scholarly journals Gender and Genre: From the Female Bildungsroman to the Postfeminist Coming-of-Age Novel

2021 ◽  
pp. 243-253
Author(s):  
Soňa Šnircová
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Female Bildungsroman ◽  
Gender Perspectives ◽  
Gender And Genre ◽  
British Novels

The paper draws attention to the fact that the introduction of gender perspectives into the studies of the Bildungsroman, or novel of development, has opened up the possibility of delineating specific female versions of the genre, ranging from the classic female Bildungsroman, through the feminist Bildungsroman to the postfeminist coming-of-age novel. The following discussion of heroines in British novels of development focuses on the changing socio-cultural factors that have influenced the representations of women’s emancipatory struggles in works by female authors over recent centuries. The selected examples reveal that the transformations of the classic female Bildungsroman which emerged in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have brought about a series of significant innovations that include not only new types of heroines whose self-realization can be achieved in ways unthinkable for their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century predecessors but also more significant thematic and formal variations on the genre.

‘To Let To Let To Let’

2020 ◽  
pp. 93-143
Author(s):  
Ushashi Dasgupta
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Great Expectations ◽  
Private House ◽  
The World ◽  
David Copperfield ◽  
A Site

This chapter explores the significance of rented spaces in the nineteenth-century Bildungsroman, reading David Copperfield and Great Expectations alongside novels by Catherine Gore and WM Thackeray. Some of the most memorable characters in these coming-of-age narratives are landlords and landladies, who act as mentors to the protagonist as he tries to find his place in the world. Dickens interrogates the idea that it is a rite of passage for a young man to take lodgings before he moves into a private house. The chapter reveals that Dickens uses spatial and architectural metaphors, including images drawn from the world of tenancy, to articulate the process of growing up. It ends with a section on the window tax debate of the 1840s and 1850s and the traces it leaves in the fiction of the period; the window is a site charged with symbolism for characters preoccupied with their ‘prospects’.

Should We Program Robotic Emotions from the Gender Perspective?

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Mercedes García-Ordaz ◽  
Rocío Carrasco-Carrasco ◽  
Francisco José Martínez-López
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Feminist Research ◽  
Human Reasoning ◽  
Gender Perspective ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
Emotional Aspects ◽  
Complex Decision ◽  
Gender Perspectives

Scientific research on robotic emotions has been increasingly developing for the last few years. It is presumed that in twenty five years’ time there will be robots with emotions capable of taking decisions. Therefore, it is important to determine if people should take into account gender when designing the development of this kind of robotic emotions. Moreover, the authors assume that nowadays there is no intelligence without emotions, which are the ones that ultimately help taking decisions. It is contended here that the emotional elements and features of human reasoning should be taken into account when designing the personality of robots. As has been shown in the last few years, the concept of gender is constructed by socio-cultural factors. Gender perspectives are increasingly being applied to different fields of knowledge. Indeed, and as recent feminist research has highlighted, technology is affected by gender relations. Technology in general has been traditionally considered as a sign of men’s power and masculinity defined in terms of technological capabilities. Nevertheless, current discourses have provided new definitions of technology, of gender identity and of what being human means. In the same way, definitions of gender also change with time, affected by technological developments. The present work aims at demonstrating that the gender perspective is indeed very useful when applied to the field of robotics. Specifically, and when dealing with complex decision-taking, it becomes necessary to analyse which managing activities women can better develop in order to apply them, together with other features, to the design of robotic emotions. The purpose is, then, to propose a robotic model that, after the inclusion of such emotional aspects, breaks with old constrained gender stereotypes and takes a rather liberating view. At the same time, such a proposal should enable researchers to get better results when creating robots capable of managing other robotic teams and taking complex decisions. In short, the authors seek to apply the gender perspective in the analysis of some emotional features to be taken into account before they are applied to the field of robotics.

scholarly journals Queering gender in contemporary female Bildung narrative

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 135-143
Author(s):  
Soňa Šnircová
Keyword(s):  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
British Novel ◽  
Female Bildungsroman ◽  
Female Version

Abstract The paper explores, in the context of feminist discussions about the Bildungsroman, a contemporary British novel that offers shocking images of female coming of age at the turn of the millennium. Queering gender and introducing male elements into the heroine’s process of maturation, the analysed novel appears to raise questions about the continuous relevance of the feminist distinction between male and female version of the genre. The paper however argues that although significantly rewriting both female Bildung and pornographic narratives, Helen Walsh’s Brass can still be read as a variation of the female Bildungsroman and an example of its contemporary developments.

The Sati, the Bride, and the Widow: Sacrificial Woman in the Nineteenth Century

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Gilmartin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
The Dead ◽  
British Novels ◽  
Three Phases

My title brings together two cultures — Indian and British — and three phases of womanhood — the bride, the widow, and — through suttee — the dead widow. Suttee, or sati, is the obsolete Hindu practice in which a widow burns herself upon her husband's funeral pyre. In this essay I wish to explore how sati was used as a metaphor in British novels and periodicals in the nineteenth century — used both as a metaphor for the British widow's mourning rituals and for the plight of the British bride in an unhappy marriage. I shall argue that sati forms a nexus connecting the seemingly disparate situations of the bride and widow, and that it also in this metaphorical sense forms a nexus or point of comparison between British and Indian culture.

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