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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Motherhood in literature'

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Published: 4 June 2021
Last updated: 29 July 2024

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1

Farnum, O'Leary Christine J. "Motherhood portrayals in American literature /." To access this resource online via ProQuest Dissertations and Theses @ UTEP, 2008. http://0-proquest.umi.com.lib.utep.edu/login?COPT=REJTPTU0YmImSU5UPTAmVkVSPTI=&clientId=2515.

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2

Ben-Sira, Tallya. "Representation of motherhood in 19th and 20th century texts." Thesis, Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2002. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B25262312.

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3

Bretag, Tracey. "Subversive mothers : contemporary women writers challenge motherhood ideology /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1999. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09ARM/09armb844.pdf.

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4

Totev, Stela Kostova. "Variation on motherhood in Woolf, Lawrence, and Joyce." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/6445.

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Woolf, Lawrence, and Joyce all have a deep interest in the problem of the mother, and especially in the problem of the mother figured as a problem of the self. The main focus of their work is the identity of the self and how problematic it is to find or preserve that identity. In this quest, they raise some of the general concerns of modernism about origins. Since origins are a major aspect of self-definition, here is where the problem of motherhood begins. This thesis explores the mother figure as seen through the psychoanalytical lens of Freud. By using such Freudian concepts as narcissism, melancholy, and the death instinct, it focuses on the mother figure as she relates to the child or child figures, to the world, and to her own function as a mother and shows how Woolf, Lawrence, and Joyce cooperate with Freud in defining for mothers a central role in the modern self's investigations of its origins. For Woolf, Lawrence, and Joyce, the mother figure is something other than a specific person. Although the actual mother in the novels I study is physically out of reach, she is still present as a psychological projection of the self, so that even though the self can grow out of its biological need for the mother, it is impossible to grow out of the epistemological need for her. Thus, my analyses of the mother figure are concerned with what the mother is not, or should not be---since inheritance, history, and identity can emerge only if there is something beyond the mother as a specific person, some continuity leading from the mother outward to what is beyond her. And it is precisely this function of continuity, rather than the individual physical experience of having a child, that I define as motherhood proper. All three authors investigate the relationship of a specific female human being to motherhood, and the degree to which the mother as a concrete human being is more, less, or other than motherhood, as well as the ways in which motherhood is something more than the individual. The mother figure is ontologically dead/unavailable as origin for Woolf, physically dead/sexually unavailable for Lawrence, and historically dead/unavailable as inheritance for Joyce. For Woolf, there are doubts that the mother ever existed in the past (lack of continuity); for Lawrence, that she exists in the present (lack of contemporaneity); and for Joyce, that she will be reincarnated in the future (lack of chronology). But in all three of them, motherhood emerges as problematic and ambivalent, and, if its status and authority are restored, it is only through the struggle and growth of the individual self.
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Nilsson, Nina. "Gender Performativity and Motherhood in Coraline." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Institutionen för språkstudier, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-160255.

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Coraline by Neil Gaiman has several characters who in many ways break gender norms. The main protagonist of the novel, Coraline, acts more in accordance with masculine gender norms, and the mother figures are mothers who do not fully conform to the traditional mother role. The purpose of this study is to look at how Coraline and the mother figures perform their gender, and in which ways this breaks with or aligns with traditional gender norms. The analytical approach is based on Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, and on masculine and feminine gender schemas defined by John Stephens. For the analysis of motherhood, gender performativity has also been used, and works by Adrienne Rich and Einat Natalie Palkovich. This study shows that the protagonists challenge traditional gender role norms of masculinity and femininity, whereof motherhood is part. The study also shows that there is a lack of female role models for the young protagonist, and that acting according to masculine gender norms is desirable and necessary in the novel. But for the mothers, breaking gender norms is undesirable, dangerous, and even punished. A conclusion of the study is that even though Coraline appears to be a feminist novel, the underlying message is not entirely so.
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6

Osborne, Deidre Jean Juliet. "New women writers, motherhood and colonial ideology (1880-1903)." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.270839.

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7

Mawoyo, Monica. "Things come together : rereading male representations of motherhood." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20185.

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Bibliography : pages 173-182.
This thesis presents a challenge to the approach that has been used to read representations of motherhood by male writers. The way of reading that has been used has led to accusations by female critics that the representations are jaundiced, a feeling that pervades the special issue of African Literature Today that focuses only on women's work. The introduction to the thesis outlines arguments that have been presented about the need to write from a point of view of experience, an approach that is meant to exclude male writers from writing about motherhood. The approach is also an attempt to prescribe to male writers how they should write about issues concerning women. It will be argued that the authority of experience argument as well as the accusation that male writers are insensitive in representations of women ends up limiting the way people read. The reading will be restricted to a realist reading that does not encourage an extrapolation of the deeper political meaning that may emerge out of male representations of motherhood. The thesis will stress that my reading of male writers' representations has drawn out diverse and complex meanings. To show the diverse ways in which males have used motherhood to produce some political undercurrent, five texts, ranging from precolonial to postcolonial Africa will be used. The analyses attempt to show using these texts by different male writers, that individual texts always exceed the limitations that can be caused by unimaginative reading.
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8

McElfresh, Darlene S. "Machiavellianism and Motherhood: Shakespeare's Inversion of Traditional Cultural Roles." Xavier University / OhioLINK, 1995. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=xavier1352478936.

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9

Weeda-Zuidersma, Jeannette. "Keeping mum : representations of motherhood in contemporary Australian literature - a fictocritical exploration." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2007. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2007.0054.

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[Truncated abstract] This thesis argues that the non-representation and under-representation of mothering in contemporary Australian literature reflects a much wider cultural practice of silencing the mother-as-subject position and female experiences as a whole. The thesis encourages women writers to pay more attention to the subjective experiences of mothering, so that women’s writing, in particular writing on those aspects of women’s lives that are silenced, of which motherhood is one, can begin to refigure motherhood discourses. This thesis examines mother-as-subject from three perspectives: mothering as a corporeal experience, mothering as a psychological experience, and the articulations and silences of mothering-as-subject. It engages with feminist, postmodern and fictocritical theories in its discussion of motherhood as a discourse through these perspectives. In particular, the thesis employs the theoretical works of postmodern feminists Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva in this discussion . . . A fictional narrative also runs through the critical discussion on motherhood. This narrative, Catherine’s Story, gives a personal and immediate voice to the mother-as-subject perspective. In keeping with the nature of fictocriticism, strict textual boundaries between criticism and fiction are blurred. The two modes of writing interact and in the process inform and critique each other.
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Weeda-Zuidersma, Jeannette Weeda-Zuidersma Jeannette. "Keeping mum representations of motherhood in contemporary Australian literature : a fictocritical exploration /." Connect to this title online, 2006. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2007.0054/.

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11

Palmer, Vanessa. "The will to truth : an exploration of modern motherhood in contemporary literature." Thesis, Kingston University, 2011. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/22359/.

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This thesis was inspired by a perceptible increase and change in depictions of motherhood in fiction and memoir between the years 19952010. It traces a body of intense motherhood literature that grew steadily throughout the twentieth century and culminated in an explosion of such writing at the turn of this century. The study contends that a significant body of these texts were directly reacting to inequalities still inherent in the social and cultural demands made on mothers. It also suggests a correlation between these inequalities and the increase of deeply ambivalent feelings about motherhood evident in this turn of the century literature. The first chapter considers the intensification of maternal ambivalence in this fiction and memoir and investigates the growing desire to establish this ambivalence as a normal reaction to the transition to motherhood. It also explores the resistance to historical narratives that imply the necessity for maternal sacrifice. By looking at seminal texts from the twentieth century, it considers where and how the myth of the ideal mother was constructed, demonstrating how such ideals came to influence contemporary writers, Hence, chapter two engages with the work of Michel Foucault and illustrates how certain postmodern ideas have coalesced with post or third-wave feminism to affect depictions of the mother in literature. This chapter argues that the lack of certainty in the mothering experience arises from notions of good mothering that have been patriarchically constructed and are, therefore. politically manipulative and suspect. As a consequence, writers have been inspired to re-imagine motherhood in a world without meaning. Chapter three considers the depiction of motherhood's pleasures that sit outside the construction of the ideal mother. It focuses on literary portraits of transgressive mothers, in particular those displaying problematic motherchild physical intimacy and mothers who are sexually active outside their relationship with their children's father. This chapter identifies both significant changes in the representation of mother-child intimacy and a surprising stasis in the fictional treatment of adulterous mothers. Finally, the thesis concludes with the ethical nature of motherhood and the duty of care parents owe to their children, This concluding chapter considers how certain twentieth-century discourses, including those influential in certain aspects of literary criticism, have contributed to an impoverishment of the motherhood experience which is strikingly evident in this particular body of fiction and memoir of motherhood written between 1995-2010.
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12

Mendelkow, Jacoba Lynne. "The Cult of True Motherhood: A Narrative." DigitalCommons@USU, 2009. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/383.

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This thesis consists of five chapters including a traditional introduction and four chapters, which investigate cultural interpretations of motherhood within the genre of memoir and personal essay. In the introduction, I discuss my research as it relates to the larger collection and detail how this work is different from other works within the "mother memoir" genre. Chapters II thru V, then, are all essays which begin to explore the major themes of cultural motherhood: ambivalence, loss, legitimacy, morality, and sin. These chapters, especially chapter II, identify and detail the traits of true motherhood as patience, compassion, sacrifice, and strength. Chapter V, as the culminating chapter, places me, as writer, in a different position--as a reader--and I begin to understand my history as a parent and as a writer through these texts. Using literature as an area of personal research and recovery, I reconstruct my past as a child and a parent and begin to understand what it means to be a mother--or at least, to better understand the expectations of those who surround me.
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Qualls, Amy N. Wyss Hilary E. "Misbehaving mothers textuality, motherhood, and legitimacy in early Puritan America /." Auburn, Ala, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10415/1815.

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Kobayashi, Fumiyo. "(M)othering the empire? : a literary study of motherhood in imperial Japan /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/11115.

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Egerton, Jacqueline Linda. "Beyond the sentiment : the image of Victorian motherhood in literature, art and popular culture." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.273194.

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Merley, Hill Alexandra. "Maternal drag identity, motherhood, and performativity in the works of Julia Franck /." Amherst, Mass. : University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2009. http://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI3359140/.

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17

Renker, Cindy K. "Imperial Motherhood: The German Civilizing Mission in Bülow's Im Lande der Verheißung." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2004. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/6661.

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This thesis explores Frieda von Bülow's last and most popular colonial novel. Im Lande der Verheißung, which she wrote in 1899 after she had returned to Germany from her second journey to the German colony of East Africa. In her novel, Bülow manifests her nationalistic ideology and her support for female participation in the colonies in the character of Maleen Dietlas, who believes in and supports the German colonial ambitions. Bülow provides her female protagonist with a role and purpose in the colony. Maleen serves as an imperial mother who sees it as her duty to "civilize" the German men of the colony. Her true sense of purpose is shown, however, in her guidance of a motherless, wayward, and dark-skinned girl, Maria, who maleen feels nees to be brough into womanhood and "civilization". This thesis views Im Lande der Verheißung and Maleen's "civilizing mission" as a metaphor for Germany's nationalistic objective to "civilize" its overseas empire.
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Fogerty, Hillary Jean. "Sexed bodies and gendered acts : motherhood in film adaptations of Shakespeare /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9406.

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Huie, Kathryn M. "Three Daughters in Search of Mothers: Exploring Surrogate Motherhood in Nineteenth-Century British Literature." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2011. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_theses/118.

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Surrogate motherhood abounds in nineteenth-century fiction. Governesses, nurses, aunts, and close family friends often form strong attachments with young girls, guiding them through life and their comings-of-age. Many surrogate mothers train their “daughters” according to the rules of societal expectations that mothers and daughters have cordial, respectful relationships, where the mother is unselfish, loving, and sympathetic toward her respectful, obedient, honest daughter. Many other nineteenth-century novels, however, depict surrogate mothers who are cruel, selfish, and unloving toward their “daughters.” While the role of the surrogate mother exists in various forms, it is regardless a strong presence in nineteenth-century fiction that leads daughters to choose to become surrogate mothers themselves.
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Reeves, Alison Diann. "The construction of a womanist standpoint: self-definition and motherhood in Toni Morrison's Sula." The Ohio State University, 1993. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392301438.

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Xaver, Savannah. "Blood and Milk: The Masculinity of Motherhood in Shakespeare's Tragedies." University of Toledo Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=uthonors1450433405.

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22

Kutzer, Roxanne. "Maternal and professional identity change during the transition to motherhood." Thesis, Cranfield University, 2013. http://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/8064.

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Becoming a mother derails many women’s chances for career progression. One reason for this is that women leave organisations when they become mothers, or reduce their working hours. Another reason is that people within the organisation start to view them as less career-orientated as a result of being mothers. At the core of this issue is that who a woman is – her identity – is being redefined in the transition to motherhood, by herself and by those around her. But, little is known about how her professional identity develops during the transition to motherhood, or whether its development is related to her growing maternal identity. This paper, therefore, presents a systematic review of the literature concerning changes in maternal and professional identities, as well as the relationship between them. Based on the evidence, this review concludes that although the development of maternal identity has been well documented in the literature, little is known about how a woman’s professional identity develops, as she becomes a mother. Suggestions for further research and practice are discussed.
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Kunkel, Aspen R. "Rebecca Rush and challenging ideals of independence through post-revolutionary women's roles in education, marriage, and motherhood." Laramie, Wyo. : University of Wyoming, 2008. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1594498511&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=18949&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

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Macleod, Catriona. "Teenage motherhood and the regulation of mothering in the scientific literature: the South African example." SAGE Publications Ltd, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007874.

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The mainstream literature on teenage pregnancy highlights teenagers' inadequate mothering as an area of disquiet. `Revisionists', such as feminist critics, point out that a confluence of negative social factors is implicated in teenagers' mothering abilities. Whether arguing that teenagers make bad mothers or defending them against this, the literature relies on the `invention of "good" mothering'. In this article I highlight the taken-for-granted assumptions concerning mothering (mothering as an essentialized dyad; mothering as a skill; motherhood as a pathway to adulthood; fathering as the absent trace) appearing in the scientific literature on teenage pregnancy in South Africa. I indicate how these assumptions are implicated in the regulation of mothering through the positioning of the teenage mother as the pathologized other, the splitting of the public from the private, domestic space of mothering, and the legitimation of the professionalization of mothering. I explore the gendered implications of the representations of mothering in this literature.
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Jordan, Jerrica. "Society's Biological Entrapment: Maternity, Eugenics, and Violence in 1920's American Literature and Film." OpenSIUC, 2017. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/1364.

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This dissertation examines how American writers in the 1920s demonstrated the eugenic influence on motherhood through fictional representations of violent resistance. My project charts the ways in which fictional, dramatic, and cinematic texts displayed negative visualizations of maternity as a response to the early twentieth-century preoccupation with eugenics. In this project, I argue that these methods of opposition took place through actions of child abuse, maternal neglect, and infanticide. Part of this dissertation identifies eugenically motivated cultural discourse, including various forms of the media, that used both overt and subliminal messages to encourage pronatalism among the white upper and middle classes while promoting sterilization and the use of birth control for minority populations. By addressing this rhetoric, I draw attention to the pervading dialogue that influenced and shaped the texts used in the dissertation. In addition, to analyze depictions of positive and negative eugenics is to reveal a social policy powerful enough to go beyond issues of class and race and drastically impact American mothers as a united group; instead of being labeled as a problem of race, color, or class, I argue instead that these American modernist writers interpreted eugenic rhetoric as a problem of gender, common to any woman who found herself with child. While many studies exist on eugenics and literature, as well as on motherhood and literature, the combination of the two topics is one that has previously gone unanalyzed. Therefore, addressing the problems raised by this subject also highlights how both male and female writers were compelled to construct situations of subversive mothering. By situating my project in the 1920-1930 time frame, I limit my commentary to how writers approached eugenics during its most popular and influential time period in the United States. My chapters argue that these constructs of subversive motherhood appear through cinematic portrayals of dysgenic children and the negative effects on their maternal figures (The Phantom of the Opera and The Black Stork), unhappiness in the role of mother and outward expressions of anger toward the offspring in question (Edith Summers Kelley's Weeds), decisive participation in the act of abortion and infanticide (Nella Larsen's Quicksand), and daughters who refuse to participate in the act of mothering because of their negative upbringings (Edith Wharton's The Children). By incorporating the genres of fiction, drama, and cinema alongside historical and cultural documents, I inform my audience of the threatening and harmful realities of childbearing during this time period, and will show that the connection between eugenics and motherhood reflects a desire of American writers to reveal the grim repercussions of eugenic practice.
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Beere, Diana. "Nurturing ideology: Representations of motherhood in contemporary Australian adolescent fiction." Thesis, Griffith University, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10072/366558.

