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Literaire opleiding en seksualiteit als middelen tot vrouwenemancipatie : een vergelijkende letterkundige analyse van 'Eva' van Carry van Bruggen en de 'Claudine'-romans van Colette
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- Women’s emancipation is a goal which can be achieved by various means. In this comparative literary analysis of Colette’s and Van Bruggen’s novels, respectively the 'Claudine'-series (1900-1907) and 'Eva' (1927), two striking and relevant keys towards women’s emancipation appear as themes in the novels. The first chapter is devoted to the importance of literary education for emancipation. The second chapter focuses on the influence of sexuality for personal freedom. At first glance, these two themes may appear inconsistent and very distinct from each other but they actually work together for this analysis. Several sentences quoted from 'Claudine en ménage' (1902) in 'Eva' are inspiring for instance for the Dutch main character’s sexual freedom. This is an example of a novel’s influence, and thus literature’s impact, for women’s emancipation as well as for sexual freedom. These two main themes will be studied apart to analyse their specific influence on women’s emancipation, but they will also be examined together in the text analysis with the quotations from Colette’s novel which appear in 'Eva'. The link between these novels has already been found in previous research by Wolf (1980) and De Koning (2002), but it has never been researched thoroughly. Therefore, a comparative literary analysis between these books is relevant. There have also already been studies about sexuality in the works of Colette and Carry van Bruggen. However, thanks to gender studies, we can shed a new light on this topic. The second chapter’s text analysis is based on a comparison between Rich’s theory about 'Compulsory Heterosexuality' (1980) and the existence of bisexuality. The influence of heteronormativity on the main characters’ sexuality will be researched in this second chapter. Although they work on different levels of efficiency, this study reveals that literary education as well as sexuality play a determining role for women’s emancipation. A second result is the importance of sisterhood which has an unequivocal emancipatory impact on women in the novels.