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1984 - 198911990 - 19981

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Devanny, Jean, 1894-1962

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    Breaking the silence : protest in the feminist fiction of two New Zealand women writers : a thesis ... for the degree of Master of Arts in Sociology at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1984) Cvitanovich, Lynley
    The thesis is concerned with the work of two feminist writers. The conceptual tools of a socialist feminist critique are applied to the selected fiction of Edith Grossmann and Jean Devanny. Grossmann's novels were written in the late 1890's and early 1900's. Devanny's New Zealand novels were written in the late 1920's and early 1930's. The major aim of the thesis is to illustrate that the protest fiction of Grossmann and Devanny is inextricably linked to the realities of life for women, in the period within which they were writing. In contrast to traditional literary criticism, and to Marxist aesthetics applied in isolation, it sees the need to develop an understanding of the specific problems of women within capitalist patriarchy. The attempted synthesis of radical feminist and aspects of Marxist analysis points toward such a progressive development.
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    The construction of Maori, Melanesian and Aboriginal peoples in the writings of Jean Devanny : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1998) Wilde, Linda
    Historical constructions of racial otherness have legacies which endure to the present. The analysis of the discursive practices of the past helps to understand the present tenacious investment in notions of racial difference. This thesis examines the construction of Maori, Melanesian and Aboriginal peoples in the writings of Jean Devanny. Western texts which are informed by the [impossible] need to become indigenous, attempt to incorporate the indigenous character as an "other-within". Where no conflict regarding indigenisation exists, such tension is minimised and the indigene remains a more distant other. In Devanny's New Zealand novels, the attempt to incorporate Maori as "one of us" is subverted by essentialist constructions which assign to them a fixed, irreducible otherness. In the Australian text, racial difference is acknowledged and deployed to challenge the prejudice which such difference generates. Additionally, this text offers an exploration of the colonial processes which assign a group identity on the basis of racial difference.