The New Versus True Woman in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and Ellen Glasgow’s Dare’s Gift

Given their opposition to Victorian conceptions of womanhood and domesticity, the literary works of Gilman and Glasgow have been a rallying point for women's emancipation and empowerment. Though the article touches upon several works by Gilman and Glasgow, it focuses particularly on the feminist viewpoints underpinning the transformation of female characters in Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and Glasgow’s Dare’s Gift from true to new women. The purpose of both tales, the article contends, is to question and deconstruct the dominant Victorian patriarchal cult of true womanhood, which has confined women to the domestic sphere and constrained their freedoms and liberties The theoretical foundation for the examination of the two stories is laid out in the Introduction, which contrastively explores the conflicting paradigms of new and true womanhoods. The Discussion delves into the many reactions to the characters' defiant behavior, as well as the phallocentric interpretation of it.

Ethics, Subjectivity, and Alterity in King Lear

Cordelia’s defiance during the first scene of King Lear is among the thorniest issues in Lear criticism. There are also questions about her defiance in the first act and her sacrificial return in the fourth. Generally, critics either interpret her defiance negatively and condemn her (the question of her sacrifice remains equivocal), or they lay the blame on Lear’s absurdity and justify Cordelia’s silence (thus somehow explaining her sacrificial return). I will turn to the recent ethical approach to Lear in which critics usually treat Cordelia as an excess that both foregrounds the ethical themes of the play and resists our understanding. She is said to be like a trace, an evasive Other who can hardly be grasped or explicated. Her defiance and sacrifice thus mark her incomprehensibility and divinity. There are, however, problems and shortcomings with this view that I will enumerate and try to resolve here. I will mainly study Cordelia’s role and discuss her subjectivity with a closer attention. Drawing upon Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy, I suggest that Cordelia’s defiance/sacrifice is not simply a choice; she (dis)embodies a logic of heteronomy and absolute openness to and receptivity of the other, a passivity which is beyond any onto-political sense of passivity and activity. Her silence and sacrifice can be discussed as pre-voluntary, nonintentional sensibility. We can connect the dots to explain her defiant behavior in the first act and her sacrificial return in the last acts. Her uncanny ethicality will finally bridge the current gap and explain her alterity as the other as well. Hence she is both a responsive self and an uncanny other in a peculiar combination of qualities.

Between Deference and Defiance: Hierarchical Status Roles and International Conflict

According to recent international relations research, an actor's status ultimately depends on commonly accepted ratings of that actor's valued attributes (e.g., wealth, competence, culture, or coercive capabilities). This manuscript argues that asymmetric reciprocal roles (leaders versus followers, patrons versus clients, teachers versus students, etc.) constitute another, even more fundamental, kind of stratification that can provoke far more acrimonious status conflicts. Such role-based hierarchies remain stable as long as subordinate actors deem their superiors entitled to deferential treatment. Disputes over asymmetrical roles arise when subaltern actors begin to question the right of dominant actors to command, or when actors fear that co-equal parties are trying to establish their social dominance through a series of faits accomplis. In such circumstances, defiance is the status tactic of choice because it directly undercuts disconcerting patterns of deference. By systematically theorizing defiance in status hierarchies, the paper provides an overdue addition to the literature on the breakdown of cooperation and the dissolution of order. It first sketches a theory that lays out the motives and forms of defiant behavior in international status disputes and then illustrates its value in explaining Russian and Greek resistance to domineering Western “partners.”

Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Psychometric Properties of Oppositional Defiant Behavior Inventory

Background: Diagnostic questionnaires play a great role in accelerating the diagnosis of mental disorders. Objectives: This study aimed to provide a cross-cultural adaption form of Self-report oppositional defiant behavior inventory (SR-ODBI) in Persian and assess the validity and reliability of this Persian form. Methods: The present study was done on two research samples, including a sample of 294 students who were selected in the school year of 2019 - 2020 (girls and boys) from high schools of Dezful city by multi-stage random sampling method and a sample of 320 parents. The validity of the oppositional defiant behavior inventory was assessed by two methods of confirmatory factor analysis and convergent validity, and the reliability of the inventory was assessed using Cronbach's alpha and split-half methods. Results: Cronbach's alpha was obtained at 0.73 (0.87) for the whole self-report scale (parent version), 0.72 (0.74) for the subscale of irritability, and 0.81 (0.80) for the subscale of stubborn and resentful behavior. The correlation between SR-ODBI and Achenbach Youth Mental Health Test was 0.56 (P < 0.01). The results of confirmatory factor analysis (RMSEA = 0.06 and 0.08) also indicated a relatively good fit of structures of the oppositional defiant behavior inventory. Conclusions: The results of the research indicated that the Persian version of the Oppositional Defiant Behavior Inventory in Iran has good reliability and validity.

