American Mnemonic: Racial Identity in Women’s Life Writing of the Civil War takes up three American women's autobiographies: Emilie Davis’s pocket diaries (1863-65), Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four in the White House (1868), and Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches (1863). Chapter one is devoted to literary review and methodology. Chapter two, "the all-absorbing topic': Belonging and Isolation in Emilie Davis’s Diaries," explores the everyday record of Emilie Davis in the context of Philadelphia’s free black community during the war. Davis’s position as a working-class free woman offers a fresh perspective on the much-discussed “elite” black community in which she participated. Chapter three, “'The Past is Dear': Nostalgia and Geotemporal Distance in Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes,” explores Keckley’s memories of the South as she narrates them from her position as an upwardly mobile free black woman in Washington, D.C. My analysis illuminates the effect of shifting subject positions (e.g., from slave to free) on the process of self-narration, a process that I argue ultimately recasts Keckley in a more abolitionist light. Finally, chapter four, “'A Forward Movement': Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches and the Racialized Temporality of Progress,” argues that Alcott uses the geotemporal conditions of the war hospital to gain social mobility. This forward movement for Alcott leads her to cast black characters in a regressive light, revealing the racial hierarchy of progress. All of these authors express their experiences of time in unique ways, but in each case, the temporal cultural shifts catalyzed by the Civil War impact how they process their racial identities, and the genre of autobiography offers an intimate view of that process.

This thesis examines the processes of writerly and editorial literary production undertaken by women sensation authors in the 1860s and 1870s. This focus represents a shift from the prevailing critical emphasis on the consumption of sensation fiction to the realm of production and therein allows the thesis to analyse the ways in which sensation operates as a set of rhetorical and linguistic strategies for women writers in the changing publishing conditions of mid-to-late Victorian society. I consider the ways in which sensation is an idiom that permeates all aspects of magazine publishing in this period and demonstrate how it could be adapted and become an empowering discourse for women writers and editors. Furthermore, this thesis sees sensation as an important component in the transformation of the press in the 1860s and 1870s. By analysing the specific ways in which sensational strategies were appropriated and transformed, this thesis reassesses the role of sensation in the creation of women’s writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, and consider its legacies in later ‘New Woman’ writers. I achieve this by examining three women editors, who were part of the transformation of magazine publishing in the period. Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915), Ellen (Mrs. Henry) Wood (1814-1887), and Florence Marryat (1837-1899) all operated as writers and editors in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. They produced varying types of sensational fiction that they serialised in their own monthly magazines, Belgravia, Argosy, and London Society respectively. Sensation provided a dynamic and flexible means for these women author-editors to assert their status in the context of the expansion of the press in the 1860s and 1870s. I argue that their work invites a more fluid and generous critical definition of sensation.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of English, 2004. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: The union between England and Scotland, which created the United Kingdom of Great Britain, generated heated discussion both before and after the Acts of Union took effect on May 1, 1707. Members of Parliament, the nobility, clergymen, pamphleteers, and authors from both nations participated in debates on the Union, in many kinds of writing, for many years after 1707. The voices of British women, however, have not been sufficiently considered in our scholarship, and are often conspicuously absent from our accounts of these polemical wars, which were still raging in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This dissertation seeks to fill this gap in the academic conversation by taking Scottish, English, and British nationalisms as its theoretical paradigm in approaching writing by female authors. The dissertation's chapters examine how the Anglo-Scottish Union figures in the works by five women writers (Jane Austen, Cassandra Cooke, Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Brunton, and Susan Ferrier) publishing from 1780 to 1820. I argue that, in the aftermath of the Union, these women writers often expressed specifically gendered concerns— such as the maintenance of social etiquette, better education for women, making sense of national prejudices, and the erasure of regional socio-economic differences. In doing so, they ranged beyond a typically masculine focus on parliamentary politics, international military endeavors, macro economy, and national churches. English women writers' attitudes towards the Union were more positive than those entertained by Scots authors, but compared with contemporary male writers, both sides were less optimistic about the potential for building a blanket national identity for the entire Kingdom. Taken together, the chapters of the dissertation provide a more comprehensive view of how the Anglo-Scottish Union figured in the minds of Britons, male and female, a century after its establishment, when the Kingdom was going through the Napoleonic Wars and another union with Ireland. The dissertation enriches our research on women's use of literary genres and techniques when taking part in political debates. It also serves to point out the need for more extensive surveys of the nuances of individual women writers' national affiliations. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2016

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Hester Pulter addresses personal and spiritual transformation in a unique way. The elusive nature of alchemical language allows Pulter to express the incomplete, ongoing process of internal transformation, with all its difficulties and inconsistencies. By means of a rich alchemical lexicon, Pulter stresses suffering rather than consolation, conflict rather than reconciliation, and lack of resolution rather than closure in her poetry. She repeatedly tries to see a divine order in earthly suffering, but she insists upon this suffering, and she often argues for a gendered element to this pain, particularly as a mother grieving her dead children. The lack of resolution we see in Pulter's writing pushes against conventional constructions of the ideal female Christian as passively accepting God's plan, and shows the limits of the religious lyric to truly provide consolation. My thesis will extend the discussion of Pulter's use of alchemical imagery and symbols in her poetry, and will argue that she uses alchemical language to reflect how transformation and healing are never, in fact, fully achieved during our physical existence. The promise of literary alchemy as a vehicle for transformation and spiritual regeneration is not always fulfilled in Pulter's work.

