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Abstract:
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My dissertation offers a new look at how women authors used popular genres to negotiate their economic , artistic , and sexual autonomy , as well as their national and imperial identities , in the context of the changes brought by modernity . As medical science and popular media attempted to delineate women’s sexual natures , Sylvia Townsend Warner , Winifred Holtby , Kate O’Brien , and Molly Keane created narratives which challenged not only psychoanalytic proscriptions about the need for sexual satisfaction , but traditional ideas about women’s inherent modesty . They absorbed , revised , and occasionally rejected outright the discourses of sexology in order to advocate a more diffuse sensuality ; for these writers , adventure , travel , independence , creativity , and love between women provided satisfactions as rich as those ascribed to normative heterosexuality . I identify a history of queer sexuality in both Irish and English contexts , one which does not conform to emergent lesbian identity while still exceeding the limits of heteronormativity . |