2017 Spring English Senior Honors Theses (MU)
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Item Romantic friendships in Shirley and Wives and daughters(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2017) Marshall Dungey, Michaela; Chang, ElizabethIt is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. -- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice. The opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice is an often quoted phrase when speaking of Jane Austen. And, while Miss Austen asserts that all men are in want of a wife, she does not say that the desire is reciprocal. Even more ironically, the bulk of that same novel is not, in fact, devoted to the exploration of heterosexual marriage -- as her introduction would lead the reader to assume -- but instead devotes itself to studying relationships between women. The penultimate marriage between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy is an event that the reader is not even present for, and is summed up in the last chapter as the day that "Mrs. Bennet got rid of her two most deserving daughters". This attention, documentation and exploration of female friendship, and the varying forms that that may take, is far more prominent and important to the Victorian novel than the (usually) eventual heterosexual marriage plot.Item Behind the blue shutters(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2017) Schrade, Corissa; Morgan, SpeerThroughout western history, people feared what they did not know; anything considered different made society feel uncomfortable. Humans have been conditioned to dislike differences and stay away from them. Because of this, western culture tends to ostracize people different from them and focus on similarities among themselves. Even though several social movements surrounded around equality molds American history, the tendency to think in binaries prevails. Humans see oppositional categorizing as essential; a person is boy or girl, black or white, straight or gay; the amounts of binaries are endless. Not only does society place individuals into opposing groups, they also exclude each other within those groups. Intragroup differences go unaddressed, especially in social movements. However, the study of intersectionality emphasizes the importance of accepting differences as differences and forming genuine empathetic relationships with people of different identities. According to popular belief, third wave feminism gave birth to intersectionality, but with close examination of the waves of western feminism, one sees how the ideas associated with intersectionality date back to the abolitionist movement.Item Rape and censorship in Tess of the D’Urbervilles in the late 1800s(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2017) Layton, Ally; West, NancyIn my thesis I argue that the limitations of the publishing environment during the late-Victorian era led Thomas Hardy to practice self-censorship when writing the rape scene in Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Though a close reading of the scene, I show how Hardy makes characterization, syntactical and narrative choices to further his purpose of drawing reader's attention to the social problem of rape in late 1800s rural England. Then, I present an analysis of the evolution of the rape scene from manuscript to serialized text to the volume editions. Hardy revised the scene for twenty-two years after its publication, and I show how these revisions reflect the restrictions he was under as a writer during this era. Finally, I highlight the prefaces Hardy wrote for each edition of Tess, and how they reveal his attitudes about the barriers he faced when publishing the rape scene. pI am aware that each of these topics could be a study in itself. However, I am interested in how all of these variables work together to give a sense of why Tess of the D’Urbervilles and the rape scene were so important to Hardy. I argue that there is value in stepping back to see the bigger picture, beyond the text itself. I seek to understand the reasons why Hardy chose to write on the topic of rape and why he so tenaciously attended to its presentation. My intention is not to give all the possible answers to that question, but to provide one possible answer based on my research and personal interpretation of the novel.Item Eliza Haywood unmasks female sexuality in masquerade novels(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2017) Ysteboe, Taylor; Karian, StephenThe essence of the masquerade ball is one of secrecy and fantasy. As a uniquely 18th century phenomenon, the masquerade was an environment where one can transform into anything imaginable. One of the most prolific female authors during this period, Eliza Fowler Haywood, sought to capture the luxury and imagination of the masquerade within her novels published from 1724 to 1725: The Masqueraders and Fantomina. For Haywood's female protagonists, the setting of the masquerade ball, along with its associated elements such as masks and disguises, grants them sexual power in addition to the power of the gaze, a privilege previously held by men. As Karin Kukkonen notes in her essay, “The Minds Behind the Mask: Reading for Character in the Masquerade” the “masquerade is a place where Eliza Haywood's heroines don masks in an endeavor to satisfy their (sexual) curiosity and, at the same time, to escape social censure” (163). In this essay, I will explore how the masquerade promoted this sort of sexual freedom within the 1700s, and I will analyze how the female protagonists within both of the aforementioned novellas interpret the theme of masquerade as sexual license. Furthermore, I will examine how the tragic and paradoxical endings operate within the narratives – as a moral warning to those participating in licentious acts, a means against the male-dominated romance genre and empowers the female voices in the works, or a realistic outcome based on the patriarchal structures reigning in 18th century society.Item The role of the first-person narrator when dealing with mental illness(University of Missouri, College of Arts and Sciences, 2017) Zoellenr, Danielle; Sauer, GordonThis thesis examines how the first-person narrator alters reader perception in a story about mental illness. The role genre plays with the first-person narrator when talking about mental illness is also important when distinguishing how it can affect the perspective. Therefore, I included both fiction and non-fiction texts. The three texts work together to show how the first-person narrator allows access for the reader. The novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, uses the epistolary form to provide a subjective experience for the reader about what the protagonist is going through. The novel, The Bell Jar, on the other hand, uses reactions from other people around the main character to emphasize how the main character is perceived by others. The memoir, Girl, Interrupted, takes other people's perspective of the main character one step further by adding doctors' reports and other documents as a more objective approach to the story. With this analysis, I have concluded that the first-person narrator allows an access to the thoughts and perspective of someone dealing with a mental illness in a way that a third-person narrator cannot. The creative component then, told in third person from Dr. Hinch, a character that is observing his son dealing with mental illness, works to show the distance that a third-person narrator creates for the reader. Dr. Hinch can't offer intimate access to what his son is going through because he is not close enough to the situation. This third-person narration works to juxtapose the critical component to show how important the first-person narrator is to allow the reader access to someone dealing with a mental illness.