Strong Female Characters Research Articles

"For want of Clelia": Re-placing the Maternal Body in The Twin-Rivals

"For want of Clelia":Re-placing the Maternal Body in The Twin-Rivals Elizabeth Savage (bio) In his preface to the 1702 comedy The Twin-Rivals, George Farquhar speculates that the play failed in part because Clelia, the pregnant woman for whom the midwife-bawd in the play attempts to secure a husband, never actually appears onstage; he claims that spectators found "the Design … defective for want of Clelia's Appearance in the Scene" (Preface 500).1 While the midwife, Mother Midnight, is a central character in this play, mothers and midwives were both notably absent from the period's comedies in general2—an omission which stands in stark contrast to the sometimes quite lively debates of which they were the subject in the culture at large. Ironically, this dramatic lack signals the important social, cultural, and economic roles of mothers and midwives; the importance of these historical roles for women requires more compelling female characters to represent them in the period's comedy. These mothers and midwives on the stage, as a result, prove too dynamic to be easily circumscribed into the comic world that would control them at the end of the play. In this essay I argue that the power that Mother Midnight, and through her, Clelia, still command at the end of Farquhar's play exposes the risks of staging such characters, and suggests why they are largely absent from the period's comedy. Even here, the mother herself—Clelia—is a victim of a double elision: Farquhar never allows her character to appear on the stage or to speak for herself; the character who stands in for her, Mother Midnight, is played by a male actor. This double erasure of Clelia's pregnant body highlights its potential to disrupt the play's thematic and ideological closure. Instead, the midwife character—a mother to all mothers—speaks and acts on Clelia's behalf, attempting to dupe a suitor into marrying Clelia and [End Page 481] fathering her illegitimate child. Although the mother never appears on the stage, then, Mother Midnight effectively represents the corruption of all mothers; she facilitates their inherent duplicity, which threatens the patriarchal inheritance that depends upon the body of the mother for its transmission. Several critics have identified the agency and self-determination displayed by the witty heroines of comedy as crucial characteristics which allow strong female characters to avoid being entirely controlled by the male forces that attempt to contain or direct their power. Misty Anderson argues that female playwrights, specifically, exploit the conventions of witty heroines in comedy to change the very assumptions of a comic ending, and Pat Gill's study of the restoration comedy of manners argues that the wit exercised by these female characters allows them a greater space for self-determination and self-definition.3 The subversive potential of these generally more powerful roles for women becomes infinitely compounded, I argue, in Farquhar's play, which departs from typical comic fare in the person of Mother Midnight, an exemplar of female duplicity. Although she lacks the wit and attractiveness of the kinds of characters Anderson and Gill discuss, this does not strip her of her power; instead, the midwife's ability to directly and tangibly corrupt families' heirs, and through those heirs the future of English masculinity, grants her a much more threatening potential that—like the wit of the heroines discussed by these critics—cannot be shut down within the comic structures of the play. The powerful image of the midwife figure was, of course, not new, and Robert Erickson has constructed a history of the figure dating back to Socrates which shows that the midwife can serve as an overwhelmingly positive figure. However, he finds that as a rhetorical figure the midwife can proliferate negative associations, as well; most commonly, she acts as a witch and a bawd,4 and is "an enigmatic figure of mystery and power, at once strange and familiar, an uncanny creature."5 He goes on to argue that "in a sense [she is] beyond time and thus [has] a godlike status" because she mediates life and death, but is herself too old to bear children.6 Common stereotypes...

A Flash of Enlightenment: A Brechtian Moment in Douglas Sirk's La Habanera

Abstract Douglas Sirk’s German films are currently looked on as works that contain few oppositional elements, and even their degree of sophistication has been questioned. Sirk’s last German film, La Habanera (1937), includes a piece of visual trickery that functions subliminally—in the broadest sense of that term—and reveals a psychological truth underlying the social interactions of the main characters. The trompe-l’oeil also reflects back on the construction of illusion and film’s expressive powers. This Brechtian moment complements a critical stance that favors strong female characters, and it invites a reconsideration of the political position Sirk adopts in his film. Although both NS censorship and the nationalist sentiments of the author of the screenplay make it seem unlikely, the repression of science through dictatorial fiat depicted in the film and the poetic justice meted out to this folly offer a strong critique of intellectual conditions in Germany.

Kids Rule! Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship (review)

