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العنوان
Virtue and Self-assertion in Kate Chopin’s At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899) /
المؤلف
Mohammad, Esraa Salah.
هيئة الاعداد
باحث / إسراء صلاح محمد عبد اللطيف
مشرف / أحمد محمد عبود
مشرف / أحمد عبد الستار عبد العزيز كشك
تاريخ النشر
2021.
عدد الصفحات
179 p. ;
اللغة
الإنجليزية
الدرجة
ماجستير
التخصص
الأدب والنظرية الأدبية
تاريخ الإجازة
1/1/2021
مكان الإجازة
جامعة عين شمس - كلية التربية - التربية
الفهرس
Only 14 pages are availabe for public view

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Abstract

Throughout history, women were victimized and oppressed by men in patriarchal cultures. Women due to the patriarchal culture faced rejection and punishment from the community. Patriarchy was the most powerful institution which allowed men to control women. It is a culture which has its manifestation in legal, political, and economic activities. This unjust system gives the patriarch the full right to be superior to women and to anyone considered weak. It is an ideology which maintains male superiority and dominance. The patriarchal system used virtue of women to serve their gendered purposes. Women were deprived of practicing equal human rights or equal moral worth with men.
Virtue and self-assertion were incompatible in the Victorian society. A self-asserted woman contrasted a virtuous true mother-woman. A woman was fully accepted for being a mother. Her identity was attached to motherhood. Women’s concepts of their selfhoods had systematically been subordinated and belittled. A virtuous woman had no sense of the self. Any self-confident woman was regarded as being out of the predominant gender norms. Thus, the sense of the female self was so difficult to develop in a Western gendered system. The female self was imposed on women by society, and it was constrained by the cultural definitions of gender.
The proposed thesis discusses different assumptions about the concepts of virtue and self-assertion and debate them in Kate Chopin’s At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899). The study highlights how the two concepts are a major concern in Chopin’s narratives. It sheds light on the obstacles that hindered a Victorian woman from attaining an asserted self. The study falls into a preface, three chapters, a conclusion, and a works cited list.
Chapter one, “Suffering of Women in a Patriarchal Culture: A Theoretical Background”, introduces the concept of patriarchy and how women are victimized in a patriarchal culture. It explores the concepts of sex and gender and how they serve patriarchy. It analyzes the various treatments of the concepts of virtue and self-assertion; and highlights how the concept of virtue is gendered. Then, it arrives at a definition of virtue of a woman. Finally, it illustrates how the female sense of the self started to develop in a patriarchal culture; and introduces the New Woman concept which has a significant role in changing gender roles at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Chapter two, “Virtue and Self-assertion in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899), traces the novel under consideration within its historical and cultural context. It presents The Awakening as a challenge to the stereotyped expectations of marriage, females’ social roles, and the patriarchal gendered view of virtue of a woman. In The Awakening, Chopin frankly discusses females’ sexuality, sensuality, individuality, and freedom. The chapter reveals the tension between virtue and sensuality that is not permitted to women in the Victorian age as well as Chopin’s criticism of patriarchal values.
Chapter three, “Virtue and Self-assertion in Kate Chopin’s At Fault (1890), presents At Fault as a story of possibilities of women’s freedom, self- assertion, and equality. Chopin manages to make a reconciliation between the two concepts that socially challenged one another at the turn of the nineteenth century. It reveals Chopin’s sever criticism of the Victorian moral system. At Fault highlights how Chopin perceives virtue and self-assertion, and how she considers the code of righteousness. At Fault questions social traditions, religion and any kind of authority that might control one’s life-choices. The Conclusion is a synthesis of the findings the research arrived at and conducted in the
previous chapters of the proposed thesis. It compares how the two heroines perceive virtue, and how they use their new freedoms. It finally illustrates Kate Chopin’s special perception of virtue of a woman and highlights her quest for a female’s asserted self.