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This study analyses the ways in which motherhood is represented in a corpus of contemporary, critically acclaimed Australian adolescent fiction. The 18 texts in the research corpus were those short-listed by the Children's Book Council of Australia for its annual Book of the Year: Older Readers award in the years 1992 to 1994 inclusive. The publicity, prestige and power attached to these awards means that short-listed books, taken to be 'good' books for children and adolescents, are often used as educational resources in Australian schools, particularly to support teaching and learning activities in literacy and English education. Recognising adolescent fiction as a potentially significant site of contestation over the social justice ideals that inform Australia's national curriculum documents, the study sought to document the ways in which these texts are implicated in the production and reproduction of ideologies of motherhood. The study was informed by the understanding that meanings are not inherent to texts, but are constructed by readers as they adopt particular subject positions in relation to texts and enter into what, in effect, are social relationships with them. From this perspective, the analysis required attention not only to textual features of the research corpus, but also to the various other resources on which readers might reasonably draw to construct meanings. This meant attending to intertextuality, that is, the relationships between the fictional narratives on which the study focused and other cultural texts, including the visual and spoken texts of everyday life, and to the ways in which readers are encouraged or required to draw on these intertexts as meaning-making resources. The study recognised that readers' primary mean-making resources are common-sense ideologies, understood as the widely shared and taken-for-granted understandings about the social world that inform much of the everyday social action and interaction among members of a society. The study was also underpinned by an understanding of motherhood as a social construct rather than an essentially biologically determined state, and therefore as having meanings that are subject to contestation and revision. To establish the range of contemporary understandings about motherhood on which readers might draw to make sense of textual representations of motherhood, the study drew on the findings of recent research into the discursive construction of motherhood, with particular attention to what currently prevails as common sense. These common-sense understandings about motherhood, together with the alternative discourses on which readers might draw to construct meaning, subsequently informed the analyses of the research corpus. Given the size of the corpus, only six of the texts were selected for close attention. The analyses of these texts were supplemented with less detailed analyses of the remainder of the corpus, focusing on the themes that emerged most powerfully from the first six analyses. While some attention was given to the linguistic features of the texts, the analytical process focused most closely on their narrative features and the ways in which particular narrative strategies work to limit the range of possible meanings that readers can construct by rendering some meanings more 'obvious' than others. Particular attention was given to the focalising strategies through which fictional narratives exert much of their power to persuade readers to adopt certain subject positions rather than others, and hence to construct meaning in certain ways, with consequences in terms of the production and reproduction of ideologies. The analyses revealed that prevailing common-sense ideologies of motherhood are not significantly challenged by the ways in which motherhood is represented in the research corpus. While there are points in some of the narratives that might serve as platforms from which to construct alternative understandings about motherhood, particularly for those readers who are equipped with critical reading strategies, the narratives never actively and unequivocally encourage readers to challenge common-sense understandings. Rather, their major contribution to contemporary ideological struggles over the meaning of motherhood is directed towards ensuring continued widespread acceptance of the discursively constructed 'truths' that work to legitimate a social order in which the lives of girls and women are regulated on the basis of their categorisation as potential or actual mothers. The study concluded that the texts in the research corpus are actively engaged in undermining contemporary social struggles for social justice and equity. The study's findings have a number of significant implications for theory development, policy, practice and future research, both within and beyond the field of education, and these are discussed in the final chapter. In particular, the findings are relevant to literacy education, where they highlight the need for educators to develop and implement critical literacy pedagogies that draw students' attention to the textual workings of ideology. The findings suggest that what students need, arguably more than they need 'good' literature, are meta-level reading skills and strategies with which they can resist being manipulated by texts, whether they are fictional narratives of the kind analysed for this study or the various other written, spoken and visual texts that are typically encountered in everyday social life.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Cognition, Language and Special Education
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27

Hoyt, Maggie Sharon. "Giving Birth to Empowerment: Motherhood and Autonomy in Greek Tragedy." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2013. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/3613.

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The Greek tragedies of Classical Athens frequently portray mothers in central roles, but despite this significance, the relationship between mother and child has long been overshadowed in secondary scholarship by the relationship between husband and wife. This study demonstrates the direct relationship between a female character's active possession of her children and her autonomy, or her ability to act in her own interests, in three plays of Euripides: Electra, Medea, and Ion. In general, women who internalize their ownership of their children, expressed on stage both in word and action, have greater influence over the men around them and the power to enact the revenge they desire. Once their ends have been achieved, however, these tragic mothers often devalue their relationship with their children, leading to a decrease in power that restores the supremacy of the patriarchal order. Within this broad framework, Euripides achieves different results by adjusting aspects of this cycle of maternal empowerment. The Electra follows this outline just as its predecessor the Oresteia does; however, Euripides invents a fictional child for Electra, extending the concept of maternal empowerment to Electra and defining Clytemnestra as both mother and grandmother. In Medea, Euripides demonstrates the significance of Medea's children to her power, and Medea does devalue her children enough to destroy them, the source of her influence, but she is not punished and cannot be reabsorbed into the patriarchal structure, which leaves an audience with a heightened sense of anxiety at the threat of maternal empowerment. Finally, the Ion initially demonstrates a cycle similar to Medea: empowered by her ownership of the child she believes she has lost, Creusa attempts revenge against the young man who threatens her but is in fact her lost son. In the end, however, Creusa uses her empowerment to achieve recognition between mother and son and voluntarily relinquishes her ownership, resulting in a peaceful reabsorption into patriarchal society and a happy ending. Despite the variations on this cycle presented by Euripides, one theme persists: motherhood was both empowering and threatening, and it required strict male control to avoid tragic results. Thus as scholars of tragedy, we cannot ignore the mother-child relationship, not only for its power to illuminate the feminine, but also for its capacity to reveal the vulnerabilities of the masculine.
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McIntyre, Heather Dawn. "Mystical Motherhood: Blending Ecstatic Religious Experience with Feminist Discourse in Appalachian Fiction." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1276621461.

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29

Still, Caitlin Elisabeth. "The Drover’s Wife Speaks: A Literary and Cultural History of Maternal Citizenship in Australia, 1890–2020." Thesis, University of Sydney, 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/23747.

