Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


MacDonald revision.pdf (1.39 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

WORKING WOMEN’S LIFE WRITING AND AUTHORIAL COMPETENCY

MacDonald, Sarah Nicole
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1511353472506823

Abstract Details

2017, PHD, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English.
Through this dissertation, I aim to challenge the limited scope scholars have established for effective life writing. I do so by arguing that nineteenth century scholars and readers alike focused on the bourgeois self while ignoring the lives and writings of working women, viewing them as incapable of producing valuable life writing, and, therefore, denying their creative choices. I examine the life writing of working women writers who constructed narratives which arose from the same conditions that framed their identities as workers. Menial and dangerous occupations, abundant familial/work duties, and poverty limited the available writing models and appropriate topics for working women’s narratives. I, therefore, present a case study for Victorian Working Women’s Life Writing through the writings of Hannah Cullwick, Ellen Johnston, Annie Kenney, and Emma Smith. My analysis focuses specifically on the motivating factors behind the women writers’ production as well as their rhetorical strategies for expression. As I will show, their motivations include asserting autonomy in personal relationships, attaining fame, and promoting political affiliations. Through my analysis, I illustrate the variety of methods utilized in producing their narratives. In this discussion, their use of established literary genres is especially illuminating. With no life narrative models suitable for their life circumstances, working women writers employed literary genres as varied as romance and Bildungsroman. By acknowledging the various physical/societal obstacles for a working woman writer, we can bring these texts to critical light and, through analysis, emphasize their important contributions to life narratives.
Margaret Shaw (Advisor)
Sara Newman (Advisor)
198 p.
Literature; Womens Studies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • MacDonald, S. N. (2017). WORKING WOMEN’S LIFE WRITING AND AUTHORIAL COMPETENCY [Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1511353472506823

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • MacDonald, Sarah. WORKING WOMEN’S LIFE WRITING AND AUTHORIAL COMPETENCY . 2017. Kent State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1511353472506823.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • MacDonald, Sarah. "WORKING WOMEN’S LIFE WRITING AND AUTHORIAL COMPETENCY ." Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1511353472506823

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1511353472506823
363
© 2017, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.