Reviewed by: Kids Rule! Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship Nicole Wilson (bio) Kids Rule! Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship. By Sarah Banet-Weiser. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Throughout Kids Rule! Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship, Sarah Banet-Weiser examines oppositional relationships: children versus adults; education versus entertainment; Nickelodeon versus broadcast television; and philosophy versus profit margin. Banet-Weiser uses a cultural studies approach to argue her position on children and media while completing a historical analysis of Nickelodeon. Her approach resonates with literary analysis, as she purposefully tries to get away from conventional media studies. In her introduction Banet- Weiser explains the disconcerting nature of considering children as consumer citizens; therefore, in the text she investigates the ideas of both citizenship and consumption and examines the ways in which both scholars and parents “confuse political citizenship and economic enfranchisement” (6). She realizes that she has to reconcile the ideas of political citizenship with consumer citizenship and does so by saying all citizenship has a history involving innate freedoms and liberties. She realizes that children are outside of the political sphere, but she maintains that they hold a large influence over the consumerism sphere. Banet-Weiser argues that children in the United States experience varying relationships with media. Some need to be protected from the media, others are savvy users, others consume media, and still others are “media citizens” (11). The problem with these varying relationships in culture is that each child has a different level of empowerment, which leads to political considerations. Considering these complications, Banet-Weiser narrows her focus, examines the definition of citizenship, and argues “for a redefinition of citizenship as a category of analysis that accounts for an interrelationship of children as an audience of consumers, and as members of an economically stratified community” (12). In chapter 2 Banet-Weiser begins her history of the Nickelodeon network as a kids-only zone, detailing the early philosophy of the channel and the leadership’s goal of creating a place for kids to be kids—a place where they will not be forced to learn but instead can be entertained primarily. She explains that while Nickelodeon started during the Media Reform broadcast era, its non-toy-based programming lineup had less to do with protecting children from advertising and more to do with creating brand loyalty. The goal of Nickelodeon is to be a home for children; Nickelodeon wants kids to see the network as the safe place to hang out, as a special place created solely for them. In chapter 3 Banet-Weiser introduces the ideologically complex issue of both wanting to protect children from media and acknowledging that children are often more savvy media users than adults. This chapter follows Althusserian logic in that it investigates the relationship between ideology, economics, and politics. Nickelodeon’s goal is to empower children while giving them a place of their own; therefore, Banet-Weiser argues that [End Page 334] Nickelodeon must provide advertising that instead of taking advantage of children’s consumerism respects their position as media-savvy consumer citizens. While Nickelodeon strives to be a place on television for children, it realizes that in order to truly create a “Nickelodeon Nation” they must have a presence away from the television and in other media. This presence not only creates a political citizenship but also an economic expectation. In chapters 4 and 5 Banet-Weiser uses a postmodern approach to investigate the issues of gender and race within Nickelodeon programming. Nickelodeon’s desire to make a safe haven for children requires additional consideration of gender and race. Nickelodeon is trying to establish a new norm for children’s television. In regard to gender it wants kids to assume that gender is not an issue on television because it is always represents both accurately and fairly. Banet-Weiser highlights two series, Clarissa Explains It All and As Told by Ginger, as examples of shows that allow strong female characters to be central to the storyline. However, while Nickelodeon is working to create “girl power,” it also claims to be “gender neutral” (141). Considering race, Banet-Weiser goes against her claim that Nickelodeon avoids educational moments when she argues that it strives to...

Willa Cather and Material Culture: Real World Writing, Writing the Real World by Janis P. Stout

MLR, I02.2, 2007 495 culture?), the emerging of these questions from inside a narrative of such masterful particularity does insist that theorykeep an eye on thegrittyand perhaps disappoint ingoutcomes of the real.We can only respectVicinus's ability to insiston these ques tions because we can, I think,only look at her rendering of somany histories of loves between women with respect, admiration, and something at times approaching awe. UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS DENIS FLANNERY Willa Cather andMaterial Culture: Real World Writing,Writing the Real World. Ed. by JANISP. STOUT. Tuscaloosa: University ofAlabama Press. 2005. ix+ 240 pp. $37.50. ISBN 978-o-8173-I436-I. A collection of essays on the role ofmaterial objects in Willa Cather's lifeand work may seem odd. After all, Cather is best known forher interest in nature and open spaces, and she isalso theauthor of 'The Novel Demeuble', which called forthe stage of thenovel tobe freeof clutter, for the fictionalworld tobe freeof the accumulation of objects that distract real, ordinary lives.Yet Janis P. Stout has brought together a collection of ten essays that for themost part rise to the challenge of scrutinizing the objects thatdo appear inCather's fiction,and drawing useful conclusions about the author's status in themodernist canon, and about her attitudes to the cultural significance of these highlighted objects, which the editor describes as 'ingredients and traces' of human identity,history, and culture. The firstfour essays in thevolume could perhaps be seen as theweaker part of the collection, but read in relation to the rest of the book, they do provide some useful ways of placing Cather's work in a larger cultural context. An illustrated essay on the significance of quilts inCather's lifeand writing, especially Sapphira, brings together notions of female creative expression and a female-centred tradition. Continuing on the theme ofCather's contribution to a female tradition, thenext two essays concen trateon herwritings for Home Monthly and Women's Home Companion, attempting to reconcile Cather's depictions of strong female characters with thosemagazines' pro motion of thewoman as docile homemaker. Here perhaps one detects the scholar's reluctance to condemn her object of study: though JenniferL. Bradley concedes that Cather had to 'adapt the style and content of her writing tomatch themagazine's editorial policy' (p. 63), the relationship between artistic integrity and commercial pressure remains underdeveloped. The theme ispicked up again in the chapter that deals with the I934 filmadaptation ofA Lost Lady, which also usefully suggests that li terary textswere themselves becoming 'more complex asmaterial objects, exploitable innumerous ways' (p. I 13) by the film industry and the consuming public. The second half of thevolume offersamore complex and rewarding consideration ofCather's fiction,drawing on anthropology and social history aswell as theories of material culture. Again, though, there is a tendency to iron out difficulties, coupled with a reluctance to consider Cather's fiction in awider literaryand critical context. Anne Raine reads The Professor's House as 'an ambivalent response to the recognition that [... .]nature is material culture' (p. 125), but her argument issomewhat weakened when she goes on to defend Cather's attitudes toNative Americans, while Deborah Lindsay Williams's essay similarly offers a too generous and forgiving account of Cather's racial portraits. The essay on the female consumer and commodity culture inA Lost Lady and The Professor's House best exemplifies both the strengths and the limitations of this collection: though the reading of the twonovels clearly shows that a consideration of 'material culture' does illuminate the texts under discussion, the essay also suffers from a blinkered approach. No literaryantecedents arementioned (one thinks of Emma Bovary, who shopped toomuch, and Isabel Archer, who did 496 Reviews not shop at all), and littleuse ismade of existing criticism on female consumerism in early twentieth-centuryAmerica. In fairness, itshould be noted that the essays in thisvolume are all rather short, so any narrowness of scope may be attributed to space limitations. Though the editorial decision to keep the essays brief allows for a variety of approaches that yield often exciting interpretations ofCather's work, one is left wanting more: more on Cather's place in literaryhistory, and more on the relationship between...

