THE WOMAN ON THE SCAFFOLD Open Access

Starkey, Theresa Ann (2010)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/j098zb66k?locale=en
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Abstract

Abstract

THE WOMAN ON THE SCAFFOLD
By Theresa Ann Starkey

Nathaniel Hawthorne's Hester Prynne functions as a
springboard for my discussion of women on display. The
transgressing female body becomes a source of spectacle, a
prismatic site on which society's fears, anxieties and
desires are projected.


Lizzie Borden, Iva Toguri ("Tokyo Rose"), Patricia Hearst,
and Martha Stewart are controversial, prismatic figures
that have captured the American public's imagination with
their notorious (sometimes merely legendary) crimes.


They, like Hester, are icons and symbols of female
rebellion. The way these criminalized women are represented
in popular culture provides a profound cultural index of
American subjectivity in terms of how female sexuality and
agency are perceived. Each chapter is a case study, an
examination of how a woman's real life tale has become a
consumable commodity that demands a fictionalized
articulation, one that struggles and fails to contain each
woman's ambiguities.

THE WOMAN ON THE SCAFFOLD
BY
Theresa Ann Starkey
B.A., History, B.A., Film Studies
Georgia State University, 2001
Advisor: Catherine Ross Nickerson, Ph.D.
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the
James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy
in Graduate Institute of the
Liberal Arts
2010

Table of Contents

Table of Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Hester Prism 11 3. The Bodies of Lizzie Borden 54 4. Aid and Comfort: Tokyo Rose and the 99 Subversion of the Feminine Ideal 5. The Abductions of Patricia Hearst 145 6. From Homemaker to Heretic: The Domestic 189 Interloper and the Marketplace 7. Bibliography 240

8. Filmography 251










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