Browsing by Author "Goldfarb, Nancy D."

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    "Charity Never Faileth": Philanthropy in the Short Fiction of Herman Melville
    (2014) Goldfarb, Nancy D.; Schultz, Jane E.; Eller, Jonathan R., 1952-; Robertson, Nancy Marie, 1956-; Tilley, John J.
    This dissertation analyzes the critique of charity and philanthropy implicit in Melville’s short fiction written for periodicals between 1853 and 1856. Melville utilized narrative and tone to conceal his opposition to prevailing ideologies and manipulated narrative structures to make the reader complicit in the problematic assumptions of a market economy. Integrating close readings with critical theory, I establish that Melville was challenging the new rhetoric of philanthropy that created a moral identity for wealthy men in industrial capitalist society. Through his short fiction, Melville exposed self-serving conduct and rationalizations when they masqueraded as civic-minded responses to the needs of the community. Melville was joining a public conversation about philanthropy and civic leadership in an American society that, in its pursuit of private wealth, he believed was losing touch with the democratic and civic ideals on which the nation had been founded. Melville’s objection was not with charitable giving; rather, he objected to its use as a diversion from honest reflection on one’s responsibilities to others.
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    Infinite regress: the problem of womanhood in Edith Wharton's lesser-read works
    (2015-05-01) Smith, Alex; Schultz, Jane E.; Goldfarb, Nancy D.; Johnson, Karen Ramsay
    Wharton’s heroines are ordinary women who fight to secure material comfort and create selves that satisfy their emotional and sexual needs. These women often find that the two goals are mutually exclusive, since society strictly dictates appropriate behavior. This code of behavior stems from their relation to men: as objects to be won, as wives, and as mothers. In many instances, women are not even aware of their prescriptive roles and confuse their search for self with a search for security. Material comfort does not nurture Wharton’s heroines’ inner selves and they feel a metaphysical dissatisfaction, often seeking to find contentment through divorce or affairs. What they find in either case is that the cure to their ennui is not material, but mental. Wharton’s women seek a transcendent self—a self that is not dependent upon popular notions of respectability; a spiritual state that is independent from any attachment to social imperatives.