Mis/representation of woman in selected fictions by Thomas Hardy and Emile Zola: Obiectification and Victimization
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Date
2015
Authors
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Publisher
Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou
Abstract
The readers-mainly female readers-are frequently enticed and entrapped by novels and whatever piece of writing whose title is a woman’s name, subsequently the female character being the main protagonist. Books as Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Nana, Madame de Bovary, etc., are ail the more alluring as they generally display a portrait of an idéal beauty surrounded by a halo. Enveloped in innocence, splendour and some other virtuous characteristics, these heroines rarely survive at the end of the narrative. Idealized and idolized, they are ensnared in the schéma of primordial types or archétypes, then the process of sanctification tums out to be mere revilement disguised in misrepresentation.
Mis/representation of woman in four novels written by the English author, Thomas Hardy and the French theorizer of literature, Emile Zola is the very subject of this dissertation. The novels I hâve chosen to deal with are Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, L’Assommoir and Thérèse Raquin because they offer possibilities conceming the issue at stake. As a matter of fact, my purpose is to unearth the latent dépréciation perpetrated against woman within these narratives, and remove the uncountable layers that cover the very misogynistic tones conveyed by each of the aforementioned books. My argument has been to show that Tess, Sue, Arabella, Gervaise and Thérèse suffer from objectification and victimization not only at the hands of their male counterparts, but above ail at the hands of the narrator/author.
To attain the goal I hâve assigned to my dissertation, I hâve to resorted the archétypal literary criticism. This approach has proved to be the most suitable theory that is likely to help me to tum an apparent Hardyan and Zolaesque positive représentation of woman into an established process of misrepresentation. In effect, however well-intentioned Hardy and Zola were, their portrayal of the female heroine is but another épisode of the lifelong mis/representation of woman in fiction.
Description
132p.; 30cm +(CD-Rom)
Keywords
Representation of woman, Selected fictions, Thomas Hardy, Emile Zola
Citation
Literature