Marriage in Gone with the Wind: The Struggle for Social Agency

정이화 대한영어영문학회 2019 영어영문학연구 Vol.45 No.4

This paper addresses Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936), with a focus on how the heroine, Scarlett O’Hara, redefines agency for women within her three marriages that overlap with the Civil War and Reconstruction era of the South in American history. The heroine, I argue, begins as a victim within the paradigm between subject and conduit that Gayle Rubin illuminates in her essay, “Traffic in Women,” but reverses her passive role within the kinship system of marriage that initially restricts her social agency and independence. Scarlett uses femininity but does not follow conventional gender roles. In the novel’s ending, she returns to Tara not in defeat but with a will to survive and a refusal to sacrifice her life in the postbellum society of the South. Within the radically changing society depicted in the novel, my paper analyzes Scarlett’s goals and what choices she is forced to make in each marriage in order to pursue what she values and desires most.

Paradoxical Rebellion Bound to Conformity: Isaac Watts’s “Hurry of the Spirits, in a Fever and Nervous Disorders”

정이화 한국영어영문학회 2012 영어 영문학 Vol.58 No.6

This paper focuses on eighteenth-century English pastor, poet, and hymnist, Isaac Watts (1674-1748), a significant yet neglected nonconformist dissenter, who defines a public religion and transforms poetry as a new literary political genre. During England’s post-Revolutionary religio-political turmoil, Watts’s poem, “The Hurry of the Spirits, in a Fever and Nervous Disorders” (1734), deliberately engages in a methodical refusal to settle upon a single system of images or terms for describing or referring to the speaker’s identity or situation. Watts’s, literal and metaphoric, refusal to identify with one religio-political approach to nonconformist dissent has been the very point of criticism that not only undermines the poet’s monumental work on hymns but also the lasting impact that the poet had upon England’s national consciousness. This study, therefore, questions why the poet refuses to choose one ideal path in his pursuit for religious freedom and, further, analyzes how the hymn writer defends his demotic aesthetics. This paper investigates Watts’s comprehensive and detailed formulation of what a secularized “social religion” should entail and, further, explores its beneficial role in the pursuit for society’s peace. In contrast to Milton’s apocalyptic vengeance,Watts’s nonconformist goal seeks to balance and locate authority in the individual with the ancient ideal of a “sacred order” that is represented in “The Hurry of the Spirits” through the means of poetic imagination.

Putting Michael McKeon to the “Question”: Is Clarissa Harlowe a Prude or Saint?

정이화 한국영어영문학회 2011 영어 영문학 Vol.57 No.6

Michael McKeon, in The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740, sets forth a theoretical study of a large canon of seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury works, based upon the dialectic of genre formations, which attempts to analyze certain “instabilities” in generic and social categories — “instabilities” that McKeon identifies as “Questions of Truth” and “Questions of Virtue.” In this paper, I argue with McKeon’s optimistic reading of Samuel Richardson’s work, Clarissa, or The History of Young Lady (1740), which concludes that—unlike Pamela’s “manifest material and social empowerment”—Clarissa acquires “manifest discursive and imaginative empowerment” and “wins” (to use McKeon’s terms) the “battle” with her antagonist, Robert Lovelace. What is difficult to accept in this reading of Clarissa is McKeon’s claim that the “success” of Clarissa’s resistance to Lovelace, despite the tragic rape, is evident in her “new-found power” which is represented in the heroine’s spiritual “conversion” — her decision to die to protect her “version of truth and virtue.” McKeon’s spiritual “conversion” not only forces Clarissa to surrender her legal right to prosecute her rapist but also forces her to seek the shelter of her “father’s house” in the afterlife because she can no longer “make others accept [her] own version of events as authoritative.” Thus, in contrast to McKeon, I claim that Clarissa represents the necessary conditions for its heroine’s “empowerment”primarily in language that suggests her manifest social invalidation;language which in particular emphasizes that her rape and torture by Lovelace forces Clarissa’s spiritual “conversion” to seek her reward in the afterlife—thereby concluding that Clarissa’s discursive and imaginative empowerment does not and cannot exist in the secular, material world.

What is Jane Austen writing about in Northanger Abbey: Advocacy of Parental Tyranny or Filial Disobedience?

정이화 중앙대학교 외국학연구소 2021 외국학연구 Vol.- No.55

This paper seeks to readdress Jane Austen’s first novel, Northanger Abbey, completed in 1803, by applying Michael McKeon’s theoretical framework which defines the English novel as a genre of instabilities narrating conflicts of class and social identity during the eighteenth century. Although McKeon’s textual analysis covers up to the 1740s and does not include Austen, his theoretical paradigm concerning “Questions of Truth” and “Questions of Virtue” outline the “instabilities” of class and social identity experienced by Austen’s hero and heroine in their struggle to override parental tyranny and avoid punishment from filial disobedience. Austen depicts how her characters, both intentionally and unintentionally, reject being victimized in the marriage market. Applying McKeon, I delineate how Austen challenges the class system and redefines social identity in her last chapter, by introducing a new paradigm in which parental tyranny is not in conflict with filial disobedience.

Breaking Away from Stereotypical War Romance in A Farewell to Arms: Mutually Interdependent Hero and Heroine

정이화 대한영어영문학회 2021 영어영문학연구 Vol.47 No.2

This paper examines how Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley, in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1927), mature in a relationship that enables them to not only break away from being passive victims of the war but also pursue their lives as active protagonists struggling with the biological trap of death. My reading focuses on the couple’s combined effort of mutual interdependence to understand and defiantly confront the threat of death without crumbling under its effect. The novel’s tragic ending is not seen as love story but rather as a narration of how the hero and heroine, through the progress of their mutually developing relationship, have become independent enough to face challenges without regressing back into their previous passive roles. This paper concludes with a new reading of Catherine’s death that touches upon but necessarily excels beyond questions of gender and social identity to include an analysis of her soldier-like acceptance that applies to the silent forgotten unknown men and women who died alone with the same courage and integrity that Catherine exemplifies for Frederic and Hemingway’s readership.

The Epistolary Novel and Samuel Richardson’s Heroines: Female Writers and Readers of Letters

정이화 한국영어영문학회 2010 영어 영문학 Vol.56 No.6

The epistolary novel, as developed and refined by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), is concerned with distinctly private experience and the morality of individuals __Richardson’s heroine writers. In contrast to nineteenth-century novels, which explore their subjects through the overview of a narrator with a singular moral outlook, the epistolary narrative allows Richardson to examine the various different ways in which individuals/heroines interpret, mold, and respond to their experiences in writing. In this paper, I argue that the authorial voice of Richardson does not control the narrative but rather is present in the prefaces, character sketches, notes and occasional interjections between letters. Although there is little doubt as to whether Richardson intended to make a particular moral point or attempted to control the effect of his novels on his readers, the heroines and their letters dominate the novels so that they put the authorial suggestions in a different light, reducing the author’s to one voice among several. Thus, Pamela’s letters are exemplary for the vigor and intelligence with which they appear to be written, rather than for the imposed morality of their ghost writer__Richardson. Although Clarissa is of a different social class from Pamela, both heroines are united in their oppression as victims of a patriarchal society. In Clarissa’s letters, the heroine’s situation and experience are seen through her own writing in dialogue with that of her confidante Anna Howe, and in contrast to the writing of her oppressors. Clarissa, then, becomes a struggle between different discourses in which their genesis and effect, and the societies and individuals from which they come are implicitly suggested in Richardson’s text. While Richardson may or may not be guilty of taking the writing of women and using it for his own ends, his epistolary novels represent a deliberate and bold attempt to shape the novel in a way conducive to his heroines and to women writers. 1076 Ewha Chung

사무엘 리차드슨의 작품 「파믈라」에 나타난 미덕(美德)

