Girlhood and Autonomy in YA Shakespeares Victoria R
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2014 Girlhood and Autonomy in YA Shakespeares Victoria R. Farmer Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES GIRLHOOD AND AUTONOMY IN YA SHAKESPEARES By VICTORIA R. FARMER A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2014 Victoria R. Farmer defended this dissertation on October 27, 2014. The members of the supervisory committee were: Celia R. Caputi Daileader Professor Directing Dissertation Aimée Boutin University Representative A.E.B Coldiron Committee Member Margaret (Meegan) Kennedy Hanson Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii To Jackie and Rachael Weinell, who inspired the genesis of this project. You give me hope for the future of feminism. And to my three wonderful nieces, Afton, Abby, and Eliza, may you grow up with the courage to tell your own stories in your own words. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to my dissertation committee for their guidance, encouragement, and patience throughout the completion of this project. You have given me an excellent professional example. Thank you to my colleagues at Crown College for their inquiries, prayers, and good wishes during this process. I appreciate you listening to me discuss this over and over for the past three years. Thanks, too, to my generous friends and colleagues in the field who gave source recommendations, listened to conference presentations, read drafts, and talked me through the writing process: Carla Ewert, Katie L.N. Grubbs, Lizz Angello, Kate Lechler, Meghan Brown, Daniel Vitkus, Douglas Lanier, Lisa Starks-Estes, Fran Teague, Sujata Iyengar, Deanne Williams, and Erica Hateley. Special thanks must also go out to the members of ENG 437 (“Shakespeare and the Intersections of Love and Power”) in Spring 2014: You were and are phenomenal students, and the ideas contained in these pages are deeper and better because of the conversations we had together. Thanks to Randi Norman for her help with copying, printing, and binding. Thank you to my parents and family for your continued belief in me and in the power of my thoughts. And to Michial, merci de me préparer pour les tigres, avec leurs griffes. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ viii 1. GIRLHOOD AND AUTONOMY IN YA SHAKESPEARES: AN INTRODUCTION ........1 2. “ALL CHILDREN DESERVE TO BE SAVED”: GIRLHOOD AND AUTONOMY IN ROUGH MAGIC ............................................................................................................................15 2.1 Beyond Father-Texts and Mother Figures: Centering Marginalized Voices ...............15 2.2 The Specter of Miranda and Absent Mothers ..............................................................21 2.3 Rough Magic’s Miranda………...………………………………………………...…25 2.4 Beyond Ferdinand: Practical Patriarchy in Rough Magic……………………………30 2.5 Chiara, Princess Culture, and Reactionary Feminisms……………………...……….33 2.6 “All Journeys Lead Back to Their Beginning”: Disney Princesses and Purchasing Fairy Tale Gender………………………………………………………………………..…38 3. “THE MOON OVERHEAD WAS SHAPED LIKE AN EGG”: FEMALE EMBODIMENT AND EMPOWERMENT IN LADY MACBETH’S DAUGHTER ..................................................45 3.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................45 3.2 Lady Macbeth: The Queenly Body as Social Stabilizer ..............................................47 3.3 Masculinity as Controlling Othered Bodies………………………………………….50 3.4 Macbeth: A Different Kind of Male Dominance?.......................................................53 3.5 Like Mother Like Daughter?: Albia and Embodiment ................................................59 3.6 “The Moon Overhead was Shaped Like an Egg”: Menstruation and Womanhood ....63 v 3.7 Albia as Third-Wave Heroine………………………………………………………..69 3.8 Conclusion: Multiple Voices and Female Adolescent Experience…………………..74 4. “READ FREELY, MY DEAR”: EDUCATION AND AGENCY IN OPHELIA .................77 4.1 Introduction: How Does Ophelia Mean? .....................................................................77 4.2 Ophelia as Social(ized) Reader ....................................................................................82 4.3 Elnora and Gertrude: The Femininity of Nature and the Nature of Femininity ..........84 4.4 Hamlet, Misogyny, and Motivations for Reading and Writing ...................................88 4.5 Conclusion: Authorship and Community at the Convent ............................................93 5. ROZ AND JULES—A HATE STORY?: FEMALE FRIENDSHIP AND TEEN UNIVERSALITY IN ROMEO’S EX .............................................................................................97 5.1 Introduction: Mean Girls, Queen Bees, and Twenty-First Century Female Socialization ..........................................................................................................................97 5.2 Roz and Jules (and Romeo) .......................................................................................101 5.3 Ways of Reading Rosaline .........................................................................................106 5.4 Not For a (Teen)age, But For All Time? .....................................................................108 5.5 Shared Universes, Part One: Petruchio ......................................................................110 5.6 Shared Universes, Part Two: Viola and Sebastian .....................................................114 5.7 Four Star-Crossed Lovers ..........................................................................................118 6. “I KNOW WHO YOU ARE,” HE HAD SAID: RELIGION, ROMANCE, AND INTERSECTIONALITY IN SHYLOCK’S DAUGHTER ............................................................121 vi 6.1 Introduction: Jessica as Intersectional Character .......................................................121 6.2 Reading Jessica: Critical Trends ................................................................................122 6.3 The Intersectional Framework of Shylock’s Daughter ..............................................125 6.4 Jessica’s Complex Self-Knowledge ...........................................................................126 6.5 After Jessica’s Conversion .........................................................................................129 6.6 Does Not a Jew Contain Multitudes?: Pressler’s Development of Shylock ..............131 6.7 Shylock’s Other Daughter: Dalilah ............................................................................133 6.8 Hannah’s House and Expanded Intersectionality ......................................................136 6.9 Intersectionality and Intellectual Maturity, or, What YA Can Do for Girls ..............139 7. TO DELIGHT AND TEACH IN A POST-THIRD-WAVE WORLD ...............................143 WORKS CITED ..........................................................................................................................153 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................162 vii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the portrayal of autonomous girlhood in five young-adult (YA) novels that appropriate Shakespearean plots for twenty-first-century girl audiences: Caryl Cude Mullin’s Rough Magic (2009), Lisa Klein’s Lady Macbeth’s Daughter and Ophelia (2009 and 2008), Lisa Fiedler’s Romeo’s Ex: Rosaline’s Story (2006), and Mirjam Pressler’s Shylock’s Daughter (2001). It postulates that these novels are the postfeminist extension of a much earlier subgeneric trend—that of mass-produced, affordable Victorian-era didactic Shakespeares, the central purpose of which is to use Shakespeare’s cultural capital in order to transmit messages regarding the nature of appropriate girlhood. This dissertation argues that that some analogously available and affordable YA novel adaptations of the twenty-first century, despite being postcolonial and postfeminist and therefore reacting against the squeaky-clean, traditional norms of their predecessors, put forward gender roles that are just as restrictive. Each chapter will cover one of Shakespeare's plays, a corresponding YA novel adaptation, and a related issue in contemporary American girl culture and/or feminist theory. The ultimate goals of such a transhistorical analysis are first: to determine what type(s) of girlhood the novels put forth as valid and why, and second: to evaluate the novels’ brand(s) of didacticism in terms of what it offers to its target audience of adolescent girls. Overall, this dissertation argues that successful YA Shakespeares for girls should exhibit nuanced characterization and developed female community, ideally one that results in intergenerational feminisms. viii CHAPTER ONE GIRLHOOD AND AUTONOMY IN YA SHAKESPEARES: AN INTRODUCTION The tradition of using shorter, bowdlerized versions of Shakespearean plots as didactic tools is a long one,1 but one that does not reach its apex until