Updating Critical Spaces: Margaret Laurence and her Work

SINCE I LIVE AND TEACH IN THE UNITED STATES, I have ample opportunity to note the relative obscurity here of Canada's renowned writer, Margaret Laurence. While the work of other Canadian writers--Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, Yann Martel, Alice Munro, Rohinton Mistry Carol Shields, to name a few--is reviewed by major publications, taught frequently in university, and even high school, courses, and sold in bookstores throughout the country, the major novels of Margaret Laurence remain insistently Canadian because it is in Canada that their main readership resides. True, the author's early critical work on Somali poetry and prose, her two early novels situated in Africa, This Side Jordan and The Prophet's Camel Bell, plus her collection of short stories, The Tomorrow-Tamer, also about Africa, while they are acknowledged to be of real significance by scholars of African literature and by such distinguished African writers as Chinua Achebe have, even in hardly received the attention they deserve in a literary climate that has for at least the past decade focused much of its attention on cultural studies. In many ways, Laurence is an ideal candidate for the cultural studies curriculum, and it is important that several recent publications attempt to place her in this arena. Christian Riegel's Challenging Territory: The Writing of Margaret Laurence undertakes to fill in some of the blanks in Laurence criticism, emphasizing in particular the political vision of feminist, postmodernist, and postcolonialist theorists. Two reissued volumes, Long Drums and Cannons: Nigerian Dramatists and Novelists, 1952-1966, and Heart of a Stranger, both edited by long-time Laurence scholar Nora Foster Stovel, pick up on various postcolonial issues that, it is fair to say, have been overshadowed among many Canadian and European critics by attention to Laurence's famous Manawaka cycle of novels and short stories My own study of the novelist, Critical Spaces: Margaret Laurence and Janet Frame, split as it is between the Canadian Laurence and the New Zealander Janet Frame, was published in 1995 and attempted to track the tendencies of the criticism devoted to each of these major writers. Roughly speaking, I follow the trajectory of work on Laurence, beginning with the sensitive studies done by Laurence's friend, Clara Thomas, through the interviews with the author during the 1960s. These interviews are often concentrated on narrative themes and archetypes, although by the late 1960s and early 1970s, many critics and reviewers began to attend to the politics of nationalism, finding in Laurence's work certain approaches designed to speak particularly to Canadians. Some psychoanalytic commentary was also being used to elucidate the extraordinarily persuasive characters Laurence has created and to investigate the milieu--Manawaka--that she has so notably given to fiction. Narratological theories, never a prominent trend, nevertheless illuminated some of Laurence's techniques in creating perspective and voice. By the 1980s, a plethora of theoretical approaches to the writer's work ranged from studies in intertextuality, to comparative literature, to language phenomena, and, of course, to the now-dominating field of feminist studies. Laurence's work lends itself to feminist literary theory, with its attention to women writers, strong female characters, feminist political issues, and the exigencies of gender roles. Some critics in the 1980s were also taking Laurence's African work seriously, paying attention to the effects of imperialism on native populations and to the emerging field of postcolonial studies. In 1980, Jane Leney published and Caliban in Laurence's African Fiction in The Journal of Canadian Fiction, and, in the same issue, Patricia Morley presented Canada, Africa, Canada; an essay analyzing the impact of Laurence's African career on her Canadian fiction. Barbara Godard's 1990 Caliban's Revolt: The Discourse of the (M)other connects postmodernism and postcolonialism, giving its feminist analysis a broadly political stance, and Fiona Sparrow's Into Africa with Margaret Laurence (1992) emphasizes the generic variety of Laurence's African work, though she argues that much of it was unduly influenced by Mannoni's 1951 study, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization. …

Shakespeare's tragedies: violation and identity

Shakespeare's Tragedies: Violation and Identity, by Alexander Leggatt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. ix + 228. Cloth $75.00; Paper $28.99. Reviewer: RAPHAEL FALCO It has been a secret creed of my Shakespearean life to avoid Titus Andronicus. The upsets me. It disturbs my equilibrium beyond what I consider (in my innocence) to be right measure of tragedy. Lavinia's rape and mutilation, which are seminal to and its architecture of violent episodes, disgusts me, blurring my experience of all other dramatic interactions. So, for most part, I've given a miss my writing and on my syllabi. It was, therefore, with anxious misgiving that I began Alexander Leggatt's Shakespeare's Tragedies: Violation and Identity, first chapter of which is devoted to Titus. But if my anxiety was well-founded - Leggatt does nothing to dispel horror of Lavinia's plight; indeed, if anything, he enhances it - my reluctance to return to over years soon seemed unfortunate. For Leggatt's learned and perceptive analysis of Titus revealed a world of nuance I now feel privileged to have encountered. Shakespeare's Tragedies is fact replete with analytical subtlety, a lifetime' s pondering of plays and criticism, of dramatic representation, and of characterologic ambiguity. Leggatt demonstrates familiarity with Shakespeare criticism and with reigning theories of early modern culture without allowing a clutter of jargon to fuddle his writing. His most obvious debt, which he readily acknowledges notes, is to feminist critics. Strong female characters fill Shakespeare's Tragedies, after tracing a familiar path from violation to tragic authority. But, prima inter pares, haunts book. chapter 4, Leggatt says of Cressida that the breakup of Cressida's identity reverberates through rest of play (86), but fact Lavinia's troubled identity is even more important to him. Her mutilation, her ruined and eventually revived identity reverberate from chapter 1 onward. These reverberations are remarkable, and indeed ironic, that they give a powerful voice to a female character who, her own play, is mute. Leggatt's method of cumulative or aggregate reverberations is not without drawbacks, however. At times comparisons he draws between and other characters seem forced, as when Leggatt suggests, again Troilus, that the kissing ... is play's equivalent of rape of Lavinia (103). Perhaps equivalent is just too strong a word: Cressida may lose her reputation and her chastity, but Lavinia, by any reasonable measure, loses much more. Shakespeare's Tragedies suffers, I think, from too many assertions of equivalence between characters and situations different plays. Hamlet chapter, for instance, Leggatt suggests that Gertrude has the same capacity to baffle and disturb as and Ghost (71). Even less persuasive is Leggatt's linking of Hector and Lavinia: In his death, set upon by a gang, he is outnumbered as is both rape sequences, and as Cressida is kissing scene (94-95). Not only strained, this comparison misleads us by substituting critic's metaphorical architecture for play's. These instances (and there are others) are disappointing since Leggatt's local analyses-that is, his acute sense of interaction and denouement within each tragedy-would stand well on their own. Particularly valuable is Leggatt's attention to theatricality itself. He casts an expert eye on relationship of players and audience experience of tragedy. Titus he suggests that in a sense theatre itself has been threatened play: questions hurled against silence . . . have been a denial of dialogue itself, medium of drama. deprived of language and and Titus deprived of hand-gestures have been deprived of two instruments of actor's art (24). …

