Browsing by Subject "Sex in literature"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    "In thir pregnant causes mixt": Gender Hybridity and Theology in Paradise Lost
    (2011) St. Amand, Bryan; Benston, Kimberly W.
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    “Poor girl!” : Feminism, Disability and the Other in Ulysses
    (2006) Flaherty, Patricia; Sherman, Debora
    The purpose of this study is to examine Gerty MacDowell in Nausicaa, Chapter 13 of James Joyces Ulysses, and how her overwhelming femininity affects her disability, and how that conflation of femininity and disability largely engages feminist disability theory. Gerty MacDowell prides herself on the active sexualizing of her own body. In the interaction between Bloom and Gerty, disability is recognized textually as her link to humanity. In recognizing Gerty's disability, Bloom is able to recognize as well as reflect on his own disabilities albeit figurative but still very integral in the way he views himself. By recognizing that disabilities are part of all human lives, Ulysses promotes a theory of disability studies that is extremely positive and helps to break down the stigmatizing of the disabled. Gerty's disability also helps further an argument relating not to disability, but rather to human imperfection. We come into contact with many transgressions on the part of the characters, and Gerty's disability reminds the narrative that disabilities/mistakes/transgressions are part of what it is to be human. This recognition helps ideas regarding disabilities in a way that promotes a more realistic idea about the body and makes the unrealistic and damaging ideal body untenable.
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    Uncovering Constructions of Gender and Sexuality in al-Ghazali’s Etiquette of Marriage
    (2015) Love, Alexandra; McGuire, Anne Marie
    This thesis seeks to understand the constructions of gender and sexuality fundamentally a part of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s analysis of the virtue of marriage, as translated by Madelin Farah in Marriage and Sexuality in Islam: A Translation al-Ghazālī's Book on the Etiquette of Marriage From the Iḥyāʼ. Specifically, my argument focuses on how Ghazali constructs his argument in favor of marriage, particularly how the themes of desire, duty, and virtue ingrained throughout, influence Ghazali’s discussion and analysis of marriage. I argue that these themes are products of Ghazali’s personal backstory and life experiences, and with this in mind I argue that the themes of desire, virtue and duty are fundamentally constructed and gendered based upon the interrelationship of the historical and societal contexts where Ghazali was living when he wrote the text, and his personal interpretation of sacred texts he uses to evidence his claims. The analysis Ghazali presents in the Etiquette is fully dependent on his use of the Quran and Sunna (transmissions from the life of the Prophet) to evidence his claims. Therefore, this thesis also attempts to deconstruct Ghazali’s use of such textual evidence, giving special attention the inconsistences between his own androcentric conclusions and the ideas present in the Quran and Sunna. This being said, this thesis seeks, first and foremost, to demonstrate specifically how Ghazali’s interpretation of sacred texts reflect particular constructions of sexuality and gender necessarily a apart of his own life experiences, by paying attention to each gender’s distinct capacity to engage with the three themes.
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    Working against closure : sexuality and the narrative endings of Little Women and Jacob Have I Loved
    (2003) Gravett, Amber; Stadler, Gustavus
    Both Little Women and Jacob Have I Loved focus on the time of adolescence, when young adults are beginning to experience sexual feelings, but cannot yet express them in socially-acceptable ways, such as marriage. Although both texts allow their female protagonists freedom to express their sexuality in non-conventional ways, thereby leading the reader to expect certain independent qualities from them, the endings of both novels remain conventional in confining the protagonist to a proper lifestyle expected of women. However, by using D.A. Miller's theory on the effects of closure in a novel, which maintains that a novel's closure does not subscribe full meaning to the text as a whole, it becomes possible to again, even in the novel's closure, view these female protagonists as the independent heroines the reader admired.