This BA thesis analyses female figures in Irish fairy tales and folklore as collected by W.B. Yeats to establish how women were represented in these stories. By analysing Carl Gustav Jung’s...Show moreThis BA thesis analyses female figures in Irish fairy tales and folklore as collected by W.B. Yeats to establish how women were represented in these stories. By analysing Carl Gustav Jung’s archetypal literary criticism, this thesis explores archetypes with the focus on the Mother and the Maiden. This thesis gives close readings of several Irish fairy tales that were selected from Yeats’s anthologies with the purpose of examining figures of the Maiden and the Mother that can be found within fairy tales more closely. Both archetypes can be chiefly be found in the passive figures of the daughter and mother, and it is this passivity that makes them into ‘good’ women. Whereas the figure of the stepmother is far from passive, but her aspirations are always associated with her malevolent nature. The passivity of these female characters is not just unique to Yeats’s fairy tales, but can be generally found in other fairy tales and folklore.Show less
This thesis offers an explanation of Katherine Mansfield’s sterile depiction of colonial life by employing the postcolonial concept of displacement. It examines four of Mansfield’s New Zealand...Show moreThis thesis offers an explanation of Katherine Mansfield’s sterile depiction of colonial life by employing the postcolonial concept of displacement. It examines four of Mansfield’s New Zealand stories, namely “The Woman at the Store” (1912), “Prelude” (1918), “At the Bay” (1922), and “The Garden Party” (1922), and argues that the characters of the woman at the store, Linda Burnell, Beryl Fairfield and Laura Sheridan are displaced postcolonial subjects in the New Zealand landscape. The thesis also demonstrates that these four stories represent the settler existence as imbued with loneliness, alienation and identity crises, and that the protagonists are unable to lead meaningful lives due to the psychological consequences of displacement.Show less
This thesis discusses Ali Smith’s contemporary rewriting of Ovid’s Iphis myth. It will examine how the democratisation of the field of Greek and Roman classical scholarship, through an increase of...Show moreThis thesis discusses Ali Smith’s contemporary rewriting of Ovid’s Iphis myth. It will examine how the democratisation of the field of Greek and Roman classical scholarship, through an increase of female scholars working in this field and the application of concepts from feminist theory to classical texts, enabled Smith in her retelling of the Iphis myth by providing new interpretations for this myth. It will then be examined how Smith formed this new narrative by working within the scholarly framework of Judith Butler’s theories on gender and sexuality, illuminating and foregrounding the issues of gender ambiguity and same-sex relationships that are already present in the original myth. Finally, the importance of intertextuality and epigraphs in Smith’s work will also be taken into account by considering how she engages with the gender confusion and homoerotic tendencies present in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Cymbeline, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Lyly’s Gallathea, providing a literary context for her novel which she uses to support her own narrative and, sometimes, to change the cultural resonance of Elizabethan plays that deal with gender and same-sex relationships.Show less
This thesis looks into two of Margaret Atwood's famous novels, Alias Grace and The Handmaid's Tale, to analyse how the female protagonists of both novels illustrate the marginalisation of women who...Show moreThis thesis looks into two of Margaret Atwood's famous novels, Alias Grace and The Handmaid's Tale, to analyse how the female protagonists of both novels illustrate the marginalisation of women who were being suppressed in a patriarchal society during Atwood's own early adulthood. Furthermore, it looks into how the women in Atwood's novels respond to this marginalisation and whether the response is comparable to the ideals of feminism.Show less