Gender and Voice in the French Novel, 1730-1782 by Aurora Wolfgang (review)

Book Reviews123 tiple functions: to protect women, to experiment on them or simply to eliminate them from society's view. The final section, "Economies," investigates the circulation, exchange, and division ofwomen in the novel in the restricted spaces like the harem and the more "open" space of society or le monde. These patterns of circulation lead to the new domestic economy as seen in Rousseau, in which women are excluded from public life, existing only within in the family realm. Espaces duféminin, with its exceeding detail and thorough documentation , is a systematic investigation of feminized space that goes beyond a surface examination ofthe boudoir, the kitchen, or the convent. Martin convincingly extrapolates the shifting perspectives on women's place in society and female sexuality that evolved during the eighteenth century. This study, while perhaps less accessible for undergraduates, is an excellent resource for graduate -level research. Susie HennessyMissouri Western State University Wolfgang, Aurora. Gender and Voice in the French Novel, 1730-1782. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing. Pp 209. ISBN 0-7546-37026 . $89.95. As early as 1715, the social space of the French salon began to evolve from its seventeenth-century function as an extension of court society, dominated by aristocratic men and women who followed explicit rules of behavior , language and "honnêteté." Eighteenth-century "salonnières" were wealthy, influential and well-educated women who attracted intellectuals and "philosophes," as well as a cross-section of aristocratic and bourgeois society , to their weekly gatherings. In her recent study, Aurora Wolfgang clearly links the influence of this female-dominated social and intellectual space to the rising popularity of the sentimental novel, characterized by the first-person , female voice in the epistolary or memoir form. The author demonstrates how the heroine inevitably gives voice to her sexuality and expresses the inherent duality of femininity: a simultaneous representation of nature and culture, spontaneity and artifice, virtue and vice. Wolfgang's study shows how Marivaux and Laclos's manipulation of the female voice is inseparable from the expression of her sexuality, whereas women writers like Graffigny and Riccoboni break with biology to create strong, independent, and assertive female characters. Wolfgang notes that the coquette's language, a mélange ofnatural spontaneity and carefully staged-seduction, characterizes the heroine's first-person narrative in Marivaux's La Vie de Marianne. Marianne's rhetoric emphasizes simplicity, conversational style and naivety, while she manipulates her image as the object of male desire. Wolfgang points out that while Marivaux overtly condemns the coquette's artifice and vanity, he nonetheless defines femininity through the highly sexualized female body and the seduction rite. 1 24Women in French Studies Adopting a female narrative voice allows Marivaux to temporarily stage himself as the coquette: exploring male desire from an instinctive (female) point of view while falling back on reason, a traditionally male attribute, to carefully order his seemingly disorganized—and thus feminine—text. In Les Lettrespéruviennes, by contrast, the author shows how Graffigny uses the traditionally female epistolary form and the voice of the "other" (woman and foreigner), to implicitly criticize the woman's participation in empty social rituals that perpetuate her debasement. Zilia, Graffigny's heroine , turns to self-education as solace for a broken heart, and prefers a solitary life surrounded by books rather than participation in society or marriage. The author aptly illustrates how Graffigny's use of historical and scholarly footnotes adds a more philosophical (or traditionally male) subtext to Zilia's narrative , transforming the heroine from coquette to "femme savante." Wolfgang's third chapter demonstrates how critical perceptions of Riccoboni's Fanni Butlerdhave falsely characterized the novel as both genuinely autobiographical and truly representative of an authentic female voice. Instead, the author argues, Riccoboni destines Fanni's sentimental confessions , normally reserved for the private sphere, for wide publication to a larger readership. Labeling the work as "autobiographical" wrongly suggests that women writers are incapable ofcreating a convincing fictional female voice. Wolfgang describes Fanni Butlerd as posing an open challenge to the eighteenth -century male domination ofnarratives of female desire. Lastly, the author turns to Chloderos de Laclos's Liaisons dangereuses, a complex epistolary novel dominated by the female voice, where highly eroticized...

