Dying to belong: Women's search for perfect love in the works of Zinaida Gippius, Kate Chopin, Galina Shcherbakova and Lya Luft.
Item
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Title
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Dying to belong: Women's search for perfect love in the works of Zinaida Gippius, Kate Chopin, Galina Shcherbakova and Lya Luft.
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Identifier
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AAI3245055
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identifier
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3245055
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Creator
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Greenlee, Anneta.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Elizabeth Beaujour
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Date
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2007
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Comparative | Literature, Latin American | Literature, Slavic and East European | Literature, American | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines representations of women by women writers. Although separated by time and space---Zinaida Gippius and Galina Shcherbakova are Russian, Kate Chopin is North American, and Lya Luft is Brazilian---they are linked by the commonality of themes and concerns. The female protagonists of the works under discussion desire Perfect Love, this elusive, even impossible, total fusion with the Other, an absolute relationship in which individual egos are lost and two beings are merged into one. This absolute desire, which admits no compromise, is continually frustrated by experience, leading some protagonists to despair and withdrawal from life. Intrinsically linked with the theme of impossible desire are themes of identity, inner freedom---understood as the freedom from reflection in the Other---and concerns with the nature of life and death. The novels are also about women's search for their social, personal, and spiritual fulfillment. All writers under discussion share a complex approach to human experience weaving together social, psychological, and spiritual threads. Their insight into the human condition reveals a profound need for spiritual growth and transcendence. 'Spirituality', 'redemption', 'transcendence' are not necessarily used here as religious terms. They can be understood, in the sense the existentialists understood them, as the desire to break out of inauthentic existence and find fulfillment in the authenticity of being; a desire for relationships based on an authentic dialogue of self with the Other. Transcendence, in this sense, can be seen as a horizon at the edge of everyday life.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
