedure. Results showed that the self-concepts of female caregivers in dementia care were complex, contextualized, and manifested in different aspects. First, the guided self and the performed self emerged from the data as the key themes consistently shared by female caregivers. Their guided self was the self that their social norms and cultural traditions told them about who they should be, while their performed self was the self they demonstrated to the outside world. The mismatch between these two types of self (self-discrepancy) caused distress among caregivers. Second, caregivers' self-concept was the combination of the three key types of the self: the moral self (a filial daughter or a responsible wife); the feminine self (a patient and graceful women); and the worthy self (a devoted and helpful caregiver). Understanding Vietnamese female caregivers' self-concepts, self-discrepancy, and its impacts on their well-being can be used to inform the development of interventions and social services for this underserved group.

Daddy, Mammy and Daughter Matters and the Fulfillment of Feminine Self in John Maxwell. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country (1999)

คำวา “ตำนาน” มการนำมาใชในหลายลกษณะ การบนทกตำนานในสงคมไทยมหลายรปแบบ บทความนมวตถประสงคหลก 2 ประการ ประการแรก เปนการนำตำนานประเภทตำนานปรมปราในสงคมวฒนธรรมไทยทบนทกไวในเอกสารตางๆ ดวยภาษาทเปนสญลกษณมาวเคราะหโดยใชวธการศกษาแบบโครงสรางนยมของโคลด เลว สเตราส พบวา สารสำคญทบรรพชนไทยสงสารผานตำนานปรมปราเปนเรองปมความขดแยงในการเลอกรบนบถอศาสนาระหวางความเชอดงเดมกบพทธศาสนาประการหนง และเรองความสมพนธระหวางชนกลมตางๆ อกประการหนง ประการหลง เปนการวเคราะหการใชคำวา “ตำนาน” ในลกษณะตางๆ ทบานหนองขาว จงหวดกาญจนบร ซงเปนหมบานทมการจดการทองเทยวเชงวฒนธรรม ผลการศกษาทำใหเหนวา เรองราวจากทงประวตศาสตร วรรณคด ประวตชวตบคคล พทธประวต สามารถรบรในฐานะตำนานได และยงกอใหเกดตำนานและความเชออนๆ ตอไปไดอก ทงยงสามารถสรางตำนานขนใหมแลวบนทกและถายทอดในรปของการแสดงไดอกดวย การศกษาทงสองประเดนดงกลาว สะทอนใหเหนถงความภมใจของคนไทยทมภาษาไทยในการบนทกปมปญหาขดแยงในใจของบรรพชนไทยสงผานมาใหคนรนหลงไดลวงร และความภมใจของชาวบานทมตำนานตางๆ บนทกหรอถายทอดอยในชมชน ทำใหตนไดรบรหรอใชประโยชนจากตำนานเหลานน The word “Tamnan,” is used in manifold contexts. There are numerous forms of documenting tamnan in Thai society. This article contains two major objectives. First, it aims to analyze myths as a kind of tamnans in Thai culture as recorded in symbolic language in various documents, using Claude Levi-Strauss’ Structuralism. The findings show that the vital messages handed down by the Thai forefathers concern the conflict between indigenous beliefs and faith in Buddhism, and the relationship among different group of peoples. The latter objective is to analyze the use of the word “Tamnan” in different contexts in Ban Nong Khao, where cultural tourism has been promoted, in Kanchanaburi Province. The results of the study illustrate that historical accounts, literature, biographies, the life of Buddha can be acknowledged not only as tamnans but also as resources to generate other beliefs and new tamnans. Also, these tamnans can be recorded and passed on by performance. From the two results of the study, it can be seen firstly, that Thai people take pride in the Thai language which is used not only to record but also discern their ancestors’ inner cultural conflicts and secondly, that the villagers are gratified to learn and make use of those tamnans recorded and passed on in their own community.