Isabella in the Marketplace

This chapter begins by distinguishing three modes of the representation of female experience in Romantic literature: conscious feminism; representation of female experience from within the ideological constraints of the dominant order; and representation of female experience without overt consciousness of ideology or social reality. Keats’s narrative poem ‘Isabella or the Pot of Basil’ is considered as working within the third category. The ostensible conventionally Romantic contrast between the idealized lovers and the calculatingly manipulative brothers is analysed as much less straightforward. The oblivion of the lovers to the reality of their social position lays them open to exploitation by the mercantile brothers; the lovers are thus complicit in their own destruction. This complexity is reproduced at the level of the stylistic contrasts within the poem.

Gothic Overtones: The Female Monster in Margaret Atwood’s “Lusus Naturae”

In “Lusus Naturae,” Margaret Atwood shows her predilection for the machinations of Gothic fiction. She resorts to gothic conventions to express female experience and explore the psychological but also the physical victimisation of the woman in a patriarchal system. Atwood employs the female monster metaphor to depict the passage from adolescence to womanhood through a girl who undergoes a metamorphosis into a “vampire” as a result of a disease, porphyria. The vampire as a liminal gothic figure, disrupts the boundaries between reality and fantasy/supernatural, human and inhuman/animal, life and death, good and evil, femme fatale and virgin maiden. By means of the metaphor of the vampire woman, Atwood unveils and contests the construction of a patriarchal gender ideology, which has appalling familial and social implications.

JUNG’S CONCEPT OF ARCHETYPES IN FEMINIST REVISIONIST MYTHOLOGY, IN THE CONTEXT OF M. ATWOOD’S PENELOPIAD AND M. MILLER’S CIRCE

The article deals with the concept of archetypes by K. G. Jung in the context of M. Atwood’s The Penelopiad and M. Miller’s Circe, which represent feminist revisionist mythology tradition. The study focuses on exploring the transformation of the Jungian archetypes of the figures of Penelope and Circe in Atwood and Miller’s novels. The author argues that while in original myths Penelope and Circe represent the archetypes of Mother and the feminine representation of Wise old man, in the novels Penelope’s archetype transforms into Mask, and Circe starts representing Mother archetype. The author comes to the conclusion that such transformation is a result of Atwood and Miller’s dealing with feminist agenda as well their attempt to present different sides of female experience, making mythological figures closer to real women.

Aniela Walewska’s Carpathian trail

The aim of the article is to bring back from obscurity a travel account, Wycieczka z Szczawnicy do Szmeks (A Trip from Szczawnica to Szmeksy) by a forgotten writer of the Romantic period, Aniela Walewska (1826–1873). During her Carpathian trip in the summer 1854 she admired mountain landscapes and visited historically attractive localities. The traveller began her several-day-long trip in Szczawnica, subsequently visiting, among others, Lubowla, Podoliniec, Kieżmark, Szmeks and Nowa Wieś. As she traversed the Carpathians, she got to know the local architecture, paint-ings and sculptures, saw buildings in fashionable resorts, enthused over the picturesque sight of the Pieniny range and the forbidding beauty of the Tatras, fully sensing the unique aura of the mountain scenery. The extraordinary landscapes were a source of many unforgettable emotional and aesthetic experiences for the writer. She was absorbed particularly by the Tatra waterfalls, which moved her heart and soul. In addition, Aniela Walewska made observations concerning the methods and condition of travel, noted down historical and tourist information, and revealed sensations and impressions accompanying her during the excursion. Thus her account can be regarded not only as a culturally and socially interesting document of the period, but also as a record of a personal, female experience of a newly explored space. In addition, it is also a document of the life of an individual — a nineteenth-century woman of letters — which should be classified as a valuable source for the study of her biography and work.

The Tea workers

The region of Darjeeling has been a backdrop for political conflict since its colonization by the British in the 1800s. In the aftermath of the politically-motivated 104-day long citywide shutdown in the summer of 2017, Darjeeling’s tea industry took a significant hit. The forced closure of the plantations meant that workers were unable to earn wages, in spite of often being at the frontlines of the Gorkhaland movement protests. This paper contextualizes the research that went into the short film The Tea Workers. In particular, it explores the complexity of the female experience of labour on and around tea plantations, as well as the ways in which labour and gender hierarchies intersect to uniquely affect women labourers in the politicized landscape of tea production.

The Tea workers

The region of Darjeeling has been a backdrop for political conflict since its colonization by the British in the 1800s. In the aftermath of the politically-motivated 104-day long citywide shutdown in the summer of 2017, Darjeeling’s tea industry took a significant hit. The forced closure of the plantations meant that workers were unable to earn wages, in spite of often being at the frontlines of the Gorkhaland movement protests. This paper contextualizes the research that went into the short film The Tea Workers. In particular, it explores the complexity of the female experience of labour on and around tea plantations, as well as the ways in which labour and gender hierarchies intersect to uniquely affect women labourers in the politicized landscape of tea production.

FROM PERIPHERY TO CENTRE: EXPLORING GENDERED NARRATIVES IN SELECT FICTIONS OF SUCHITRA BHATTACHARYA

The issue of women empowerment breaking the boundaries of patriarchy is the locus of the narrative based on the female experience. The representation of the female perspective in a narrative constructs an alternative discursive narrative, different from that of the male narrative. And once, when the perspective is changed, the whole narrative got changed. Suchitra Bhattacharya's lady detective fiction based on detective Mitin aka Pragyaparamita Mukherjee introduces detective literature from female experience, quite unlike the conventional detective genre, exploring gendered experience in terms of intelligence and its relation with the discourse of power. These fictions encode female experience within the web of the narrative, opening the door of a new prospect towards detective literature. The lady detective literature, as it was developed, was resistance against the male narrative of the detective literature and the subverted female presentation of it. It brings forward the women agency that was previously denied by patriarchy and reconstitutes the ways of interpreting a text incorporating women in the center. The narrative establishes and celebrates the thinking capability of women negated in the male narrative. Henceforth, the argument is how and to what extent the female narrative achieves its hold over discursive power, and succeeds in bringing up a whole new thread by subverting the discursive narrative of the androgenous stratum.

Makkah: City of self-identity and inspiration

This study highlights the duty of individuals and the community, rather than organizations, to preserve a city’s heritage and identity. It underlines important facts about Makkah as one of the world’s major historical and religious cities. The analysis reflects upon an academic journey to appreciate and conserve the city’s identity. It is a story of ‘Being Inspired and Being an Inspiration’ through education. On the one hand, ‘Being Inspired’ stresses a personal understanding of preserving the identity of Makkah and its architectural heritage. It is a narrative of the female view and experience through culture, architecture and art. Diversely, ‘Being an Inspiration’ is demonstrated via academic case studies and chronological documentation that mirrors historical stages of the city. It is a pioneering piece about the female experience, documenting the story of one of the first female graduates of architecture in Saudi, and the outcomes of teaching and identity in higher education.