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This thesis interrogates the specific construction of the maternal citizen in Australia. While the patriarchal construction of motherhood is not an Australian phenomenon, the maternal has in a settler-colonial context been inextricable from nation-building projects. Through the study of a selection of Australian texts, published from the 1890s to the decade just past, demonstrated is how Australian women’s citizenship has been constructed in relation to their maternality—actual, potential, or presumed. Apparent, moreover, is the mutual implication of maternality and citizenship which has underpinned the regulation of all Australian women, with different consequences contingent on the desirability of varying maternalities according to the dominant culture. Where “good” motherhood has been attainable, it has been regulated in such a way as to uphold dominant national interests, including the perpetuation of colonialism. The representations I consider represent the maternal as a site both of hegemony and resistance. Argued, therefore, is that Australian women have across divisions of race and class been regulated by the dominant construct of maternal citizenship against their own interests, albeit with varying consequences. Explored, however, is the potential for an autonomous maternal citizenship to challenge the oppressive structures structuring the nation. Accordingly traced is the maternal citizen’s emergence as literary subject, in response to her objectification by dominant national narratives.
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Olchowy, Rozeboom Gloria. "Bearing men : a cultural history of motherhood from the cycle plays to Shakespeare." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/NQ56598.pdf.

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31

Lee, Shantell. "The Unheard New Negro Woman: History through Literature." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2015. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2046.

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Many of the Harlem Renaissance anthologies and histories of the movement marginalize and omit women writers who played a significant role in it. They neglect to include them because these women worked outside of socially determined domestic roles and wrote texts that portrayed women as main characters rather than as muses for men or supporting characters. The distorted representation of women of the Renaissance will become clearer through the exploration of the following texts: Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun, Caroline Bond Day’s “Pink Hat,” Dorothy West’s “Mammy,” Angelina Grimke’s Rachel and “Goldie,” and Georgia Douglas Johnson’s A Sunday Morning in the South. In these texts, the themes of passing, motherhood, and lynching are narrated from the consciousness of women, a consciousness that was largely neglected by male writers.
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Vu, Dorothy. "“Maternal Melancholia”: Reading Diasporic Asian Canadian Motherwork in the Fictions of Kerri Sakamoto, Hiromi Goto, and Madeleine Thien." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/31802.

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What does it mean for an immigrant to be a “good” mother? Asian immigrants in Canada experience pressures to assimilate to a “normal,” homogenous ideal of Canadian culture—to erase aspects of their own cultural identity as well as their diasporic history. Asian mothers specifically are subject to mothering ideologies that depict white, middle-class, happy mothers as the norm. This thesis examines literary depictions of this phenomenon in novels by Kerri Sakamoto, Hiromi Goto, and Madeleine Thien. Each of these authors offers representations of motherhood that counter racialized and gendered ideals of mothering, and that refuse to ignore the sometimes traumatic effects that diaspora can have on immigrant families. Through David Eng and Shinhee Han’s notion of “racial melancholia”, I argue that the mothers in these novels conduct “maternal melancholia,” a form of motherwork that subverts dominant ideologies of mothering, resists assimilation, and sustains losses incurred through racialization and diaspora.
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Rodriguez-Carroll, Natasha L. "Red Factor." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1470331179.

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34

Randall, D'Arcy Clare. ""Adam and his mother" : maternal performance in late twentieth-century American women's poetry /." Digital version:, 2001. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p3008425.

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35

Miller, Jeanette Leigh. "Beat Women: The Thunder Before the Storm-An Analysis of Feminism's Bridge Generation." OpenSIUC, 2014. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/1486.

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The 1950s saw the height of the Beat literature movement. Within this movement moved a cohort of women who helped revolutionize gender relations in the early Cold War era, leading to the emergence of the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. By questioning social gender norms and harnessing their artistic, sexual, and economic autonomy, Beat women built lives of lived art outside proscribed social norms building the base for a new era in gender relations.
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36

Brandstedt, Nathalie. "The Complexity of Motherhood in Dystopian Novels : A comparative study of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Lois Lowry’s The Giver." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för lärande, humaniora och samhälle, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-44202.

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This study explores how motherhood is depicted in Margaret Atwood’s and Louis Lowry’s dystopian novels The Handmaid’s Tale and The Giver. It examines the negative social and psychological consequences of forced surrogacy in the novels’ state-constructed nuclear families, looking closely at a lack of maternal love and care. Using feminist and psychoanalytic criticism, this essay examines the link between the broken connection of mother and child and the protagonists’ search for maternal love in other relationships. It contrasts the protagonists’ rebellion to the social backlash effect and shows how motherhood emerges as a form of resistance against the social engineering of the dystopian societies.
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Horn, Jessica. "Maternal Misogyny: Absent Mothers in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature." [Johnson City, Tenn. : East Tennessee State University], 2001. http://etd-submit.etsu.edu/etd/theses/available/etd-0327101-132957/restricted/horn0412.pdf.

