| Through a re-reading of two male-authored and two female-authored texts, this study means to underscore the active female agency in each text, side by side with how this agency operates to subvert the essentialist paradigms of each society in question. The first chapter, accordingly, makes a rereading of Joyce's "A Mother," aiming to introduce Mrs. Kearney as an active female agent who destabilizes the society's oppressive values and lays open the hidden dynamics of gender politics and cultural manipulation.; The second chapter discusses the active agency of "Granny" in Friel's "Mr Sing My Heart's Delight," which, as I argue, is a proposal of cultural miscegenation to save the exclusionary Irish culture from falling victim to decay and dissolution. Friel's coded depiction of Granny's character and Granny's awareness of the lack of her culture will be emphasized. In order to set a necessary contrast between the devastating effects of cultural essentialism and the constructive effects of cultural openness, Flann O'Brien's The Poor Mouth is presented in some detail to widen the reader's scope both of Granny's effective agency and Friel's message of cultural interaction.; The third chapter handles the active agency of Miss Moore in Bambara's "The Lesson." In the process, Bambara's coded depiction of Miss Moore's character, her critique of the blacks' exclusionary essentialism, lack of mobility, and intra-racial divisions will be discussed.; The fourth chapter discusses Walker's The Color Purple as a model of female collective agency. The narrative is mainly handled as a new breed of the bildungsroman, one that, in its progressive openness, can be called a "patchwork bildungsroman" which awards maturation and self-recognition to females and males alike as an indication of the need for the creative power of both sexes.; Finally, a stream of what I call "deconstructive mockery" is noted running in every work and will accordingly be highlighted in each chapter. |
