ABSTRACT: Some second-wave feminists thought that women’s friendship is the deepest and most important bond that
humans can create. Since women were speculated to have inherent nurturing qualities, they were regarded as the only
ones capable to fulfill emotional needs. Women can gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their friends
through dialogue, mutual recognition, and interpretation, leading to more meaningful relationships and a heightened
sense of identity. However, recent feminists look on these beliefs with skepticism, as they point out a reality in which
women friendship is complex and ambivalent. Indeed, the literature in question, which represents various cultures,
languages, and time periods, portrays friendships marked by negative qualities such as competitiveness, possessiveness,
jealousy, and other similar traits. This analysis of Elena Ferrante’s tetralogy L’amica geniale, Jane Austen’s novel Emma,
and Ai Yazawa’s manga NANA ultimately concludes that the concept of sisterhood, as conceived by some second-wave
feminists, remains an unfulfilled ideal.
ABSTRACT: In an era characterized by change and upheaval, the Romantics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century embraced the revolutionary impetus of the moment and reconsidered traditional ideologies while investing a new faith in the powers of the imagination. One such concept that is subject to Romantic reevaluation is immortality. Thus, this thesis examines the recurring but mutable concept of immortality in select works of Romantic poets: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Through a historical analysis, this thesis navigates the various forms and poetic manifestations that the concept of immortality takes from experiential and spiritual to reputational and artistic. Though these Romantic writers differ in their interrogation of the concept of immortality, it becomes evident that they all share a desire to radically examine immortality through their privileging of the subjectivity of experience and their embrace of ambiguity and mystery, which they find central to their philosophies and to the act of poetic creation.
