Thesis Presentation

At a certain point, I have to do some college work

Welcome back to the home of unoriginal thinking. I hope all are well and ready to hear more about my college work. Yes, it's another college post. I know, I know but please read it anyway. While I have just recently uploaded a blog post about a mini-conference I took part in, I wanted to talk about another presentation of mine. On the 4th of April, I had to give a presentation on my thesis topic in front of the UCC English Department and my fellow peers. I thought it would be really helpful to talk about the presentation itself but more importantly, to map out my thesis idea.

I cannot pretend that coming up with a thesis topic was easy. At all. Like many other students, I was convinced since September that I knew what I would be studying. I had it all planned out. I believed that I would be analyzing rape-revenge narratives in literature and films. While this is still a topic, I am very much interested in it is not what I am doing my Thesis on. I suppose being able to discuss and study such a wide range of literature during the academic year, it's not that surprising. It was a little bit of an anxiety-ridden experience deciding on a topic of research. I had put a great deal of pressure on myself trying to come up with something that was original, interesting, and somewhat manageable. I dreaded taking on a topic that I was not capable of doing properly and ended up crashing and burning because of it.

As most of you have seen from my previous blog posts, I have a great interest in Feminist Literary Criticism and the idea of tropes. I wanted to think about a way I could bridge the two ideas together. I suppose the most straightforward way to tackle such a topic was to think about the books that have impacted me the most. Through the duration of my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, it is safe to say I have done my fair share of reading. Still, there are some books that have resonated with me more than others. As I thought about possible texts, I could not help but recall my second-year module: Women in Literature with Heather Laird. Two of the texts that we discussed were Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. The concept of reimagining villainous figures such as Bertha Mason and giving her own narrative was always intriguing to me.

At this point, I had to consider the transformation of a sad little Creole girl into the "madwoman in the attic", without being able to speak. Without any control of the narrative, Antoinette Cosway was suddenly the demonic interloper that stood between Mr Rochester and Jane Eyre. More attention is being given to Bertha Mason now, but not to the credibility of Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester. Their reliability as narrators and their internal motives are rarely questioned. This was not the only text that manages to distort the perception of silent female characters. Another example that came to mind was The Turn of the Screw (1889). After establishing a common thread between these texts, I started drafting out different ways to address my concerns.

As the idea was very much in the early stages I had to think about how to best present my idea, My biggest fear was of course being faced with questions that I could not answer and staring blankly at a room of people. I would have to pretend to pass out. As the presentation was quite short, I had to summarize greatly but cover a lot of ground.

I wanted to make it very clear that my MA Thesis idea was worth exploring. While it is not a requirement that a MA dissertation is wholly original, I wanted to show that I had some creative initiative. Thus, there has to be a reason for studying this topic. My first step was outlining the clear similarities between my two main texts.

After consolidating the reasoning behind my topic, I needed to discuss an approach to answering my questions about the representation of women. There were plenty of ways to discuss this but I narrowed down my methods to three schools of thought; adaptation, ambiguity, and apparition theories. The thesis dissertation would compromise of a comparative study. In order to understand the differences between the adaptations and the original texts, I needed to have a better understanding of the process. The significance of using different mediums such as film and television. The intentions of adaptors and their exploration of their own interests within the text.

Ambiguity appears in different ways within all the texts. I wanted to look at the creation of ambiguity itself. Authors present ambiguity in different ways to enhance the atmosphere of the text. In the case of The Turn of the Screw the ambivalence centres on the existence of ghosts such as Miss Jessel and Peter Quint. It is never clarified by the author or the narrator if the governess had truly seen these malevolent figures. In other works such as Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre ambiguity focuses on the racial identity of Bertha Mason/Antoinette Cosay. The confusion surrounding her ethnicity further adds to her sense of 'Othering.' Ultimately the lack of clarity on her race gives greater justification to her poor treatment and alienation.

The use of apparition theory would help demonstrate the significance of ghosts within the texts. While there are no literal ghosts in Jane Eyre, the language describing Bertha Mason is quite odd. It gives the impression that the home as well as Jane is haunted by some kind of malevolent figure. Bertha Mason is not dead in the text but she is still treated as if she is. In The Turn of the Screw, the presence of the ghosts is still very much up for debate.

Now to talk about the presentation itself. I was shocked by the level of nerve I experienced on the day, Even though I was aware that this was not a graded presentation, I could not relax. That might also be linked to the pressure of being the last presenter of the day. Following up with all my classmates and their amazing work definitely did not help the nerves. It was definitely a worthwhile experience. Lee Jenkins, who later became one of my supervisors for my dissertation, offered some very interesting feedback.

Rather than treating the texts as completely separate from each other, I should also consider The Turn of the Screw as an adaptation of Jane Eyre. By doing so this offers up a new string of connections between all four of the texts. This is something that I want to further research, as it would be really important to address this in my introduction.

Overall, I did really enjoy the experience and getting the chance to really knuckle down and plan out my Thesis a bit more. Also, it gave me a nice little prep presentation for the Mini-Conference which took place later that week.

Until next time,

Stay Unoriginal.