Since the twenty-first century, feminist retellings of myths have become increasingly popular. As an epic, Homer’s The Odyssey brims with female characters. However, mythology is often considered...Show moreSince the twenty-first century, feminist retellings of myths have become increasingly popular. As an epic, Homer’s The Odyssey brims with female characters. However, mythology is often considered to consist of archetypal and universally applicable stories about the nature of the universe and human life, which often leads to the notion that myth is stagnant and unchangeable. As a rising genre, feminist revisionist mythmaking aims to focus on the role of women in myth. By using Hélène Cixous’ essay The Laugh of Medusa and Alicia Ostriker’s definition of feminist revisionist mythmaking, this thesis aims to illustrate how Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005) and Madeline Miller’s Circe (2018) revise and adapt previously marginalised female characters. This thesis will give an analysis of the women in Atwood’s The Penelopiad, focussing on Penelope’s voice and reputation, female rivalry, and the unjust hanging of the maids, followed by an analysis of Miller’s Circe that focusses on Circe’s voice and personal growth, sisterhood, and female sexuality. Both The Penelopiad and Circe confront issues such as gender and justice that are present in The Odyssey as well as present-day society. By focussing on women’s presence in a literary canon that historically seen has been dominated by the male gaze, Atwood and Miller emphasize that these women have survived despite the male-focused dominance and that it is never too late for them to speak up.Show less
This thesis discusses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) in relation to Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and examines to what extent Atwood used Jacobs’s...Show moreThis thesis discusses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) in relation to Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and examines to what extent Atwood used Jacobs’s slave narrative as a template for her dystopian novel. With this comparison, this thesis considers whether Atwood’s novel marginalizes Afro-American experiences of slavery and to what extent The Handmaid’s Tale can be seen as a product of white feminism through a focus on the concept of intersectionality.Show less
In Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy, society is divided into two groups: numbers people and word people. This thesis analysed the extent to which this fictional dichotomy reflects and comments...Show moreIn Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy, society is divided into two groups: numbers people and word people. This thesis analysed the extent to which this fictional dichotomy reflects and comments on the ideological divide between scientists and humanities scholars in Western society. The analysis focused on the trilogy’s first novel, Oryx and Crake (2003). Oryx and Crake depicts the relationship between humanities scholars and natural scientists on a societal level, but also through the friendship between its main characters Jimmy and Crake. This thesis compares Jimmy and Crake to the stereotypical images of humanities scholars and natural scientists. It argues that the novel challenges the stereotypes of the superfluous humanities scholar and the mad scientist, by showing that the characters who represent these stereotypes are much more complex. This thesis demonstrates that these stereotypes impede open conversations between the two cultures in the novel. It concludes that reading Oryx and Crake gives the reader a better understanding of the reasons behind the conflict between the two cultures. By doing so, the novel provides a starting point to improve the mutual understanding between the humanities and the natural sciences.Show less
In literature, madness has frequently been used by female writers as a guise, or as Elaine Showalter refers to it, a mask, to express the inexpressible. Using Showalter's term of the 'mask of...Show moreIn literature, madness has frequently been used by female writers as a guise, or as Elaine Showalter refers to it, a mask, to express the inexpressible. Using Showalter's term of the 'mask of madness', this thesis explores the image of madness and its link to self expression in three contemporary novels by female authors. Through a close reading of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing (1972), and Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects (2006) – novels all featuring protagonists exhibiting signs of mental illness – this thesis examines how the image of madness can feature as a response to oppression, and how it can be used as a tool for societal criticism.Show less