정이화 연세대학교 인문학연구원 1995 人文科學 Vol.74 No.-

토마스 만과 오스카 와일드: 『도리언 그레이의 초상』에 드러난 동성애와 예술의 역할

정이화,변영은 한국동서비교문학학회 2021 동서 비교문학저널 Vol.- No.55

This paper examines how, in the late 19th century, Thomas Mann (1875-1955) and Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) were both not only involved with the role of the artist and the heightened social consciousness of homosexuality but also critically aware of each other as contemporary writers. Whereas Mann struggled to find a personal balance between the two extremes of social order and the philosophy of aestheticism, Wilde chose to pursue his often shocking and impulsive desires which are vividly captured in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). In his novel, Wilde narrates a dark and tragic story of how the male protagonist chooses a life of deceit and evil in pursuit of absolute youth and beauty, which is seen as a premonition of how the author’s life ends. Wilde voluntarily exiles himself from England after being imprisoned for gross indecency with men and ends his life destitute and alone in Paris. In comparison to Wilde’s course of life and his literary works, Mann embraced the ideology of aestheticism with caution and moderation because it was strongly associated with being demoralized and because it instigated its believers towards homosexuality. In this paper, therefore, I focus on Mann’s accurate and significant criticism of Wilde and how he advised Wilde, both as author and as contemporary writer, to redirect his artistic literary skills to better means of social order.

킹스턴의 『여전사』와 월트 디즈니의 『뮬란』에 나타난 장르의 변형과 그 의미

정이화,안현주 문학과영상학회 2013 문학과영상 Vol.14 No.2

In 1998, the Walt Disney corporation witnessed world-wide success with the animation film, Mulan. The film, Mulan, is based on the story of a mythic legendary heroine, Fa Mulan, who dates back to the third century of medieval China; and, it is an adaptation of the chapter titled, “White Tigers,” in Maxine Hong Kingston’s most significant literary work, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976). Both the novel and the film create their own narrative versions of the original Chinese myth about the heroine, Fa Mulan. In this paper, I analyze Disney’s film version Mulan and question how Chinese characters and Chinese representative symbols differ from Kingston’s novel and what such changes mean in terms of identity. My analysis of the novel, The Woman Warrior, applies Judith Butler’s theory of “performativity” to the heroine who is able to “perform” roles that are not prescribed by gender or restricted by social norms. My paper will begin with an examination of current research by cultural critics such as John Storey and Edward Said. I apply Storey’s recent critical analysis of how Hollywood’s Vietnam War movies not only “change” but also “invent” new forms of social and national identities concerning Vietnam. Storey states that Hollywood’s films not only “produce” their own version of “Vietnam” but also define what “Vietnam is like” to their audiences. Storey examines how Vietnam is invented and circulated through Hollywood’s powerful film industry. This paper examines the characters and iconic symbols within the novel and film in order to define how such invented identities, which result from genre transformation, often produce, change, and misconstrue identities that serve as prevalent realities in American society.

Ferdinand Count Fathom’s Narratives of Conflict: Fathom vs. Monimia

정이화 대한영어영문학회 2023 영어영문학연구 Vol.49 No.4

This paper analyzes Tobias Smollett’s third novel, The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753), by using Michael McKeon’s theory in The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 (1987). The novel, according to McKeon’s theoretical analysis, focuses on conflicts that attempt to define truth and virtue, and these conflicts not only form a dialectic of genre formations but also expose how the internal structures of the novel unfold its own narrative of history and record how a character struggles to prove his/her version of truth and virtue. In this paper, I look at how these conflicts are enacted in Smollett’s novel and how they narrate Fathom’s licentious schemes against the heroine, Monimia, who struggles to defend her virtue and prove her narrative to be true. By exposing the intricate details of how Fathom manipulates the narrative of truth and abuses the virtue of vulnerable women, Smollett traces Fathom’s ultimate downfall and emphasizes Fathom’s agonizing acknowledgment of his past guilt. Smollett’s novel, thus, emphasizes instabilities in the narration of truth and virtue portrayed through the conflict between Fathom and Monimia and, further, probes questions defining innocence and guilt not only by delineating Fathom’s despairing moment of guilt and repentance but also by allowing Monimia to forgive Fathom with grace and mercy.