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38

Fitzpatrick, Theresa. "The Girls Who Had to Grow Up: Reflections on Motherhood and Dual Identity in Lewis Carroll's Wonderland and J.M. Barrie's Neverland." TopSCHOLAR®, 2008. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/433.

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My thesis explores the world of the "imaginary" in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan and its connection to the world of the "mundane" experienced by the typical Victorian housewife and mother. Both are intimately connected within the texts, primarily in the characters' dual roles as dictated by the gendered expectations of Victorian society. While in the imaginary world, both Alice and Wendy experience mini-versions of their future lives. They exist as girl and mother simultaneously. Carroll, by creating a hostile environment, grotesque motherimages, and a confused, argumentative Alice, shows a negative portrait of motherhood, since he never wanted little girls to become women. In contrast, Barrie depicts motherhood as sacred, something to be desired and protected at all costs. By necessity, maternal ideology is connected to female sexuality but is far superior in value. Both authors created an escape from the mundane realities of Victorian life wherein the audience could contemplate its societal roles. Barrie's story elevates mothers and their connection to eternal childhood, and Carroll's elevates girlhood, questioning the absurdities of "grown-up" reality. I also explore the dual nature of the secondary characters, analyzing the females against the Victorian Madonna/harlot dichotomy. For example, Tinker Bell, the working-class, profane fairy to Wendy's middle-class angel, is allowed much more freedom of expression and power to control her life than Wendy, though this freedom comes with a price. Primarily, she seeks Peter's company and attention, but she must settle for second place when Wendy is around. Mrs. Darling, the representation of angelic motherhood, is Barrie's professed "favorite" character. Though she cannot go back to Neverland, she experiences it vicariously by "tidying up" her children's minds. Through her we see what Wendy is destined to become, as well as Barrie's expression of the pivotal, sacred role of the mother. The male characters also play dual roles - sons and husbands - though they mostly serve to further define the female heroines. Alice suffers an identity crisis throughout her time in Wonderland, particularly since her place in the hierarchy of power is constantly changing. Her relationships with the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar, the King of Hearts, and others are what she uses to understand herself within the dream. Conversely, in Peter Pan, Barrie's male characters are defined by their relationship to the dominant females within the story. Mr. Darling and Captain Hook illustrate the dual nature of the Victorian male, though neither figure embodies the typical stereotype. The authors' treatment of the male characters does show insight into, and even a forgiveness for, their multiple flaws, but they are most often depicted according to how their behavior affects the heroines. By creating these girl-characters in fantastic settings, both authors made an appeal to their audience to become (or avoid becoming) what seemed inevitable: adult females. By doing so, they also displayed how the institution of motherhood affected their own realities and, perhaps subconsciously, what they wanted to sustain or change about the gendered expectations of Victorian society.
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Barry, Juli. "American families in fact and fiction : decentering a constrictive ideal /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 1998. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p9835407.

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40

Chornokur, Kateryna. "Postcolonial Religion and Motherhood in the Novels by Louise Erdrich and Alice Walker." Scholar Commons, 2012. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4009.

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41

Kirkpatrick, Leah Marie. "Hidden kisses, walled gardens, and angel-kinder : a study of the Victorian and Edwardian conceptions of motherhood and childhood in Little Women, The Secret Garden, and Peter Pan /." Full-text of dissertation on the Internet (1.17 MB), 2009. http://www.lib.jmu.edu/general/etd/2009/Masters/Kirkpatrick_Leah/kirkpalm_masters_11-19-2009_01.pdf.

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42

Jurney, Florence Ramond. "Voix/es libres : expression de la maternité et constitution d'une identité feminine dans une sélection d'œuvres francophones des Caraïbes /." view abstract or download file of text, 2002. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3045089.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 272-293). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
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43

Weaver, Kimberly C. "Mothering and Surrogacy in Twentieth-Century American Literature: Promise or Betrayal." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2011. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/77.

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Twentieth-century American literature is filled with new images of motherhood. Long gone is the idealism of motherhood that flourished during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in life and in writing. Long gone are the mother help books and guides on training mothers. The twentieth-century fiction writer ushers in new examples of motherhood described in novels that critique the bad mother and turn a critical eye towards the role of women and motherhood. This study examines the trauma surrounding twentieth-century motherhood and surrogacy; in particular, how abandonment, rape, incest, and negation often results in surrogacy; and how selected authors create characters who as mothers fail to protect their children, particularly their daughters. This study explores whether the failure is a result of social-economic or physiological circumstances that make mothering and motherlove impossible or a rejection of the ideal mother seldom realized by contemporary women, or whether the novelists have rewritten the notion of the mother’s help books by their fragmented representations of motherhood. Has motherhood become a rejection of self-potential? The study will critique mother-daughter relationships in four late twentieth-century American novels in their complex presentations of motherhood and surrogacy: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), Kaye Gibbons’s Ellen Foster (1990), Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) and Sapphire’s Push (1997). Appropriated terminology from other disciplines illustrates the prevalence of surrogacy and protection in the subject novels. The use of surrogate will refer to those who come forward to provide the role of mothering and protection.
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De, Renzo-Huter Lauretta. "Maternity and matricide in the works of Carlo Emilio Gadda : a Kristevan approach /." view abstract or download file of text, 2001. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3018360.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2001.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 202-212). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
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45

