Enforcing Performance: Disciplining Girls in British Co-educational Boarding School Stories, 1928–58

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-138
Author(s):  
CLARE HOLLOWELL

This paper examines girls and power in British co-educational boarding school stories published from 1928 to 1958. While feminist scholars have hailed the girls’ school story as a site of potential resistance to constricting gender roles, the same can not be said of the co-educational school story. While the genres share many tropes and characterisation, the move from an all-female world to a co-educational setting allows the characters access to a narrower range of gender roles, and renders the female characters significantly less powerful. The disciplinary structures of the co-educational schools, mirroring those in real life, operate in a supposedly progressive manner that in fact removes girls from access to power.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 12-22
Author(s):  
Indira Acharya Mishra

This article analyzes Abhi Subedi's play, Agniko Katha, from a feminist perspective. Feminist critics blame that the classics of literature are partly responsible for creating and perpetuating the myth about 'eternal feminine.' They claim that there are only two images available for women in patriarchal literature. One is the image of a virtuous passive woman and the other is the promiscuous selfish woman. The author of such literary texts rewards the virtuous woman whereas they punish the promiscuous one. Feminists argue that the underlying message of this method is: if a woman wants to survive in patriarchy she must act feminine. This effects women in their real life situation for they tend to perform feminine gender roles though they are disadvantageous to them. Thus, they protest the stereotype depiction of female characters in literary and other cultural texts. The article argues that Subedi defies the traditional notion of femininity and creates new roles for his female characters. The protagonist of the play denies to play her assigned feminine role and searches for a new role for her. She questions and protests the patriarchal gender roles which are bias against women. Thus, it is relevant to explore the feminist voice in the text. The finding of the article suggests that women, too, have the potentiality to create new roles for themselves and bring change into society.


Humanities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 120
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Steinway

In early modern England, infanticide was a crime overwhelmingly associated with women. Both popular texts and legal records depict women accused of infanticide as mothers acting against nature. These figures, however, do not often appear in the period’s drama. Instead, early modern drama includes fictionalized mothers who kill their children beyond infancy and into adulthood. By eschewing portrayals of neonaticide and the trials associated with it, the drama highlights a dependency upon female characters’ verbal narratives of the reproductive body that reinforces pregnancy’s unstable epistemology. I argue that the flexibility of this epistemology allows women, whether female characters in drama or historical women on trial, to distance themselves from the crime of infanticide by reconstructing narratives of both pregnancy and childbirth. Sharing rhetorical devices with the testimonies of women accused of infanticide, dramatic mothers such as Videna in The Tragedie of Gorboduc and Brunhalt in Thierry and Theodoret linguistically sever the biological ties between mother and child, thus disrupting conventional portrayals of reproduction. These parallel strategies position the reproductive female body as a site of resistance to the legal mechanisms designed to interpret it.


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Ryan

Hybrid literature has flourished in the Russian diaspora in the last decade and much of it is semi-autobiographical, concerned with the reconfiguration of identity in emigration. It dwells productively on the translation of the self and (more broadly) on the relationship between center and margin in the post-Soviet, transnational world. Gender roles are subject to contestation, as writers interrogate and reconsider expectations inherited from traditional Russian culture. This article situates Russian hybrid literature vis-à-vis Western feminism, taking into account Russian women’s particular experience of feminism. Four female writers of contemporary Russian-American literature – Lara Vapnyar, Sana Krasikov, Anya Ulinich, and Irina Reyn – inscribe failures of domesticity into their prose. Their female characters who cannot or do not cook or clean problematize woman’s role as nurturer. Home (geographic or imaginary) carries a semantic load of limitation and restriction, so failure as a homemaker may be paradoxically liberating. For female characters working in the West to support their families in Russia, domesticity is sometimes even more darkly cast as servitude. Rejection of traditional Russian definitions of women’s gender roles may signal successful renogotiation of identity in the diaspora. Although these writers may express nostalgia for the Russian culture of their early childhood, their critique of the tyranny of home is a powerful narrative gesture. Failures of domesticity represent successful steps in the redefinition of the self and they support these writers’ claim to transnational status.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Sims ◽  
Hilary Clare
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Catalina Millán Scheiding

Esta propuesta didáctica ejemplifica el uso de la escritura creativa como una forma de acercarse al discurso de género, a través de la generación de un héroe o heroína de fantasía. Se ofrece una actividad en la que se trabaja el conflicto aparente y el conflicto subyacente, donde los roles de género pueden ofrecer respuestas diferentes y redefinir las estructuras narratológicas. El alumnado trabaja sobre su propia creación literaria para definir sus expectativas literarias y los conflictos hegemónicos que se presentan en las historias de fantasía y ficción de su contexto social e ideológico. El contraste de los textos de creación propia con el análisis de textos y ejemplos audiovisuales de fantasía y ciencia ficción de creadoras literarias y de personajes femeninos, presenta una oportunidad para generar un espacio contrastivo y constructivo, a la vez que enlaza con competencias educativas y facilita un acercamiento comparativo a la critica literaria. This didactic proposal exemplifies the use of creative writing as a way to approach gender studies, through the creation of a fantasy hero. The activity offers the possibility of working both the apparent and underlaying conflicts, where gender roles can offer different answers and redefine narratological structures. The students work on their own literary creation to define their literary expectations and the predominant conflicts that appear in fantasy and fiction stories in their social and ideological context. The contrast of their own textual creations with the analyses of textual and audiovisual examples from fantasy and science fiction by female authors and including female characters offers the possibility of generating a contrastive and constructivespace, which also links to educational competences and facilitates a comparatist approach to literary criticism.


