scholarly journals “Bluebeard” versus black British women’s writing

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Alexandra J. Sanchez

Abstract Helen Oyeyemi’s 2011 novel Mr. Fox artfully remasters the “Bluebeard” fairytale and its many variants and rewritings, such as Jane Eyre and Rebecca. It is also the first novel in which Oyeyemi does not overtly address blackness or racial identity. However, the present article argues that Mr. Fox is concerned with the status of all women writers, including women writers of colour. With Mr. Fox, Oyeyemi echoes the assertiveness and inquisitiveness of Bluebeard’s last wife, whose disobedient questioning of Bluebeard’s canonical authority leads her to discover, denounce, and warn other women about his murderous nature. A tale of the deception and manipulation inherent in storytelling, Mr. Fox allows for its narrative foul play to be exposed on the condition that its literary victims turn into detective-readers and decipher the hidden clues left behind by the novel’s criminal-authors. This article puts the love triangle between author St. John Fox, muse Mary, and wife Daphne under investigation by associating reading and writing motifs with detective fiction. Oyeyemi’s ménage à trois can thus be exposed as an anthropomorphic metaphor for the power struggle between the patriarchal literary canon, established feminist literature, and up-and-coming (black British) women writers, incarnated respectively by Mr. Fox, Mary Foxe, and Daphne Fox.

1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard H. Dana

This paper describes the status of multicultural assessment training, research, and practice in the United States. Racism, politicization of issues, and demands for equity in assessment of psychopathology and personality description have created a climate of controversy. Some sources of bias provide an introduction to major assessment issues including service delivery, moderator variables, modifications of standard tests, development of culture-specific tests, personality theory and cultural/racial identity description, cultural formulations for psychiatric diagnosis, and use of findings, particularly in therapeutic assessment. An assessment-intervention model summarizes this paper and suggests dimensions that compel practitioners to ask questions meriting research attention and providing avenues for developments of culturally competent practice.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 81-85
Author(s):  
Linshuo Qi

Before the Victorian era, it was rare for women to be authors and writers to fix the protagonists of their works as female characters. However, in the 19th century, there was a rapid increase of women writers and emphasis on feminist consciousness. Among all the works of women writers, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights which were written by the Bronte sisters were distinctive. The Bronte sisters conveyed their feminist consciousness and described the society in their works. Both works emphasized romantic relationships as the narrative thread. By shaping the female characters in their works as self-reliant women who fought for equivalence and freedom in the era where male chauvinism occupied leadership roles, the Bronte sisters conveyed their eagerness for freedom, equality, and their feminist consciousness. This paper combines features of the Victorian era and the Bronte sisters’ life experiences to analyze feminist consciousness in these two works and make comparisons between them.


Time and Tide ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 177-208
Author(s):  
Catherine Clay

This chapter picks up and extends arguments advanced earlier in the book regarding the status of women’s writing and criticism during the years of modernism’s cultural ascendancy and academic institutionalisation. In the contexts of (1) a newly configured ‘University English’ which took an authoritative new role in the cultural field against an earlier belle-lettres tradition, and (2) the unprecedented prestige of middlebrow fiction in the 1930s, the chapter explores how Time and Tide navigated increasing tensions between ‘highbrow’ and ‘middlebrow’ spheres and succeeded in straddling both. First the chapter discusses the introduction in 1927 of a new ‘Miscellany’ section of the paper – home to E. M. Delafield’s popular serial ‘The Diary of a Provincial Lady’ – and argues that these columns created and legitimised a place for the ‘feminine middlebrow’ and amateur writer as the periodical increased its orientation towards the highbrow sphere. Second, with reference to the appointment of Time and Tide’s first two literary editors, the chapter discusses how the periodical negotiated a widening gap in this period between intellectual and general readers, and between amateur and professional modes of criticism.


