The Legitimate Business of Courtship and Marriage : Searching for Fulfillment in the Turn of the Century American Novel

This thesis reads three American Naturalist novels, Theodore Dreiser\u27s Sister Carrie, Edith Wharton\u27s The House of Mirth, and Kate Chopin\u27s The Awakening, as challenges to both domestic ideology and to the market. Exploring the boundaries of an individual\u27s interiority and exteriority, these novels suggest an alternate, more fulfilling existence, though never fully conceptualizing it. Naturalism presents characters who must make sense of their world almost wholly on a material level; the world presented in Naturalism is concerned with the what of a person, not the who. Capitalism splits the self by valuing the outward performance rather than the inward development. The female protagonists of these three novels attempt to gain happiness promised by consumerism through the only plot available to them, that of marriage. When this fails, they all three turn to artistic expression as a way to find the inner fulfillment their commercial society refuses. Carrie, Lily, and Edna value the art they pursue not because of its economic value, but because of the emotional liberation it allows them. In developing their art, each of these women gets the chance to examine the interior life that their societies deny. Looking at marriage and the market within these novels, this thesis examines the split between an individual\u27s exterior and interior in fin-de-siècle American fiction

The Human Affectome

Over the last decades, the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences has seen proliferation rather than integration of theoretical perspectives. This is due to differences in metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions about human affective phenomena (what they are and how they work) which, shaped by academic motivations and values, have determined the affective constructs and operationalizations. An assumption on the purpose of affective phenomenacan be used as a teleological principle to guide the construction of a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions—a framework for human affective research. In this capstone paper for the special issue “Towards an Integrated Understanding of the Human Affectome”, we gather the tiered purpose of human affective phenomena to synthesize assumptions that account for human affective phenomenacollectively. This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research

The Human Affectome

Over the last decades, the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences has seen proliferation rather than integration of theoretical perspectives. This is due to differences in metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions about human affective phenomena (what they are and how they work) which, shaped by academic motivations and values, have determined the affective constructs and operationalizations. An assumption on the purpose of affective phenomena can be used as a teleological principle to guide the construction of a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions—a framework for human affective research. In this capstone paper for the special issue “Towards an Integrated Understanding of the Human Affectome”, we gather the tiered purpose of human affective phenomena to synthesize assumptions that account for human affective phenomena collectively. This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research

The Human Affectome

Over the last decades, the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences has seen proliferation rather than integration of theoretical perspectives. This is due to differences in metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions about human affective phenomena (what they are and how they work) which, shaped by academic motivations and values, have determined the affective constructs and operationalizations. An assumption on the purpose of affective phenomena can be used as a teleological principle to guide the construction of a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions-a framework for human affective research. In this capstone paper for the special issue "Towards an Integrated Understanding of the Human Affectome", we gather the tiered purpose of human affective phenomena to synthesize assumptions that account for human affective phenomena collectively. This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research