Graduation Year
2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree
Ph.D.
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Degree Granting Department
English
Major Professor
Phillip Sipiora, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Quynh Nhu Le, Ph. D.
Committee Member
John Lennon, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Victor Peppard, Ph.D.
Keywords
Modernist Writers, Women Writers, Melancholy, Trauma, Gender, Sexuality
Abstract
This study surveys the use and abuse of alcohol within the literature of Modernist female authors of the Jazz Age, 1920 – 1930. An examination of the works of Djuna Barnes, Dorothy Parker, and Zelda Fitzgerald is conducted to understand their treatment of alcohol consumption by women and how this treatment is more complex than their male counterparts. This dissertation focuses on each author’s use of alcohol in developing their fictional female characters and how, when, and why they drink. These questions directly relate to the use and abuse of alcohol to assuage trauma, or as a reaction to trauma. How the state of melancholy informs the way these characters feel and their sense of loss, whether a loss of home, a loss of self, and or a loss of freedom, leads to their use and abuse of alcohol. This dissertation explores how these three authors use textual approaches to investigate and scrutinize why people, themselves included, turn to alcohol to cope with internal and external pressures.
Scholar Commons Citation
Villines, Chondell C., "Soaked in Alcohol: Beyond the Female Archetype as Reflected in Djuna Barnes, Dorothy Parker, and Zelda Fitzgerald" (2024). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/10572