Author(s):  
Jacob Agner

This essay argues that Eudora Welty’s 1966 civil rights story, “The Demonstrators,” casts a spotlight on the “crime” of systemic racism in the U.S. South through the popular crime genre of American noir fiction and film. Although a mid-twentieth-century category mainly recognized for its depictions of dark cities and shadowy “mean streets,” noir’s stylized world collides with the Closed Society in Welty’s late story and throws into stark relief the subtler effects of white supremacy. Turning noir’s key traits on their head (e.g., black-and-white chiaroscuro lighting, the femme fatale, and the tropes of hard-boiled detective fiction), Welty throughout “The Demonstrators” brilliantly illuminates the subtle tactics of, and clues left behind by, criminalized acts of whiteness. In so doing, Welty’s masterful crime story pays homage to classic noir artists such as Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes, and Alfred Hitchcock.


Author(s):  
Kelvin Joseph Bwalya ◽  
Tanya Du Plessis ◽  
Chris Rensleigh

With widespread adoption of ICT usage in public service delivery platforms (e-Government) throughout the world, African countries have vowed not to be left behind in this marathon. Robust e-Government adoption depends on the strategy employed to implement it. This paper presents the different initiatives that have been employed to promote e-Government development and development in Botswana, Mozambique and Malawi thereby showing the impact of such initiatives on overall e-Government agenda. Using extensive document and literature reviews, this paper further intends to investigate the status of e-Government implementation in these three countries and understand the multi-dimensional factors that dictate adoption and use of e-Government services. The paper has found that deliberate fiscal ICT policies, trust of e-applications, availability of ICT infrastructures such as appropriate mobile phone and base stations technology, usability of ICT platforms, and relevant ICT skills of ordinary citizens have a lasting positive impact on people’s intention to engage in e-Government.


Author(s):  
Hawraa Al-Hassan

W hen Saddam Hussein infamously proclaimed that the word and the bullet came from the same barrel, he created an embattled cultural space which would persist because of, and in spite of, his dominance of Iraqi politics for almost twenty-five years. This book is not an analysis of the status of women in Iraq under Saddam Hussein; nor is it exclusively about Iraqi women writers inside or outside the country, or about constructions of gender and gender identity. Instead the focus of the book is, to use the words of Abir Hamdar, on the ‘ongoing struggle for symbolic power in the Arab world’....


Author(s):  
Grace Kinyanjui

Men greatly outnumber women in leadership positions. Women are much less likely than men to be considered leaders. The status of women and leadership has been a quiet subject that is barely pronounced consciously. This is attributable to the various levels of discrimination, barriers, and biases that the society has towards women. The glass ceiling phenomenon is a great indicator and an illustrator of the fact that women have got what it takes to lead at the top levels in various spheres, but this has been curtailed by the various manifestations of the glass ceiling. Various scholars have demonstrated the contribution of inhibitions such as human capital differences, gender differences, as well as gender perceptions and biases. This chapter explores the intricate relationship and interplay between all these factors.


2015 ◽  
pp. 365-379
Author(s):  
Rafiat A. Oyekunle ◽  
H. B. Akanbi-Ademolake

This chapter presents an overview of e-Government technological divide in developing countries. Technological divide here does not consist simply of telecommunications and computer equipment (i.e. ICTs), but it is also e-Readiness (i.e. the available capacity as indicated by workforce capacity to build, deploy, and maintain ICT infrastructure), ICT literacy (using digital technology, communication tools, and/or networks appropriately to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information), e-Inclusion and/or e-Exclusion (i.e. no one is left behind in enjoying the benefits of ICT), etc., which are factors also necessary in order for people to be able to use and benefit from e-Government applications. Most of the currently published works on e-Government strategies are based on successful experiences from developed countries, which may not be directly applicable to developing countries. Based on a literature review, this chapter reveals the status of e-Government technological divide in developing countries and also underscores the challenges associated with e-Government in developing countries, thus bringing to the limelight the factors that influence the growth of the technological divide and different approaches that have been put in place to overcome the divide. In conclusion, this chapter advocates education and training, local content development, enhancing network infrastructure, and capacity building, among others, as ways of bridging the divide.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feifei Gao ◽  
Yuan Yao ◽  
Chengwen Yao ◽  
Yan Xiong ◽  
Honglin Ma ◽  
...  

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