Gazes and Cinematic Readings of Gender: Danzon and its Relationship to its Audience

Gazes and Cinematic Readings of Gender:Danzón and its Relationship to its Audience Norma Iglesias (bio) Translated by José Pablo Villalobos (bio) Though Mexican cinema has been the object of numerous studies, few of these refer to the process of audience reception: to that intimate moment of cinematic communication in which the gazing subject discovers part of its identity while simultaneously appropriating the film. In this article I would like to share the findings of a research project that advances the study of audience reception from the perspective of gender. A project, in other words, that seeks to recognize the relationship established by diverse gendered subjects/audiences with a film made by a woman. In such an undertaking, the gendered subjectivity of the director, of the researcher, as well as of the audience that interprets both the film and its own reactions to it are all put into play. My point of departure is the recognition that women directors disclose their gendered subjectivity through film and that this feminine subjectivity motivates, stimulates, and questions the gender of the subject that interprets the film. Studies on the characteristics of women's film have shown that female creators commonly present a feminine—and in some cases feminist—gaze and perspective of the reality they choose to narrate. Thanks to the presence of female directors, the feminine subject narrates and the narrated subject has gone from object to subject, thus occupying [End Page 173] an active control over discourse (See all listings for De Lauretis, Kaplan, Kuhn, and Penley in "Works Cited"). Women directors have created the possibility that they be included as creative subject and not as objects of the traditional cinematic gaze. This subjectivity is expressed in various areas such as the use of themes related to women's everyday lives, the development of strong female characters that are more complex than those of traditional female roles, the fact that these stories and their narrative point of view tend to value feminine subjectivity, as well as the incorporation of new rhythms, narratives, perspectives, and forms. In summary, this is a cinema that attempts to be different by depicting the peculiar way in which life is experienced by women. It establishes in the cinematic code a gendered identity equipped with an awareness that allows it to question itself and whose film product is generated from within (Millán, 1996, 1997, 1999; Hershfield, 1995, Iglesias, 2004). Beyond modifying the horizon of representation, feminine cinematographic narrative also questions the audience's reading and appropriation process (Mulvey, 1990; Iglesias, 1994, 1998). In this article, I will present part of a larger research project whose objective is to understand how these transgressions of the order of discourse are read, reinterpreted, and appropriated by various audiences according to gender while considering the different discursive practices with which various identity positions choose to express themselves. In very general terms, cinema is one of the many instances that participate in the social and cultural creation and recreation of gender. In the cinematic realm, the contribution of women is precisely found in questioning and deconstructing established, masculinist practices in order to create "new femininities" that stem from new gender relationships. It is precisely these characteristics of feminine and masculine modes that are the subject of this study, but rather than approaching this subject in an abstract way, my method goes directly to the oral reconstruction of a film directed by a woman. Through a gendered cinematic work it becomes possible to understand part of the process of reception that constitutes the "talking about" a film, the telling of a reading-appropriation-interpretation of a specific film. I am not solely speaking of analyzing the act of watching a film, but of the plotting that takes place in its re-elaboration when talking about and discussing the movie in a group setting. The idea is to make a type of x-ray (in that it reveals aspects not seen to the naked eye and that it is selective) of an intimate moment in which underlying gendered power structures are brought forth in the exercise of interpreting a film and [End Page 174] its particular images. In this way I analyze...

Audience perceptions of strong female characters on television

Scholars have criticized television networks for the weak roles assigned to actresses. Women's roles are evolving. This study examined audience reactions to strong female characters on five prime time television shows. The study measured whether the sex or race of the viewers influenced their perceptions of the masculinity or femininity of the characters. The participants saw the characters as slightly more feminine than masculine. Women were more accepting than men of the powerful female characters. African Americans related better to the strong characters than did Caucasian Americans. These results should encourage producers to expand the breadth of roles for women characters.

Ernaux, Redonnet, Ba et Ben Jelloun: Le personnage feminin a l'aube du XXIeme siecle (review)

Through the study of four novelists—Annie Ernaux, Marie Redonnet, Mariama Bâ, and Tahar Ben Jelloun—Michèle Chossat examines contemporary representations of the female character. Although from different cultural backgrounds, these writers all depict strong independent urban educated female characters trying to redefine their identity. Using de Certeau's analysis, L'invention du quotidien—the prevalence of social and cultural environment over the individual—and Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of rhizomatic identity, the author focuses on the impact of daily life on women's identity.

Willa Cather's sexual aesthetics and the male homosexual literary tradition

Willa Cather is primarily known for her creation of strong female characters, yet her fiction often centers on male friendships. In this first full-length study of male homosexuality in Cather's short stories and novels, John P. Anders examines patterns of male friendship ranging on a continuum from the social to the sexual. He argues that Cather worked in the familiar tradition of friendship literature inspired by classical and Christian texts and also borrowed from a homosexual legacy that is part of, yet distinct from, established literary traditions. In combining these two traditions Cather gave her fiction an unexpected depth and complexity. Anders argues that Cather's artistic achieve-ment is distinguished by her sexual aesthetics, an elusive literary style inextricably associated with homosexuality. A homosexual ethos and eros helped Cather develop a sensitivity to human variation and a style to accommodate it; the range of male friendship and masculine desire in her fiction demonstrates this gift of sympathy and registers its sincerity. Although Cather's wide play of feelings opened her to the imaginative possibilities of human differences, the subject of homosexuality does more than humanize her fiction. It also enabled her to refine her characteristically subtle and elusive style, becoming, in effect, the objective correlative of her art, dramatizing the diversity of human nature as it deepens the mystery of her work. John P. Anders is an independent scholar who lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Nissim Aloni's Heroines: Defusing the Grotesque through the Theatrical in Modern Israeli Drama

This paper discusses the reemergence on the stage of strong female characters who are transformed, through modern myth-making, from their roots in ancient myths and classical archetypes into a new stage entity, in the plays of Nissim Aloni. His women are representatives of the tragic spirit in a modern world that disallows tragedy, and through his unique use of theatricality as an ironic device he empowers them to reorder their universe into a meaningful whole.

