Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-2003

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

English

Major Professor

Nancy M. Goslee

Abstract

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's 1979 critical study The Madwoman in the Attic, with its gynocritical approach to the fictions of nineteenth-century women writers and the anxieties those writers faced, has garnered much critical attention since its publication—both positive and negative. As feminist criticism has expanded and branched off into several new disciplines, the idea that women writers formed a kind of literary community through the way in which they incorporated their anxieties into the fictions they created has been challenged by subsequent critics. This study examines that critical disapproval and seeks to demonstrate why Gilbert & Gubar's approach is still worthy of study as a system of interpretation and how their approach can be adapted and applied to literature written after the nineteenth century. This project explores the relevance of Gilbert & Gubar's critical study through an examination of three novels published since 1979: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1986), Jeanette Winterson's The Passion (1987), and Zadie Smith's White Teeth (2000). The Handmaid's Tale is an example of how a novel written by a contemporary "literary woman" can be influenced by the works of previous male authors--but in a positive manner. The Passion, through the presence of agoraphobic tendencies and reactions in the text and its characters, leads to the conclusion that anyone who struggles against patriarchal tradition will suffer at the hands of that tradition. Lastly, White Teeth demonstrates how the kind of anxiety that "infects" the writing of women has changed at the beginning of the twenty-first century from a more patriarchy/society based anxiety to one based on issues of religion, ethnicity, and race.

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