8:40 a.m., Oct. 27, 2009----April Pelt, a graduate student in English, is researching feminist authors between World War I and World War II, but through her classes at University of Delaware became intrigued by other literary pursuits and figures, and these literary excursions have turned into scholarly presentations and papers.

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Pelt received a grant for research from UD's Office of Graduate Studies and the Center for International Studies and took off for a fruitful research- and conference-filled 10 days in England this spring, which has resulted in papers, presentations and recognition.

“One of my favorite heroines is Jane Eyre,” Pelt said, “so I visited the Bronte parsonage and museum in Haworth. I've always been interested in the role that textiles play in defining the characters' personalities. In the novel, Jane becomes associated with middle class Englishness. This happens in part because of her preference for domestically-produced cotton and wool, as opposed to the satins and silks of the gentry and aristocracy.

“There also is a hidden history behind the fibers -- wool was imported from all over, but cotton was imported from the American South, which depended on slave labor,” Pelt said. “These fabrics were produced under exploitive conditions, which undermines the virtuousness of Jane's Englishness.”

Pelt is writing an article called “Fabricating Englishness in Jane Eyre” about how clothing helps define the characters. Pelt presented her findings at the British Women's Conference in Iowa City last spring and at UD this fall as part of the English Department's Brown Bag Lecture Series.

During her short stay in England, Pelt also did research at the Wellcome Institute in London and wrote an article about Gerty McDowell, a seemingly flighty character in James Joyce's Ulysses, who is believed to have been easily influenced by advertising. Pelt noticed that one of the products Gerty mentions, a patent medication called Widow Welch's Female Pills, was actually reputed to have been used by women to induce abortions. Pelt said she believes this information has remained hidden to critics for so long because Gerty has mastered the veiled language used by advertisers rather than being their dupe.

Her article, “Advertising Agency: Print Culture and Female in 'Nausicca,' ” is being published in the James Joyce Quarterly, the leading journal in Joyce studies.

One of the main goals of Pelt's trip to England was to attend the International Rebecca West Society's Conference in London. West is one of the writers Pelt is writing about for her dissertation, and she was awarded the Graduate Conference Prize for her paper, “Fashioning a Feminist Icon, Adapting Rebecca West's Life for the Stage.”

For her dissertation, “Fashioning Feminist Icons: Interwar Women and the Cultural Work of Adaptation,” Pelt is doing research about feminist writers from 1918 to 1939, including West; Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter; famous author Virginia Woolf; and Zora Neale Hurston, an African American writer whose work was rediscovered by Alice Walker in the 1970s.

“I am fascinated by how and why these women, all of whom faced numerous personal challenges, have been transformed in to feminist icons by subsequent generations of writers and artists,” Pelt said.

Pelt is a graduate of Winthrop University, and her adviser is Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies.

Article by Sue Moncure
Photo by Ambre Alexander