| dc.contributor.author | Rothenburger, Sunnie. | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2014-10-21T12:34:56Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2006 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2006 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.other | AAINR16690 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10222/54780 | |
| dc.description | This dissertation considers how nineteenth-century and late twentieth-century Canadian historical fictions, in their inclusion of the love-story plot and character stereotypes of romance, reify the subordination of women and minority cultures. Because historical novels explore Canada's moments of origin, they often engage with what exactly the nation is or set out to be. In considering nation, the narratives in this study draw upon a gendered hierarchy to allegorize social and political relationships between cultures and races: the French-Canadian woman's subordination to her husband in marriage signifies the subordination of her culture; the Native woman's unrequited love for the white man signals her culture's similar subordination. | en_US |
| dc.description | Crucially, the racial/cultural and gendered stereotypes such narratives employ are often contradictory: women have less power than men, and yet they have enough power to choose this lack of agency; the Native man's proximity to the "wilderness" makes him both a "noble savage" and a violent rapist. Drawing on a variety of theorists, I detail the ways in which such contradictions circumscribe women and minority cultures/races, and help justify white colonial and patriarchal power. | en_US |
| dc.description | After setting out my methodology in Chapter One, I explore, in Chapter Two, English-Canadians' erotic relationships with French-Canadians, focusing on what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick calls "triangles of homosocial desire." In Chapter Three I consider Native women in the novels in relation to the non-Native heroines, employing Terry Goldie's observations on Native sexuality in Fear and Temptation, as well as theories about the "Green Indian." In Chapter Four, I compare Native men as rapists with non-Natives as both romantic heroes and rapists, using essays by Jenny Sharpe and Alan Lawson. The fifth chapter, through Judith Butler's theories about performative gender, explores the subversion of the love story by three protagonists who, as both violent and "fallen" women, find agency in ambiguous (rather than ambivalent) gendered identities. Chapter Six considers these violent women and others in relation to specific national conflicts. My seventh chapter uses Steven Bruhm's consideration of Narcissus to analyze how representations of homosexuality can challenge or confirm conventional notions of history, nation, and erotic love. | en_US |
| dc.description | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 2006. | en_US |
| dc.language | eng | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Dalhousie University | en_US |
| dc.publisher | | en_US |
| dc.subject | Literature, Modern. | en_US |
| dc.subject | Literature, Canadian (English). | en_US |
| dc.subject | Literature, Canadian (French). | en_US |
| dc.title | True (patriot) love? Gender and culture in the Canadian historical romance. | en_US |
| dc.type | text | en_US |
| dc.contributor.degree | Ph.D. | en_US |
