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This thesis examines the representation of the scented female body in the literary culture of late Republican and early Imperial Rome. Recent years have seen increasing scholarly interest in odour and olfaction in antiquity, building on anthropological and sociological research on the cultural relativism of olfactory perception and its associations and interpretations. Through its connections to sexuality, bodily fluids, and corporeal corruption, odour provides a fascinating lens through which to scrutinise the ancient female body. To this end, this thesis draws together the fields of sensory studies, the body in antiquity, and ancient gender and sexuality, in order to facilitate the first holistic examination of the ways in which scent was used as a means to categorise and evaluate the character, behaviour, and morality of women in ancient Rome. After an analysis of ancient medical associations surrounding odour and the female body, the thesis examines the key properties and thematic concerns of perfumes, first across a range of Roman texts and then in the detailed assessment of perfumes by Pliny the Elder. It then demonstrates that female odour and perfume were deeply embedded in mythical traditions that were richly adapted by Roman poets and themselves extended to embrace female figures that populated the urban environment of Imperial Rome. It argues that the relationship between the female body and odour was frequently employed as a means of reasserting Roman hierarchies of gender and power. However, it also argues that the odour of the female body was powerful. Odour invaded, captivated and polluted the bodies it touched, and it was also the sense that best correlates to the traditional ambiguities, dangers, and wiles with which women were associated. The sensory manipulation enabled by perfume stoked these ambiguities and anxieties, permitting women a level of control over the ancient sensorium, potentially deceiving discerning male noses and thus disrupting the very hierarchies which characterised women as socially and biologically inferior.

The veil - most commonly known as hijab - is considered as the primary visible marker of a Muslim woman's religious identity and symbol of piety. Thus, its absence not only brings about feelings of conflict for the non-wearer (Izharuddin, 2018), but moreover invites unfair characterisation of their morals and values, as well as discrimination (Fadil, 2011; Othman, 2006; Wagner, Sen, Permanadeli, & Howarth, 2012). In light of this, this study seeks to examine the ways Muslim women construct their identities (with particular focus on religious identity) as women who do not wear the veil. It also investigates the challenges these women face as consequence of their non-veiling. Adopting a social constructionist paradigm, this study draws on almost 20 hours of in-depth interviews with non-veiled Muslim women in Malaysia as its primary data. It brings together interdisciplinary perspectives to analyse identity, by drawing upon Bucholtz and Hall's (2005) sociolinguistic principles for identity, Baxter's (2003) Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA), and intersectionality. To supplement the analysis of the interview data, this study scrutinises a range of selected materials from contemporary media in Malaysia to explore Muslim women's representation with regards to the veil and non-veiling. Findings reveal that in the absence of the hijab, the women who participated in this study constructed themselves as being in alignment, or in contrast with, and/or in ambivalence to their respective ideal of a Muslim woman. In talking about their lives and experiences as non-veiled Muslim women, they 'talk into being' their religious and gender identities, which include (but are not limited to) ethnic and institutional identities. As the women live in Muslim-majority Malaysia that has been experiencing Islamisation since the past four decades, they also divulge stories of personal struggle and challenges they face in various domains of life such as in the family, institutions, and communities.

The object of this thesis is to explore the representation of ‘ Thainess ’ in Thai wedding magazines. The thesis adopts semiotic and multimodal analysis as methods to examine how cover pages, photographs, editorial contents and advertisement s in the magazines communicate their denotative and connotative meanings through primary markers and modality markers such as pose, objects, setting, framing, lights, shadow and colour tone. Subsequently , each image is examined through its depiction of people in the image to determine any st ereotypical cultural attributes that highlight a distinction between the traditionalised Thai and modernised Thai bride. This thesis argues that the legacy of Thailand ’ s semi colonial history constructs an ambivalent relationship with the West and Thailand ’ s self - orientalising tendency, as well as the diffusion of hybrid cultures and modern Thai beauty ideals. Self - orientalising tendencies and the desire to encapsulate ‘ Thainess ’ are thusly observed in the magazines ’ representation of traditional ‘ Thainess ’ with a nostalgic overtone, by linking the ideals of traditional beauty to the imagined qualities of heroines in Thai classic literature and aristocratic ladies from pre-modern Siam through fashion and traditional beautifying remedies.

