Date of Award
12-26-2007
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Teaching & Learning
First Advisor
Sheryl O'Donnell
Abstract
From 1700 to 1731, Mary Davys wrote six novels, two plays, and a poem. These works reveal her abiding concern with gender relations, moral behavior, and social order. Davys's work is an articulate critique of social and sexual politics of late Stuart and early Hanoverian England. Few scholars have traced the development of her gender ideology and this aspect of her work remains underexamined. Also, the author's early years in Ireland have not been closely considered even as doing so illuminates the shaping of her world view. As products of an Anglo Irish immigrant critiquing Teaching & Learning society, her works need to be analyzed to reveal their social value as documents of gender criticism. Close readings of Davys's primary works reveal her interest in amusing her readers and her impatience with gendered power and immoral behavior. Analysis of secondary criticism reveals Davys's reputation for innovation, observation, and instruction and employing reading practices of New Historicists enables one to understand the culture from which Davys's work emerges and the corresponding impact of her work on British culture as well. Davys's work arcs from feminized female protagonists to those who enact masculine modes of behavior for the purpose of acquiring power and to those who foreground themselves in the text. Davys constructs characters who perform gender; she approves of females uttering masculinized language and performing masculine modes of behavior to empower themselves and articulate their identities, which oftentimes have nothing to do with their female sex. Most times, Davys imbues her protagonists with agency and implies they perform gender to bring about reform or social change. Davys disapproves of characters performing femininized modes of behavior, because these performances exhibit a lack of rational thought and authority. Davys's discourse tracks the development of female protagonists who are virtuous and powerless to those whose overly feminized performances need reform and those who are empowered through gendered performativity and performance. Her fiction deserves to be recognized as a social artifact that not only illuminates problematic gender relations, but also divines the ways performing gender can lead to correcting those problems, especially for women.
Recommended Citation
Glore, Barbara, "Gender Performance In The Works Of Mary Davys" (2007). Theses and Dissertations. 7999.
https://commons.und.edu/theses/7999