Mrs grundy's rebellion: margaret oliphant between orthodoxy and the new woman

Known for her strong opinions on Thomas Hardy's writings and her condemnation of what she dubbed the “Anti-Marriage League” among turn-of-the-century writers, Margaret Oliphant seems more of a reincarnation of Mrs Grundy than a hesitant women's advocate. Yet although she came down on the side of establishment morality, some of her later nineteenth-century newspaper articles and especially her fiction, with its strong central female characters, challenge Victorian sex-role stereotypes and suggest that Oliphant occupied an ambiguous, fluid position. Exceptional for women of her time in terms of her earning power and phenomenal writing output, Oliphant was unusual, too, in that she maintained, single-handedly, a steady string of children, relatives and male adults. In her ambivalent and shifting position on women's rights she could be seen as a representative of the older generation of “respectable” Victorian middle-class women who, as a result of personal experience, became more sympathetic to some of the aims of the women's movement as the century came to a close, while clinging to the strict moral code of an earlier age and remaining firmly opposed to the sexual liberalism of the fin de siècle.

Strong Female Characters in Recent Children’s Literature

Shares the authors’ criteria for evaluating female characters as positive role models in children’s literature. Explores the criteria by examining “The Ballad of Lucy Wipple” (Karen Cushman). Discusses other recently published picture books and novels which feature strong females in history, in contemporary times, and in fantasy.

Young Jane Austen and the First Canadian Novel: From Emily Montague to "Amelia Webster" and Love and Freindship

Young Jane Austen and the First Canadian Novel: From Emily Montague to "Amelia Webster" and Love and Freindship Juliet McMaster Historians of Canadian literature often call Frances Brooke's The History of Emily Montague of 1769 the first Canadian novel. Though it was published in England and written by an Englishwoman, Frances Brooke spent the years 1763 to 1768 in Québec, and drew extensively on her experience there for her novel, the first and besthalf ofwhich is vividly set in Lower Canada. Emily Montague1 is no mean literary achievement. Ithas alively heroine, Arabella Fermor (there is further play on the allusion to the original of Pope's Belinda, although this Arabella is firmly Protestant) and a sentimental heroine, Emily Montague—a kind of contrast that recalls Richardson 's vivacious Anna Howe and serious Clarissa Harlowe, as well as looking forwardto Austen's Marianne andElinorDashwood, Elizabeth and Jane Bennet, Emma Woodhouse and Jane Fairfax; it has a well-developed sense of location; and it incorporates strong female characters and a vigorous feminist stand. It is an epistolary novel, and pays marked attention to 1 Frances Brooke, The History ofEmily Montague (1769), New Canadian Library no. 27 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1961). References are to this edition and appear as EM. The novel has recently been reprinted by the same press, with an afterword by Lorraine McMullen (1995). EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 11, Number 3, April 1999 340 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION the necessary hiatuses in communication between Lower Canada and England , allowing time not only for transatlantic sailing, but also for the winter freeze-up ofthe St Lawrence River. That is, while Brooke takes on the epistolary convention with its frequent strains on credibility, she is businesslike and convincing in following through on the consequences of her choice. Even today it is a good read, thanks to the vivacity of one heroine, the social and topographical interest of the story, and the rapid pace of the narrative. Nevertheless, by the time Jane Austen took the pen into her hands in the late 1780s, a sentimental epistolary novel of 1769 inevitably seemed dated, and to "a mind lively and at ease" it must have called for parody. Young Austen, as I believe, answered the call; and Emily Montague seems to me a strong candidate as the novel most aptly parodied in her wild little fiction "Amelia Webster" from Volume the First, as well as a prominent target, among others, for her exuberant take-off of the sentimental novel, Love and Freindship, from Volume the Second. I will address the parallels one by one. I am aware that it is not always easy for a reader to follow a set of parallels and variations paraded by a reader familiar with both texts, and that such a parade can become tedious. Pointing out parodie connections, moreover, can be perilously like explaining a joke. My defence is that we know there are many jokes in Austen's works that inevitably pass us by, as her literary and historical contexts recede from us; and that it can be enjoyable to rediscover them. The brilliance of a parody such as Love and Freindship lies largely in the fact that it is wonderfully funny even if you do not know exactly what is being parodied, because Austen allows us to reconstruct the fictions she bounces off. A reader who does not know The Mysteries of Udolpho can still laugh at Northanger Abbey; but the reader who does know it finds an extra dimension of pleasure. And I suggest that knowledge of Emily Montague can similarly enhance our enjoyment of the parodies of Austen's teenage years, "Amelia Webster" and Love and Freindship. Frances Brooke's full-length epistolary novel Emily Montague contains the courtship and marriage of three separate couples: the heroine's to the hero, the secondary heroine's to the secondary hero, and the hero's sister to his friend. Exactly the same could be said of Jane Austen's minimalist epistolary novel, "Amelia Webster," though it occupies no more than twoand -a-half pages in the Chapman edition. As with Austen's breathless dramatic version of Sir Charles Grandison, brevity is a major part of...

Feisty Females: Using Children's Literature with Strong Female Characters

Girls enter school more mathematics ready than boys. By the time they graduate from high school, however, females have been outdistanced by males in the number of higher-level mathematics courses taken and in the results of crucial tests, such as the mathematics portion of the Scholastic Achievement Test (American Association of University Women 1991). They are also much less likely to pursue majors and careers that relate to mathematics.

