Degree Name
MA (Master of Arts)
Program
English
Date of Award
12-2019
Committee Chair or Co-Chairs
Matthew Fehskens
Committee Members
Phyllis Thompson, Daniel Westover
Abstract
The time of modernity, defined here as 1850-1940, contributed to massive changes in the representation of the feminine in literature. Societal paradigm shifts due to industrialism, advances in science, psychology, and a newfound push for gender equality brought transformation to the Western World. As a result of this, male frustrations revived the ancient trope of the femme fatale, but the modern woman—already hungry for agency, tired of maligned representation in heinous portrayals of skeletons, sirens, and beasts—saw a symbol begging for redemption rather than the intended insult. Women of the nineteenth century infused texture to a two-dimensional accusation that argued the only good female sexuality was one that could be contained. The redemption of the femme fatale is traced in this thesis through Charles Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil (1857), Gabrielle D’Annunzio’s The Triumph of Death (1901), and Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood (1936).
Document Type
Thesis - unrestricted
Recommended Citation
McNally, Amanda, "The Gendering of Death Personifications in Literary Modernism: The Femme Fatale Symbol from Baudelaire to Barnes" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3669. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3669
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.
Included in
Literature in English, North America Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons