This panel is for NeMLA's annual convention at Baltimore from 23-26 March, 2017.

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Bennett can never match the resourcefulness of his wife in her attempts to settle their five daughters in life; Edgar Linton in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a caricature of manliness; in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters, an only daughter, Molly Gibson, proves to be a better child to her father than a son, Osborne Hamley, who fails his parents; George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss presents Maggie Tulliver as a far stronger, braver and tougher character than her brother Tom.

This proposed panel aims at exploring how women writers represent the concept of masculinity in their literary works. How do they evaluate, challenge, mock, refute and/or regulate masculinity (or the lack of it)? How do they relate it to femininity? Do they use their representation of masculinity to contest male writers’ depiction of women and womanhood?

Please submit a 300-word abstract and brief bio, if you are interested in participating in this panel.

NOTE: Please do not submit your abstracts to my email address; instead, you need to do so via NeMLA website (https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/cfp) by September 30, 2016.