Dissertations of Note

Dissertations of Note Rachel Fordyce (bio) Barron, Frances Marlene. "Doing Books in the Social Context of Montessori Early Childhood Classrooms: Children 'Reading' Without Teachers." Ph.D. diss. New York University, 1995. 261 pp. DAI 56:4332A. This ethnographic study, involving children aged 2.9 through 5, tries to determine how children respond to books in individual as well as group settings. Not surprisingly her outcome suggests that children's interaction with books is most successful and frequent when teachers create an environment where books are valued and where the classroom is "flooded" with books. Blyn, Roslyn. "The Folkgames of Celtic-Speaking Children: A History and Classification System." Ph.D. diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1995. 350 pp. DAI 56:1924A. Blyn suggests that "children's play activities in the Celtic-speaking areas has been over-represented in print due to the desire to present an image that distinguishes the Celts from other ethnic groups." She includes a classification system that combines native Celtic terms with a folk taxonomy. Bronzel, Patrishajoy. "An Analysis of Selected Gifted Early Adolescent Protagonists in Children's and Young Adult Literature." Ed.D. diss. Columbia University Teachers College, 1995. 282 pp. DAI 56:4301A. Bronzel analyzes five gifted protagonists, aged ten through fifteen, in realistic late-twentieth-century fiction. She finds, in a study that surveys many more works than are focused on in the dissertation, that there is a male gender bias in books about gifted children, that the books tend to be limited "in scope of plot and characterization," but that they do reflect the "chaotic reality that is experienced by the gifted early adolescent." Burmeister, LaVern. "Response to Literature: The Influence of Primary Caregivers' Belief Systems on Eighth Graders' Response to Short Stories." Ph.D. diss. University of California, Riverside, 1995. 154 pp. DAI 56:3034A. The dissertation indicates that children's value systems are clearly influenced by their parents' beliefs, although students may not be fully aware of the influence or the extent of it. Burmeister also finds that students "appear to respond to literature based on the roles they perceive for themselves within the family." Carico, Kathleen Marie. "Responses of Four Adolescent Females to Adolescent Fiction with Strong Female Characters." Ph.D. diss. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1994. 266 pp. DAI 55:3119A. Carico's research, based on Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Katherine Paterson's Lyddie, is informed by Louise Rosenblatt's perception of literature "as human experience and a medium for exploration," as well as the work of Richard Beach. She is concerned with "the enhancement of women's confidence by a validation of their experiences . . . through demonstrations of social constructions of meaning." Castañeda, Maria Anita. "A Look at Hispanic Children's Reading Choices and Interests: A Descriptive Study." Ph.D. diss. Texas Woman's University, 1995. 141 pp. DAI 56:3448A. In a semester-long study of five 8- and 9-year-old students Castañeda discovered that the genres they most preferred were realistic fiction, fantasy, and folktales, as well as information and concept books, and that a teacher's influence [End Page 239] on what students read is much more pervasive than a parent's. She also finds that preferences of both sexes are similar although boys had a stronger preference for legends than girls, and girls liked rhymed text better than boys did. Cleary, Beth M. "'Making the Gods' Voices Yell': Performing Theories of the Bread and Puppet Theatre." Ph.D. diss. University of California, Berkeley, 1994. 226 pp. DAI 56:1584A. Cleary's dissertation is an in-depth analysis of the thirty-year history of the Bread and Puppet Theatre and its founder, Peter Schumann, based on the four years she worked with the theatre. She demonstrates how Schumann draws on sophisticated cultural critics, such as Hannah Arendt, Ernst Bloch, and Herbert Marcuse. He "yolks his papier-mache mass spectacle aesthetics to their sophisticated mass culture ideas [and] asserts the necessity and urgency of [a] critical relationship between the individual and mass culture." Collins, Pansy Hillin. "Children Responding to Crisis Literature: Fifth Graders and Bridge to Terabithia." Ph.D. diss. University of Missouri—Columbia, 1993. 217 pp...

Sarah Orne Jewett: reconstructing gender

her book Orne Jewett: Reconstructing Gender, Margaret Roman argues that one theme colours almost every short story and novel by the turn-of-the-century American author: each person, regardless of sex, must break free of the restrictive, polar-opposite norms of behaviour traditionally assigned to men and women by a patriarchal society, as seen from Jewett's perspective during the late Victorian era, was one in which a competitive, active man dominates a passive, emotional woman. Frequently referring to Jewett's own New England upbringing at the hands of an unusually progressive father, Roman demonstrates how the writer, through her personal quest for freedom and through the various characters she created, strove to eliminate the necessity for rigid and narrowly defined male-female roles and relationships. With the details of Jewett's free-spirited life, Roman's book represents a solid work of literary scholarship, which traces a gender-dissolving theme throughout Jewett's writing. Whereas previous critics have focused primarily on her best-known works, including A White Heron, Deephaven, A Country Doctor, and The Country of the Pointed Firs, Roman encompasses within her own discussion virtually all of the stories found in the 19 volumes Jewett published during her lifetime. And although much recent criticism has centred around Jewett's strong female characters, Roman is the first to explore in depth Jewett's male characers and married couples. book progresses through distinct phases that roughly correspond to Jewett's psychological development as a writer. general, the characters in her early works exhibit one of two modes of behaviour. Youngsters, free as Jewett was to explore the natural world of woods and field, glimpse the possibility of escape from the confining standards that society has set, through some experience turbulent and confusing adolescences where those norms have become more pressing, more demanding. At the opposite extreme among these early characters are those who have mindlessly accepted the roles in which they have been trapped since youth - greedy, selfish men, dutiful women who tend emotionally empty houses, young couples unable to communicate either between themselves or with others - in short, characters who are too alienated within their roles to function as whole human beings. On the other hand, Jewett approaches the men and women of her later works with a higher degree of optimism, in that each person is free to live according to the dictates of her or her inherent personality - each character is able to measure life from within rather than from without. This group includes the self-confident men who are not reluctant to present a nurturing side, and the warm, giving women who are unafraid of displaying a decided inner strength. As Roman summarizes, In her writings, Jewett attempts to shift society's focus from a grasping power over people to the personal development of each member of society. Ahead of her time in many ways, Sarah Orne Jewett confronted the Victorian polarized gender system, presaging the modern view that men and women should be encouraged to develop along whatever paths are most comfortable and most natural for them.

