Women's identities are created and performed relational to the contexts in which they live and by which they are bound. Identities are performed within and against those contexts. Romantic subjectivity: women's identity in their nineteenth-century travel writing about Scotland, is concerned with the location of women and their creation and construction of relational identity in their personal narratives of the nineteenth century. The texts taken for study are travel journals, memoirs, and diaries, each of which narrates times and journeys in Scotland. The subjects of study are three women writers whose identities have been located relational to their husband, brother, or father. They are Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, whose work was located with her husband's, William Hazlitt; Dorothy Wordsworth, whose work was located relational to her brother's, William Wordsworth; and Elizabeth Grant, whose identity was located with that of her father and his Highland estate. The texts considered are Journal of My Trip to Scotland, written by Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt in 1803; Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, 1803 and Journal of my second tour in Scotland, 1822, written by Dorothy Wordsworth; and Memoirs of a Highland Lady, written by Elizabeth Grant about her life before 1830. The focus of study is Romantic subjectivity in the texts of the three women writers. Women's relational performativity to the prevailing social and cultural norms is examined and considered in the context of women writers; women's travel writing; and ideologies of women's place in the nineteenth century.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2002. / Adviser: Sonia Hofkosh. Submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 291-310). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;