Nyanhongo, Mazvita Mollin. "Gender oppression and possibilities of empowerment: images of women in African literature with specific reference to Mariama Ba's So long a letter, Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of motherhood and Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous conditions." Thesis, University of Fort Hare, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10353/522.

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This study consists of a comparative analysis of three novels by three prominent African women writers which cast light on the ways in which women are oppressed by traditional and cultural norms in three different African countries. These three primary texts also explore the ways in which African women's lives are affected by other issues, such as colonialism and economic factors, and this study discusses this. An analysis of these novels reveals that the inter-connectedness of racial, class and gender issues exacerbates the oppression of many African women, thereby lessening the opportunities for them to attain self-realization. This study goes on to investigate whether there are possibilities of empowerment for the women in the primary texts, and examining the reasons why some women fail to transcend their situations of oppression. The primary novels will be discussed in different chapters, which explore the problems with which various women are beset, and discuss the extent to which the various women in the novels manage to attain empowerment. In conclusion, this study compares and contrasts the ways in which the women in the primary texts are oppressed and highlights the reasons why some women are able to attain empowerment, whilst others are unable to do so. It also shows that many women are beset with comparable forms of oppression, but they may choose to react to these situations differently. Over and above these issues, the study seeks to draw attention to the fact that women need to come together and contribute to the ways in which they can attain various forms of empowerment.
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46

Glenn, Brittany Austin. "(M)otherhood : the mother symbol in postcolonial francophone literature from West Africa and the Caribbean." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2008. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/1083.

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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf.edu/Systems/DigitalInitiatives/DigitalCollections/InternetDistributionConsentAgreementForm.pdf You may also contact the project coordinator, Kerri Bottorff, at kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu for more information.
Bachelors
Arts and Humanities
French
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47

Gross, Shurice L. "Under Silver Ash." University of Akron / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1312397649.

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48

Tighe-Pigott, Katharine. "THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE: STORIES." UKnowledge, 2018. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/81.

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The Elegant Universe: Stories is a story collection featuring female characters unflinching in their self-appraisal, and wry in their humor, who explore the realities of their heterosexual relationships, particularly the weighty decision whether to have children or not in these dark and terrifying times. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, the stories collected here explore the various, subtle modes of threat that are the palpable part of the experience of being a woman—not in society, or in the workplace, but primarily inside relationships with men. At the same time, the stories own that love can grow between men and women despite the near and present poison of misogyny. They own the miracle of motherhood while depicting the palpable fragility of new life and the proximity of mothers to unstoppable wreckage and ruin.
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Said, Patricia. "What is missing in The Kite Runner? : Replacing motherhood with fatherhood through the absence of mothers and the presence of fathers." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Lärarutbildningen, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-38417.

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This essay uses The Kite Runner, a well-known novel written by Khaled Hosseini in 2003, to analyse what is missing in the novel. Much of the previous research has discussed Hosseini and the main characters' roles as well as the important part of the settings to discover unseen messages. However, only one has analysed the novel through a gender perspective. This essay analyses the meaning behind the absent mothers and the present fathers through the use of Hélène Cixous’ view of women in literature and Hisham Sharabi’s theory of neopatriarchy. This paper argues that The Kite Runner intends to replace motherhood with fatherhood through the absence of mothers (and women) and the presence of fathers (and men), to strengthen patriarchy. The novel shows that women are unnecessary through their absence, which the characters of Soraya (who is infertile), Sanaubar (who is absent but returns and dies “again”) and Sofia (who is dead) demonstrates. In order for the woman to be present, she must be imperfect and if she is absent, the man claims both fatherhood and motherhood. Also, the novel uses male characters such as Hassan and Sohrab to make them feminised in order to need salvation and form the idea that those in need of rescue (in this case they are rape victims) can only occur to women or feminised men. Thus, this novel not only excludes women but also strengthen patriarchy and male dominance. This essay intends to contribute within the field of English literature, but further research is needed to demonstrate and make visible of gender inequality and (male) dominance.
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Smialek, Amy B. "FE/MALE MOTHER OF TWO: GENDER AND MOTHERHOOD IN LIONEL SHRIVER’S WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN." Cleveland State University / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1460635518.

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