Response: More Cagney and Lacey

I was rather flattered to be described as a 'theoretical guerrilla' in Beverley Alcock and Jocelyn Robson's article 'Cagney and Lacey Revisited' (1990). Yet it was clear from this article (and the debate that Alcock and I had within the pages of Spare Rib in 1988) that there has been some misunderstanding about the female gaze argument made in 'Watching the Detectives' (Gamman and Marshment, 1988). Alcock and Robson assert that 'Gamman seems to be saying little more than that it is important to have strong female characters with which to identify' (Alcock and Robson, 1990: 43). This crude reduction completely misrepresents my position which I would like the opportunity to restate within the pages of Feminist Review. My whole point about the female gaze in the context of looking at TV cops Cagney and Lacey was not to claim that these characters were progressive 'heroines' (I use the word 'protagonist' throughout). On the contrary, I suggest that a TV series which emphasizes female friendship and features scripts around some feminist issues such as rape, incest, abortion, pornography, violence against women opens up a space for female spectatorship not adequately addressed by most earlier feminist film criticism which had been influenced by Laura Mulvey's ideas about the male gaze of classic narrative cinema. This might not seem like a very startling insight but, at the time I wrote my piece, like other contributors to The Female Gaze, I found myself in disagreement with 'orthodox' feminist film criticism. The viewing space offered by some moments of Cagney and Lacey seemed to be important to me. Not simply because this series featured the first female buddies I'd ever encountered on television, but because I couldn't find anything that adequately explained my experience of watching them.

Selected Poems 1938–1988 by Thomas McGrath

Reviews 83 Hunt has provided an excellent biographical introduction, correcting the erroneous impression that Albert Gelpi’s foreword to Everson’s book perpetu­ ates: the notion that Jeffers was not only isolated from, but also ignorant of, the modernism he rejected. Hunt demonstrates that Jeffers’s rejection was thoughtful and informed. He also sketches the development in the late teens and early twenties of Jeffers’s poetics and then briefly limns the rest of his life. William Everson’s The Excesses of God treats the topic of Robinson Jeffers, but its real subject is the definition of the contemporary religious poet. This extended meditation works much like one of Jeffers’s narratives, drawing the reader in and making one believe the vision, even as one might resist the argument. And resist this argument one must, as it contains numerous contra­ dictions. Part One has the greatest strength, as Everson lays his foundation, building on the work of Rudolph Otto and Mircea Eliade to define and apply Otto’sconcept of the numinous to Jeffers’spoetry. This section helps the reader to understand better much of Jeffers’s work but also reveals the limitations of trying to find a unifying architectonics. Part Two contextualizes Jeffers’s “excess” in the social excesses of his times, and depicts the power that arises from his abiding seriousness: “One is left with the disturbing impression that this man means it.”But here Everson also begins to falter as he engages in a dionysian worship of “divine wrath,” and employs tautologies to demonstrate the superiority of the religious “man” over the skeptical and nonreligious one. But the real failing of this book lies in the male chauvinism of Part Three. There Everson posits that the mantles of poet, mystic, and prophet can only be placed on male shoulders, not only ignoring but actually rationalizing away the strong female characters of Jeffers’s poems. He does this in order to use Jeffers to inscribe his own selfimage of the religious poet. The latter section of this part, however, does pro­ vide a valuable comparative analysis of the shaman and the religious poet. The Excesses of God is more a meditation cm Jeffers’s influence on Everson and Everson’s own self-conception, with some valuable insights into Jeffers’s poetry to be found along the way, than it is a study of Jeffers per se. PATRICK D. MURPHY Indiana University of Pennsylvania Selected Poems 1938-1988. By Thomas McGrath. (Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 1988. 224 pages, $10.00.) In one handsome and very readable volume, the best poems from fifty years of work by one of America’s truly important poets are presented. There are poems from all of McGrath’s books except the two volumes of Letter To 84 Western American Literature An Imaginary Friend which are too long and concentrated to excerpt or con­ dense profitably. Working with the poet, publisher Sam Hamill has included poems left out of earlier books of collected poems in addition to including the more well known w'ork. The last section of Selected Poems 1938-1988 offers a generous selection of McGrath’snew' poems as well. Hamill has also written a masterful introduction to the volume and any review would be hard pressed to improve upon his appreciation of McGrath’s poetry/life’s work. Hamill is quick to point out McGrath’s commitment to poetry, his feeling of responsibility to it and to people, the poet’s struggle for “Justice through Love.” For indeed McGrath has been a poet without a “career,” one largely uncelebrated, certainly in the sense of New York publish­ ing and honors. Nonetheless, he has made a life’s worth of important poems, poems in the “western” tradition in its largest sense of inclusiveness and struggle. His heart and mind have aWays been with the common working man—his poems have often been political and democratic whether focusing on the politics of nations (“Ode For The American Dead In Asia”) or on the politics of poetry (“Ars Poetica: Or: Who Lives In The Ivory Tower?”) McGrath is at the same time a poet of many love poems. The early work sings of basic human...