Women authors

This thesis aims to rescue the name of Elisabeth Mulder, a Spanish female poet who started to publish her first poetry books around the rise of the Generation of 1927 in Spain. The importance of this work hinges on the recognition of Mulder as a female poet whose work has been marginalized from the literary canon, like that of many other women of her era. This thesis focuses on Mulde''s third poetry collection, Sinfonâia en rojo, which was published in 1929 and stands out for its symbolic richness and its romantic and modernist features. Part of this research deals with the symbolism of the color red and the meanings that red acquires within the context of the poems. The main leitmotivs of Sinfonâia en rojo are the images of fire and blood, which are used to make reference to both the emotional and the physical world of the poetic voice. The research also focuses on the connections between Mulder's work and that of her contemporaries, and it suggests that she was in contact with the literary world of her era.

Women in Britain in the nineteenth century were expected to fulfill the traditional roles of wife and mother as determined by British society. Over the course of the nineteenth century, these ideals evolved, but the core functions of wife and mother remained at the center. Woman's participation outside the household was limited. British women travelers during the nineteenth century found themselves in many different environments. By examining samples of women's travel narratives from various locations in the Empire, this study analyzes the daily lives of British women in the Empire and determines that, while maintaining their roles within the private sphere as wives and mothers, women's activities in the colonies were less restricted than they would have been in Britain.

The Jones Act of 1917 gave U.S. citizenship to all Puerto Ricans, who were then able to move easily between the island and the United States. A constant transfer of people ensued and the process of transculturation accelerated. Puerto Ricans zealously strive to maintain their identity and to culturally set themselves apart, most visibly through the use of the Spanish language. Thus, some find it scandalous that Puerto Rican authors, such as Rosario Ferrâe and Esmeralda Santiago, would dare publish works in English. Both authors received university-level education in the United States, but their experiences have been very different, and their works provide a worthwhile comparison. Ferrâe had not written a novel in English until she published The House on the Lagoon in 1995, and she always translates her own prose work. Santiago writes exclusively in English and does not translate her own work. The second of her three memoirs, Almost a Woman, published in 1998, relates the story of her time in New York City until she is twenty-one years old. This thesis examines the transculturation of Puerto Ricans in U.S. society and their struggle to hold onto Spanish as a way of maintaining their identity as seen in The House on the Lagoon and Almost a Woman.