Features of military personnel adaptation in modern conditions of army service

The paper reveals essential characteristics of military personnel adaptation to the conditions of service in the army. The author believes that to understand the essence of adaptation it is necessary to understand modified, stressful living conditions and activities causing the inclusion of physiological, psychological, and physical functional reserves of the organism, some problems of adaptation: the relationship between commanders and soldiers, the relationship between the older soldiers and recruits, the commanders of insubordination, aggressive behavior, defiant behavior and factors of maladjustment: the low stress resistance of the organism, physiological reserves, poor physical fitness, lack of personal and psychological potential, non-acceptance of new rules and conditions of life, low training and combat training, unformed value-semantic orientation. A sociological study revealed the following problems of socio-psychological adaptation: insufficient psycho-pedagogical competence of commanders in matters of socio-psychological adaptation; a lack of specialists of social work; a lack of individual psychological assistance to servicemen who have difficulties of adaptation; a lack of the programme of adaptation work; insufficient development of individual methods, techniques and technologies of work; a lack of analysis of work; insufficient work with the team. The author sees the prospect of the research in the development of methods and techniques that can help to successfully support military personnel during their adaptation.

Political terror and the right-wing movement (The case of Vladimir Governorate)

The article examines the street confrontation of October 1905 which went down in history as Jewish pogroms. The source base of the work comprises the documents of the police department deposited in the State Archive of Vladimir Oblast and the materials from periodicals of various political leanings. After the publication of the Manifesto of the 17th of October, 1905, in the streets of Russian cities, the revolutionary demonstrations whose participants viewed the Manifesto as a signal for a decisive assault on the autocracy clashed with the patriotic manifestations held by those who wanted to defend their familiar world. The defiant behavior of opposition supporters who preached their political ideals and in doing so insulted national and religious feelings of the conservative strata of population provoked street excesses, which then turned into bloody clashes. The situation was aggravated by the inaction of the local authorities who had not received timely instructions from St Petersburg and showed confusion during the first “days of freedom.” Thus, the pogroms of October 1905 which took place outside the Pale of Settlement were directed not so much against the Jews as against the revolutionaries (a considerable part of them were Jews). Contrary to the idea prevailing in historiography that the clashes of October 1905 were organized, the pogroms arose spontaneously. Neither the government, which was prostrate, nor the right-wing parties, the numerical composition of which in Russia at that time was measured by several thousand people, initiated or organized those events. In October 1905, there were no monarchist organizations in Vladimir Governorate at all. However, the supporters of autocracy are responsible for two political murders which occurred after the pogroms in November–December 1905. In Ivanovo-Voznesensk the crowd infuriated with the events of recent months tore to pieces a revolutionary woman who was transporting weapons, and in the village of Undol workers killed an agitator who called for the overthrow of autocracy. After the foundation of monarchist organizations in Vladimir Governorate, street clashes between the opponents and the supporters of autocracy gradually died down because the monarchists got an opportunity to defend their political convictions in a more civilized form. Although the conflicts between persons of opposite political views continued for some time, they were more like domestic quarrels and had no victims. Both sides were equally responsible for those incidents.

The Use of Collaborative/Therapeutic Assessment With Oppositional Defiant Disorder

The aim of the present single case study was to demonstrate the effectiveness of a therapeutic evaluation model (CTA) used for 4 years with a teenage girl (13–17 years of age) with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). Clinical evaluations using autobiography as well as the Millon Adolescent Clinic Inventory, House–Tree–Person Drawing, and Rorschach test (Comprehensive System) were conducted at each of four time points: 13, 14, 15, and 17 years of age. An average of four evaluation sessions were carried out at each time point following feedback of the results to the client, reflections about her experience with the evaluation process and with results obtained were requested in writing. Progressive findings reveal a gradual decrease in ODD markers and increasing sophistication, organization, and realism in the configuration of the drawings. The Rorschach test gradually indicated a decrease in aggression content and improvement in the quality of responses. In conclusion, the longitudinal design used in the case shows a strengthening of the self, a notable decrease in oppositional defiant behavior, and an adaptation and adjustment to reality as expected for a young woman of the client’s age.

Ocular Findings in the 16p11.2 Microdeletion Syndrome: A Case Report and Literature Review

The recurrent 16p11.2 microdeletion is characterized by developmental delays and a wide spectrum of congenital anomalies. It has been well reported that individuals with this ∼593-kb interstitial deletion have an increased susceptibility toward the autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Abnormalities of the eye and ocular adnexa are also commonly associated findings seen in individuals with the 16p11.2 microdeletion syndrome, although these ophthalmic manifestations have not been well characterized. We conducted an extensive literature review to highlight the eye features in patients with the 16p11.2 microdeletion syndrome and describe a 5-year-old boy with the syndrome. The boy initially presented with intellectual disability, speech delay, and defiant behavior; diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) were established. He had a Chiari malformation type 1. His ophthalmic features included strabismus, hyperopia, and ptosis, and a posterior embryotoxon was present bilaterally. From a systematic review of prior reported cases, the most common eye and ocular adnexa findings observed were downslanting palpebral fissures, deep-set eyes, ptosis, and hypertelorism.