| dc.description.abstract | This thesis is a comparative analysis of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight (1939), with a specific focus on how these novels challenge and critique the social script of womanhood, exposing the depths and edges of traditional female roles and patriarchal mechanisms of subjugation.
My approach is mainly based on three analytical methodologies: in-depth examinations of the chosen novels, comparative analysis of pivotal scenes, and the integration of targeted theoretical frameworks and sources. The research is predominantly anchored in feminist criticism extending from the foundational thoughts of Mary Wollstonecraft to Elaine Showalter. Thorstein Veblen’s perspectives, particularly concerning class, fashion, and the New Woman, offer further insights into the mechanisms that oppress, as well as the models that function to liberate, women.
The research uncovers Woolf's and Rhys's exposure and critique of ingrained mechanisms of subjugation, particularly highlighting social class and fashion as problematic constructs for women during the interbellum period. Examining the two literary texts, the study elucidates how the authors employ the novel as a means to challenge women's situation during this era through innovative literary techniques. The precariousness of women's circumstances, connected to their age, work, class, and gender, was specifically highlighted by the authors, and indicated a tension between the ideal of womanhood and freedom. Through the New Woman ideal and magazines, fashion significantly contributed to the establishment of new beauty standards and the shaping of societal norms. As the study shows, the New Woman ideal is both celebrated and problematized by the authors, as it swiftly devolved into a consumerist paradigm where consumption itself became the new ideal. In both literary works, the urban landscape assumes a pivotal role, offering the characters a sphere fraught with both promise and destruction, emblematic of transgression, interconnection, and potential renewal. Through the lens of modernist critics, the study elucidates the symbolic value of the city as depicted by Woolf and Rhys and highlights its function as a site of carnivalesque and polyphonous modes that interrogate entrenched patriarchal structures in the quest for female freedom. | |