Native American women played a key role in negotiating relations between settler and Native society, especially through their relationships with white men. Yet they have traditionally languished on the sidelines of Native American and colonial American history, often viewed as subordinate and thus tangential to the key themes of these histories. This dissertation redresses the imbalance by locating women at the centre of a narrative that has been dominated by discourses in masculine aspirations. It explores the variety of relations that developed between men and women of two frontier societies in eighteenth century North America: the Creeks of the Southeast, and the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia. This dissertation complicates existing histories of Native and colonial America by providing a study of Indian culture that, in a reversal of traditional inquiry, asks how Native women categorised and incorporated white people into their physical and spiritual worlds. One method was through ritualised violence and torture of captives. As primary agents of this process women often selected, rejected or adopted men into the tribes, depending on factors that ranged from nationality to religion. Such acts challenged contemporary Euro-American wisdom that ordained a nurturing, auxiliary role for women. However, this thesis shows that ‘anomalous’ violent behaviours of Indian women were rooted in a femininity inculcated from an early age. In this volatile world, women were not shielded from the horrors of war. Instead, they became one of those horrors. Therefore, viewing anomalous actions as central to the analysis provides an understanding of female identities outwith the straitjacket of the Euro-American gender binary. With violence as a legitimate and natural expression of feminine power, the Indian woman’s character was far removed from depictions of the sexualised exotic, self-sacrificing Pocahontas or stoic Sacagawea. The focus on women’s violent customs, which embodied several important and unusual manifestations of Native American femininity, reveals a number of jarring behaviours that have found no home within colonial literatures. These behaviours included sanctioned infanticide and abortions, brutal tests for adolescents, scalp dancing and death rites, cannibalism, mercenary wives and sadistic grandmothers. With limited means of incorporating such female characteristics into pre-existing gender categories, the women’s acts were historically treated as non-representative of regular Indian lifeways and thus dismissed. Colonial relations are therefore analysed through an alternative lens to accommodate these acts. This allows women to construct their own narrative in a volatile landscape that largely sought to exclude those voices, voices that challenged dominant ideologies on appropriate male-female relations. By constructing a new gender framework I show that violence was a vehicle by which women realised, promoted and reinforced their tribal standing.

The central focus of this thesis is the storytelling of place and the place of storytelling. These elements comprise the geoliterary terrains of narrative, the cultural matrix in which texts are sited, produced and received, including the lifeworld of the author. The texts under scrutiny in this research have been written by women during the interwar years of the 20th Century in Britain and Australia. One of the primary aims of the thesis is to explore the geoliterary terrains (including the space known as the middlebrow) of these texts in light of their relative neglect by contemporary critics in comparison with the prominence given to works written by men during this period. Analysis of the texts through the lens of locational feminism (Friedman, 1998, p.5) provides the framework for an interdisciplinary inquiry that draws on geography, feminist literary criticism and new historicism. The examination of the first of the texts, Hostages to Fortune (1933), is centred on the politics of the domestic space and the main character, Catherine’s experiences of domestic life. The chapter dealing with the second novel, A Charmed Circle (1929), while still engaging with the politics of domesticity and the everyday, also pursues the more psychological space of individual and family life as well as locating the interior spaces of the author’s lifeworld. The inquiry broadens out into spiritual and regional landscapes in the probing of The Nine Tailors (1934) which is set in the Fens of East Anglia. Expanding still further into empire, nation and identity, the fourth of the novels, The Invaluable Mystery, set in Australia, is explored in terms of the politics of place. More discussion of these sub-themes ensues as the therapeutic landscape of High Rising (1933) located in an imagined setting, is investigated and the links between the author and the writing of the novel are under scrutiny. The substantive themes of domesticity, home and nation are found to be embedded in these works and in the lifeworlds of their authors. The critical neglect of the texts is located within a set of cultural and material practices that marginalised women writers during this period. This marginalisation is in turn located within a longer historical practice of attempting to silence women’s narratives. Operating beside/against these practices are the imperative of storytelling and women’s ‘will to be known’ through narrative.

Despite the vast literature surrounding tobacco use, there is little work looking at the question of smoking among women in a historical context. The work which has been done on women and smoking has largely looked at the issue from a sociological viewpoint. In addressing this gap, I have drawn from both disciplines to explore the history of smoking among women from 1890 until the end of the 20th century and to historicise existing sociological literature on women and smoking. I have aimed to integrate women into the history of tobacco more generally and to explore women’s own interpretations of smoking in the past. In doing so, I have focused on the relationship between smoking among women and the socio-cultural position of smoking in Britain from the 19th century until the end of the 20th. I have also explored the relationship between smoking and the changing social position of women. Drawing on archival material from a variety of sources and interviews with epidemiologists and health professionals, I have shown the changing, often ambiguous, public discourses surrounding smoking from the late 19th century until the end of the twentieth. I have also shown, through oral history interviews with women aged between 40 and 85, how these discourses have shaped individual women’s interpretations of smoking in their lives and the personal experiences of smoking which they recollect. What I found is that the social meaning of smoking has undergone a series of redefinitions over this period. The advent of the cigarette in the 1880s and its subsequent popularity in the decades following was crucial to this. From having been a recreational pastime, suited to certain times and occasions, in the nineteenth century, smoking permeated every aspect of public and private life for most of the twentieth. The First World War was pivotal in this expansion, as smoking, particularly cigarette smoking, was defined as a necessity to men’s lives, both at the Front and at home. Its increasing prevalence in the interwar period and the priority accorded to tobacco supplies during and immediately after the Second World War served to reinforce the idea that smoking was integral to every day life.