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Women and writing : a comparative study of some texts by Miles Franklin and Higuchi Ichiyo

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thesis
posted on 2023-05-26, 17:54 authored by Iida, Natsuko
This thesis examines textual comparisons between Miles Franklin (1879-1954) and Higuchi Ichiyo (1872-96). This is an interdisciplinary project that applies the methodologies of comparative literature, feminist literary studies, and comparative studies between Australia and Japan. My methodology depends particularly upon feminist approaches to modern women's literature and an international tradition of women's writing. Thus, feminisms such as poststructuralist and postcolonialism are not applied here because they stress a notion of difference, broadly defined, between women through arguments based in identity politics. Likewise, differentiating Franklin and Ichiyo's, Australia and Japan, as the Occident and the Orient is not to my purpose. Translation is a major medium or resource in comparative literary studies. My Brilliant Career is available translated into Japanese while some of Ichiyo's texts are translated by Robert Lyons Danly. However, I study the original texts and quote both in English and Japanese, avoiding some of the restrictions and cultural reshaping of translation. In the Introduction, I look into Australia's bush myth and Japan's \ie\" system as Franklin's and Ichiyo's cultural backgrounds. These paradigms which also operate as ideologies are powerfully similar in their significance as invented cultural and national traditions. In my reading of Franklin's and Ichiyo's respective texts as both individual texts and intertexts in each chapter I focus on commonalities in their concerns about femininity sexual politics and gender issues in relation to their cultural and political contexts. The primary focus in my thesis is their shared use of metaphor. I discuss bird/s in Chapter two as a metaphor for women. In My Brilliant Career (1901) My Career Goes Bung (1946) and Childhood at Brindabella (1963) Franklin's bird imagery signifies various situations and experiences of the women characters. Ichiyo's bird imagery in the diaries (1912) and Wakarejimo (1892) together with its cultural and social signification implies women's suppressed sexuality. Chapter three investigates images of gardens. In My Brilliant Career and Childhood at Brindabella representations of gardens are the symbolisation of femininity and female power. Images of gardens in Ichiyo's diaries Yamiyo (1894) Utsusemi (1895) and Warekara (1896) symbolise not only the women characters' powerlessness but also their resistance and self-understanding. My investigation of metaphor reveals Franklin's and Ichiyo's rejection of patriarchal ideologies and confirms their shared project of speaking for women through their writings. Thus these writers participate in an on-going and international tradition of feminist literature. The particular contribution of this thesis is to make Franklin's and Ichiyo's shared project visible through comparative literary studies."

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Copyright 2003 the Author - The University is continuing to endeavour to trace the copyright owner(s) and in the meantime this item has been reproduced here in good faith. We would be pleased to hear from the copyright owner(s). Thesis (MA)--University of Tasmania, 2003. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 157-184)

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