Iris Murdoch and Simone de Beauvoir: a feminist reading of A fairly honourable defeat and La femme rompue

Author(s)

Ana Paula Dias Ianuskiewtz

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Araraquara. 2015-08-20.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Faculdade de Ciências e Letras. Araraquara
• Defense date: 2015-03-17
• Advisor: Maria Clara Bonetti Paro

Abstract

The aim of this research is to address some aspects of feminism from a feminist Anglo-American critical stance in two fictional works that have been published in the late sixties and early seventies: La Femme Rompue (1967) by Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) and A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970) by the Irish writer Iris Murdoch (1919-1999). First, we establish a dialogue between the philosophical thought of Beauvoir and Murdoch. Then, we firm a relationship between feminist literary criticism and Beauvoir's and Murdoch's thoughts regarding the issue of women's role as a reader and as a writer of literary texts. Thus, we explore the role of the reader as a key instance in the process of deconstruction of the discriminatory nature of gender ideologies and we demonstrate that, just as Virginia Woolf, Beauvoir and Murdoch defended the concept of androgyny in literature. Finally, we analyze the different aesthetic features that Beauvoir and Murdoch use in the characterization of female characters, since La Femme Rompue presents the characteristics of a modern novel while A Fairly Honourable Defeat has some traces of a realist novel (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 11/02543-6 - Iris Murdoch and Simone de Beauvoir: a feminist reading of "A Fairly Honourable Defeat" and "La Femme Rompue"
• Grantee: Ana Paula Dias Ianuskiewtz
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate