The Rape of Lucretia

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Female Character ◽  
Dominant Female ◽  
Sexual Choices

This chapter looks closely at the dominant female character of the first three seasons of the series—Lucretia, the wife of the gladiatorial ludus master Batiatus. It maintains that Lucretia's sexual choices and, in particular, her relationship to the act of rape as portrayed in the series present an ongoing reflection on the depiction of rape in modern historical fiction to assert power and to demean women. As the chapter argues, the question of rape in Spartacus is fraught with issues of power and its abuse, and it exposes how the series creators make a significant and meaningful distinction between implicit rape, which is depicted non-violently and often performed silently by extras, and the violent, explicitly abusive rape of named characters.

The Late-Victorian ‘New Man’ and the Neo-Victorian ‘Neo-Man’

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Margaret D. Stetz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
New Man ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The New Woman ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Victorian Age

The New Man was a crucial topic of discussion and a continual preoccupation in late-Victorian feminist writing, precisely because he was more often a wished-for presence than an actual one. Nevertheless, creators of neo-Victorian fiction and film repeatedly project him backwards onto the screen of literary history, representing him as having in fact existed in the Victorian age as a complement to the New Woman. What is at stake in retrospectively situating the New Man – or, as I will call him, the ‘Neo-Man’ – in the nineteenth century, through historical fiction? If one impulse behind fictional returns to the Victorian period is nostalgia, then what explains this nostalgia for The Man Who Never Was? This essay will suggest that neo-Victorian works have a didactic interest in transforming present-day readers, especially men, through depictions of the Neo-Man, which broaden the audience's feminist sympathies, queer its notions of gender relations, and alter its definition of masculinity.

Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084 as a Journey of an Apolitical Mother

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-281
Author(s):  
Sadhana Rengaswamy. R ◽  
S. Ambika
Keyword(s):  
Female Character ◽  
Mahasweta Devi ◽  
The Awakening ◽  
The People

Mahasweta Devi is one of the most important writers writing in India today. she stands with few equals among today's Asian writers in the dedication and directness with which she has turned writing into a form of service to the people. Her writing is disturbing because it shows the reader her or his own true face. Her Mother of 1084 analyzes the occurrences of failed Naxalite insurgency in Bengal in the 1970s. It shows the larger problem of the nation’s suppression of any authentic form of subaltern insurgency. It’s a saga of the Naxalite resistance in Bengal through the characters of Sujata and Nandini, her powerful exploration of subjectivity voiced through the female character. It’s a tragedy of an apolitical mother. This paper explores how the Naxalite movement brings two subaltern mothers together instead of their class barriers which in turn lead to the awakening of Sujata.

Gender Diversity in Computing: An Environmental Perspective

10.28945/3248 ◽  
2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecille Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Household Head ◽  
Female Students ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Female Household Head ◽  
Dominant Female ◽  
Computer Confidence ◽  
Males And Females ◽  
Research Questions

Previous research conducted by the author investigated the socio-political backgrounds of two groups of female students studying computer-related university programmes. They came from distinctly different backgrounds and were enrolled at two institutions with very different legacies. The author found that socio-political factors, in particular the role of a dominant female household head and aggressive governmental affirmative action, had a significant effect on the girls’ levels of confidence and subsequently on their decision to study computer-related courses. Based on this insight, the researcher undertook to look further into gender diversity with respect to self-perceived general computer confidence and self-perceived ability to program a computer. A sample of both female and male Information T echnology students from very similar disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds was surveyed. The sample of 204 students was drawn from all three years of the National Diploma in Information Technology. The author considered the following research questions: (i) Do males and females studying computer-related courses have differing computer selfefficacy levels? (ii) Do males and females studying computer programming have differing attitudes towards their ability to program? (iii) Do males and females differ in their attitudes towards the programming learning environment?

Popular Fiction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roslyn Weaver
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
History Of

This chapter discusses the history of popular fiction in Australia. The question of place has always been central to Australian fiction, not only as a thematic element but also as a critical or political preoccupation. In part, this is because popular fiction writers, wanting to attract broad audiences, either exploited their Australian content to appeal to international readers or have excised the local to produce a generic and thus more readily accessible setting for outsiders. The chapter considers works by popular fiction writers who adopt a range of positions in relation to their focus on place, but often tackle many different aspects of Australian social and historical change. These novels cover various genres such as crime fiction, historical fiction and romance, science fiction and fantasy, and include Fergus Hume's The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), Nevil Shute's On the Beach (1957), Damien Broderick's The Dreaming Dragons (1980), and Cecilia Dart-Thornton's The Ill-Made Mute (2001).

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Murnaghan ◽  
Deborah H. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
Pleasure Reading ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Classical Myths ◽  
Classical Culture

The book’s subject is the widespread and formative reception of classical culture that takes place in childhood, with a specific focus on children’s pleasure reading in Britain and America from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The production of literature designed to foster children’s connection to antiquity is identified as an adult project, which begins with the retelling of classical myths in the 1850s and which this study traces primarily in myth collections and works of historical fiction. Attention is also given to adults’ memories of their own childhood encounters with antiquity and the uses and meanings assigned to those encounters in memoirs and other works for adult readers.

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