Current Search:  Du Maurier, Daphne, 1907-1989 (x)

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Re-constructing the past: women, time, and inanimate objects in Virginia Woolf's the years and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca
Title
Re-constructing the past: women, time, and inanimate objects in Virginia Woolf's the years and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.
Creator
Derisi, Stephanie, Berlatsky, Eric L., Low, Jennifer A., Hagood, Taylor, Graduate College
Date Issued
2011-04-08
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/3164523
Subject Headings
Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941. Years, Du Maurier, Daphne, 1907-1989, Women in literature
Format
Document (PDF)
Housing identity
Title
Housing identity: re-constructing feminine spaces through memory in Virginia Woolf's The Years and Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca.
Creator
Derisi, Stephanie, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description
This thesis represents a study of The Years by Virginia Woolf and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Both novels attempt to redefine the role of women in patriarchal society during the 1930s. The domestic role women had to fill within a masculine household constrained their ability to form an independent "self," apart from fathers and husbands. I argue that these novels articulate the possibility for women to access an independent self by examining the meaning behind domestic objects in and of the...
Show moreThis thesis represents a study of The Years by Virginia Woolf and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Both novels attempt to redefine the role of women in patriarchal society during the 1930s. The domestic role women had to fill within a masculine household constrained their ability to form an independent "self," apart from fathers and husbands. I argue that these novels articulate the possibility for women to access an independent self by examining the meaning behind domestic objects in and of the house. Lucy Irigaray asserts that women were, and still are, associated with being valued as a desirable "commodity". Since women have no choice but to work within the symbolic order and are already labeled as "object," women writers have manipulated the system by examining the subject/object dichotomy. The relationship women have with inanimate, and particularly domestic, objects shows how time (the past and the future) manipulates freedom in the present moment. Woolf's reflection on how "moments of being" function as gateways to a heightened sense of awareness is prevalent in her last published novel, The Years. I invoke Friedrich Nietzsche to consider notions of how an antiquated past hinders identity in du Maurier's Rebecca. In the literary texts of Woolf and du Maurier, women have a unique relationship with material objects in relationship to subjectivity. By examining the spatial constructs of the home, women are able to construct themselves as free "subjects" in a male dominated world.
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Date Issued
2012
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3342046
Subject Headings
Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Feminism in literature, Identity (Psychology) in literature
Format
Document (PDF)