2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (35) ◽  
Author(s):  
U Noury ◽  
J Stoll ◽  
S Haeghebaert ◽  
D Antona ◽  
I Parent du Châtelet ◽  
...  

To date, 110 cases of measles have been identified by local health authorities in the Bourgogne and Nord-Pas-de-Calais regions of France, with onset of symptoms between 3 May and 19 July. The first three cases were reported on 25 June by a general practitioner to the French national institute of health (Institut de Veille Sanitaire, InVS) regional office in Bourgogne, in the centre of France. The three unvaccinated cases were students at a private religious school for girls located in Bourgogne and had onset of rash between mid-May and 23 June. On the same day, another general practitioner in Nord-Pas-de-Calais reported a case of measles in an unvaccinated 14 year-old boy attending a private religious boarding school for boys. The boy had developed a rash on 19 June and happened to live in the same place in Bourgogne where the above-mentioned girls' school was located. The two schools have elementary to secondary students. Both are private religious boarding schools. Most of the students come from the surrounding areas, some resident pupils are from other French regions, and some from abroad. All students returned home on 26 June for summer holidays.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-116
Author(s):  
Bagus Afiansah ◽  
Sumartini Sumartini ◽  
Maharani Intan Andalas IRP

Penelitian ini dilandasi oleh kondisi kaum perempuan yang rentan mengalami kemiskinan. Banyak karya sastra yang digunakan sebagai kritik sosial terhadap permasalahan yang ada dalam kehidupan nyata, salah satunya adalah novel Genduk karya Sundari Mardjuki. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk : mendeskripsikan gambaran kemiskinan yang dialami tokoh perempuan, mendeskripsikan konstruksi gender, dan mendeskripsikan peran-peran tokoh perempuan mengatasi kemiskinan dalam novel Genduk karya Sundari Mardjuki. Sumber data penelitian ini adalah novel Genduk karya Sundari Mardjuki yang diterbitkan oleh Gramedia Pustaka Utama pada tahun 2016. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah deskriptif-kualitatif dengan pendekatan kritik sastra feminis. Penelitian ini difokuskan pada kemiskinan yang dialami tokoh perempuan dan peran mereka mengatasi kemiskinan tersebut. Data diperoleh dengan menggunakan teknik baca-catat. Hasil analisis dari penelitian ini adalah sebagai berikut. 1) Terdapat gambaran kemiskinan yang dialami tokoh perempuan Genduk dan Yung yaitu tidak terpenuhinya kebutuhan dasar dengan layak. Kemiskinan yang dialami Genduk dan Yung disebabkan oleh ketergantungan pada satu sumber penghasilan sebagai petani tembakau dan konstruksi gender. Kemiskinan yang dialami Genduk dan Yung mengakibatkan ketergantungan pada pihak lain. 2) Kontruksi gender terdapat pada semua tokoh baik laki-laki maupun perempuan, tetapi tidak semua tokoh memiliki konstruksi gender yang dilekatkan masyarakat. Tokoh perempuan seperti Genduk, Bu As, dan Yung adalah tokoh-tokoh yang melawan konstruksi gender dengan hadir di ranah publik 3) Terdapat peran-peran yang dilakukan tokoh-tokoh perempuan dalam usahanya mengatasi kemiskinan yang mereka alami. peran-peran tersebut antara lain membuka akses penjualan tembakau, menjalankan peran publik sebagai petani tembakau, memberikan pendidikan untuk anak-anak di Lereng Gunung Sindoro, menciptakan alternatif lapangan pekerjaan bagi perempuan, dan melibatkan perempuan dalam mengambil keputusan. This study is based on the female condition which tend to gain poverty. Many literatures used as a social critique towards prolems in real life, such as Genduk  novel by Sundari Mardjuki. The aims of this research are : (1) to describe the poverty gained by female characters; (2) to describe gender construction; (3) to describe the roles of female characters in dealing with poverty in Genduk novel by Sundari Mardjuki. The source of the data is taken from Genduk novel by Sundari Mardjuki  published by Gramedia Pustaka Utama in 2016. The method used by the writer is descriptive-qualitative with literature feminism critique approach. This research is focus on the poverty occurred in female characters and their roles in dealing with it. The data are obtained by reading and taking notes technique. The results of the analysis are as follows. 1) The image pattern of poverty occurred in female characters in Genduk novel by Sundari Mardjuki including:  relative poverty covers the needs of clothes, houses, and foods, and also social image which covers the dependence on others and inability to adapt with environments. Seasonal poverty caused by economical sources. 2) The poverty occurred in women is related to gender construction prevail in each gender. However, Genduk, Yung and Bu As are the characters against the gender construction by existing in public 3)  Roles of female characters in dealing with poverty which happen to them and their environment. The roles is  opening an access to tobacco distributors, carrying out public role for women,  giving education for childrens at Sindoro Valley, creating alternative job vacancy for woman, women involvement in getting decision.


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