Chapter 5 Jewish Female Agency in the Ghetto Mercantile Elite

2021 ◽  
pp. 177-201
Keyword(s):  
Female Agency

scholarly journals Female agency in the films of Jean Renoir

2021 ◽  
pp. 095715582110129
Author(s):  
Barry Nevin
Keyword(s):  
Gender Relations ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Gender Representation ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Male Power ◽  
Jean Renoir ◽  
The Relationship

Although Jean Renoir’s oeuvre has been extensively debated since the emergence of the politique des auteurs in the pages of Cahiers du cinéma, his representation of gender relations has sustained less discussion than his signature formal style. This article posits that Renoir’s films provide a valuable means of identifying how gender, specifically female identity, affects temporal trajectories in cinema. First, it illustrates Gilles Deleuze’s understanding of crystallisation and situates it in relation to current scholarship on gender representation in the director’s work. Second, it conducts a close analysis of the relationship between female identity and crystallisation through a close analysis of the central female characters of La Règle du jeu (1939) and The Golden Coach (1952). This article ultimately argues that whether these characters belong to an upper-or lower-class stratum, they are subordinated to male power, which plays a determining role in the range of potential futures available to them.

Yevgeny Zamyatin’s “Hypertext” About the Female Warrior. Article I

2021 ◽  
pp. 18-38
Author(s):  
Veronika B. Zuseva-Ozkan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Male Character ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Silver Age ◽  
Woman Warrior ◽  
Horse Riding ◽  
Marina Tsvetaeva ◽  
Rural World ◽  
Physical Abilities ◽  
The Woman Warrior

This article deals with Yevgeny Zamyatin’s “hypertext” about the female warrior, i.e. with the totality of her manifestations in the works of the writer and the semantic continuum that they form. This type of character is defined as a heroine with outstanding physical abilities (such as strength, horse-riding and shooting skills, etc. - and also great beauty), a strong, proud personality, persistence, ability to fight back, determination to gain the upper hand, to win at all costs - especially in the game of power and armed conflict with the male character that is in love with the heroine and/or is loved by her. The author identifies Zamyatin’s works in which the woman warrior appears, analyzes the plot functions and the characteristic motif complex associated with this image. The author demonstrates that the female warrior represents a very frequent type of heroine in Zamyatin’s works: the image appears at the beginning of his career as a writer, in the short story “Kryazhi” (1915), and accompanies him until the end, manifesting itself in the screenplays written in the 1930s. The author reveals that a specific variant of the plot featuring the female warrior is implemented in Zamyatin’s works: the heroine is shown as equal in strength with the male character, and the test of power happens, in particular in the form of a literal duel. Whatever its outcome is and whoever wins, the storyline usually finishes with the death of one or both characters - either during the combat or as its remote consequence. While the type of the plot is usually the same, the female character itself shows a wide variety: there are Valkyrie-like heroines (Ildegonda in the play Atilla), polenitsas from Russian bylina songs (such as Nastasya Mikulishna in the screenplay “Dobrynya” or Marya in “Kryazhi”), Mongolian women warriors (Borte, Ulek), and even contemporary heroines of this type (Zinaida in the screenplay “The God of Dance”). Usually such characters are attributed in Zamyatin to the legendary epic past or rooted in “folk archaics”; they belong to the rural world, to the Russian village. The constant topoi and the evolution of the female warrior in Zamyatin’s artistic works are revealed; in particular, such motifs as love-hate, test of strength (in the form of a duel or a competition), mutual intendedness of two “strong ones” and their tragic non-encounter are considered. The author notes that the supervalue of the female warriors in Zamyatin’s works is love, while for some other writers of the Silver Age, for instance, for Marina Tsvetaeva or Lyubov Stolitsa, such values were female agency, independence, control over one’s life, freedom, or even spiritual salvation. The play Atilla and its heroine Ildegonda are analyzed in this article in particular detail; the sources of this image are revealed.

Mary Hallock-Greenewalt's Spectral Middle East

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-49
Author(s):  
Anne Ciecko
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Female Agency

This essay dialogically examines materials from Mary Hallock-Greenewalt's largely self-curated and reflexively annotated archive, illuminating overlooked facets of her life and work, in particular her bicultural upbringing, elements of syncretism that inform her oeuvre, and her practices of self-mythologizing. The text is divided into interconnected sections that explore the following facets of the spectral Middle East in Hallock-Greenewalt's life and work: the remembrance of the Syrian mother, the activation of pervasive Orientalist discourses, genealogical expansions through the figure of Hallock-Greenewalt as mother-inventor, and archival interventions. It argues that her autobiographical writings engage her mythologized past in service of the construction of hagiographic narratives of female agency.

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