Low, Jennifer A.

Feminist literary critics often praise Mary Elizabeth Braddon's sensation
novels for undermining Victorian gender ideologies, and yet by failing to scrutinize
aspects of maternity and female sexuality, they overlook some of her work's most
subversive potential. In Aurora Floyd, for instance, Braddon deploys the trope of the
missing mother to deconstruct the Victorian maternal ideal of a pure, passive angel in the
house. Her text proposes a notion of motherhood, which is more concerned with internal
goodness and vitality, rather than with the Victorian era's emphasis on external
proprieties and socially constructed notions of femininity. Braddon's Aurora is a
motherless girl who develops into a strong, sexually assertive and, thus, unfeminine
woman by Victorian standards. In positioning Aurora as the narrative's heroine, Braddon
promotes female dominance and male masochism as alternative gender relations to the
traditional domestic economy of male mastery and female submission.

This thesis documents Thomas Lanier (Tennessee) Williams's treatment of
brother/sister relationships in literary works written between 1939 and 1950. Though
Williams began by exploiting his troubled relationship with his sister Rose in "The Long
Goodbye" and "The Purification," two one-act plays, he revised his treatment of siblings
in The Glass Menagerie and the short story "The Resemblance between a Violin Case
and a Coffin." These works do not merely reveal the writer's transparent guilt and shame
at having neglected his sister at moments when he could have helped her, nor do they
serve simply to over-write his torrid depictions of similar relationships in the earlier
plays. I contend that Williams's intense guilt inspired the creation of literary doubles in
both The Glass Menagerie and "The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin,"
not only to undo in symbolic terms the ways he had previously characterized Rose and
her relationship with him and, more importantly, to express his wish that he had done
more to help Rose avert her tragic fate.

John Webster’s play The Duchess of Malfi subverts early modern hierarchical
structures of matter and life by characterizing the human body as fundamentally
deceptive and inferior to the animal body. Through close readings of Bosola’s meditations and Ferdinand’s lycanthropy, I consider how Webster constructs animals as simplistic creatures that enjoy a desirable existence, where body and soul are continuous. Within Webster’s play, the dualist conflict between human body and human soul is a primary subject of discourse. Various human characters see animal existence as preferential, as they view animals as automated creatures that do not suffer the self-consciousness that humans do. This model of animal existence further increases the thematic significance of Ferdinand’s lycanthropy, which I argue is an escape from the discontinuity between the human body and human soul.

Cultural geographic theory uses dramatic language (place ballets , time-space routines, temporal rhythms , etc.) to describe how humans sense and dwell in places. Because the theory contemplates human behavior enacted upon a stage, it is applicable to theater studies. This thesis asserts that Hamlet's, Othello's, and Antony's treacherous lifeworlds undermine their spatiotemporal senses and initiate quests similar to those described by Anne Buttimer as searches "for order, predictability, and routine, as well as [...] for adventure and change" ("Grasping" 285). Hamlet's revenge plot is a pursuit of order and reclamation of his identity at Elsinore. Desdemona's murder is Othello's attempt to salvage his character, which he believed sullied by infidelity. Alexandria offers Antony a life opposite Rome's and sets him on a course of indecisiveness. These plays demonstrate that, at the point of cultural contact, routines are interrupted and identities destabilize. Tragically, the characters lose themselves in the turmoil.

Renaissance ideology positioned the witch as deviant and dangerous. Using common cultural perceptions, Shakespeare's and Middleton's dramas help both to define and to produce alternative notions of the witch. Analyzing the function of the witch as cultural icon reveals why the cultural community scapegoated certain women, particularly "wise women." These women were often older and unattached, uncanny in their powers of perception and unruly in their refusal to conform to societal norms. Such women challenged the discourse of power employed by patriarchy. The Tempest requires the reader to read through Prospero's propaganda to examine his motive for vilifying Sycorax. In The Witch, the witch is associated with the "masterless woman" who, in defying masculine authority, inverts the status quo, transgressing established boundaries of acceptable behavior. The witches in both these plays mirror Renaissance mores and belief structures, exposing the hypocrisy behind their civilized facades.