La réception espagnole des œuvres de Madame de Genlis, Madame de Beaumont, Madame d’Épinay ou Madame de Lambert constitue un chapitre important de la fortune littéraire que ces auteures connurent en dehors des frontières françaises et plus concrètement dans l’Espagne des Lumières. L’obsession pédagogique des intellectuels des Lumières hispaniques, l’intérêt des femmes pour la lecture et le développement du monde éditorial, provoqueront pendant tout le XVIIIe siècle une véritable avalanche de textes destinés à la formation et à l’instruction féminine, surtout vers le milieu du siècle lorsque un fort intérêt pour les traductions d’œuvres étrangères se fit sentir. En harmonie avec cet intérêt pédagogique du siècle des Lumières, l’éducation deviendra donc un des sujets phare de la production éditoriale de l’époque. De ce fait, les débats éducatifs qui avaient lieu en France, vont circuler aussi dans le milieu intellectuel espagnol, grâce, comme nous venons de souligner, aux différentes traductions d’œuvres françaises. La visée pédagogique des productions littéraires de Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis, Louise d’Épinay ou Madame de Lambert séduira un grand nombre des intellectuels des Lumières espagnoles. La sensibilité de ces pédagogues françaises en matière de morale et de religion s’adaptait à la perfection avec les créations littéraires de L’Espagne des Lumières. Une littérature respectueuse des valeurs spirituelles traditionnelles et en même temps ouverte à ce nouveau concept de « vertu sensible ». Ce renouveau féminin va se faire sentir aussi dans les traductions d’œuvres pédagogiques françaises. Ainsi un bon nombre de ces écrits vont passer par les mains des femmes. Ana Muñoz, María Jacoba Castilla,María Romero Masegosa, Antonia de Río y Arnedo, Cayetana de la Cerda et tant d’autres vont être tour à tour traductrices et écrivaines espagnoles, qui donneront ainsi une couleur féminine au mouvement d’émancipation et d’éducation de la femme espagnole. D’ailleurs, ces traductrices furent les responsables des premières versions espagnoles des œuvres de Madame de Lambert, Madame d’Épinay ou Madame de Genlis. Nos recherches vont essayer donc d’analyser les avatars des œuvres des auteures pédagogues françaises, leurs premières traductions en Espagne et leurs influences sur la littérature pédagogique espagnole et en particulier celle produite par les femmes. De cette manière, on va pouvoir esquisser certains traits spécifiques qui vont caractériser la production féminine hispanique. / The favourable reception in Spain of works by Madame de Genlis, Madame de Beaumont, Madame d’Épinay and Madame de Lambert constitutes an important chapter in the literary fortune that these authors came to achieve outside of France and particularly, in Spain during the period of Enlightenment. The pedagogical obsession of the Spanish Enlightenment scholars, women’s interest in reading and the development of publishing provoked a veritable avalanche of texts aimed at the education and schooling of women throughout the XVIII century, especially in the middle of the century at a time when a strong interest in translating foreign literary works was surfacing. Concurrent with this pedagogical interest taking place during the Enlightenment, the subject of education had become a beacon in the editorial production of the time. Consequently, the educational debates which had been taking place in France also began to become the subjects in Spanish educational circles a result of the various translations of French literary works. The pedagogic lens in the literary production of Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis, Louise d’Épinay and Madame de Lambert seduced a large number of Spanish Enlightenment intellectuals. The sensitivity of these French pedagogues on moral and religious matters translated perfectly to Spanish literary creations; it was a literature which respected traditional spiritual values at the same time as remaining open to the new concept of “sensitive virtue” This resurgence in female influence would go on to became apparent in the translations of French pedagogic literary works as a good number of these writings passed through the hands of women. Ana Muñoz, María Jacoba Castilla, María Romero Masegosa, Antonia de Río y Arnedo, Cayetana de la Cerda and so many others alternated between being translators and Spanish writers who gave a feminine perspective to the movement to emancipate and educate Spanish women. Notably, these women were responsible for the first Spanish versions of works by Madame de Lambert, Madame d’Épinay and Madame de Genlis. This research will analyse the transformation of these French pedagogical works: their first translations in Spain and how they influenced Spanish pedagogical literature, especially when produced by women. In doing so it will outline a number of specific traits which characterise hispanic female literary production.

The central topic of the thesis is a (seemingly) paradoxical preposition of current feminist thinking that a woman in language and in our culture is absent. It is an all theoretical work that focuses on interpretation of key concepts of gender analysis related to the major concept of absence of a woman in language. It is trying to explain these concepts as deeply as possible and point at their interconnections and eventually their different conceptions, whereas the analysis proceeds primarily on the grounds of literary criticism. The work is structured into two thematically interconnected units. The first focuses on analysing key terms of contemporary poststructuralist philosophy and critical theory, particularly language, text, writing, discourse, power, gender identity and falogocentrism, with the aim to map the theoretical foundations of the concept of absence of a woman in language. The second unit concentrates on analysing the subversive potential of individual conceptions of women's writing, mainly of the theory of l'écriture feminine of Heléne Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and the concept of "women's writing" of Jan Matonoha, which all equally aspire to destabilize and problematize the functioning and the logic of the dominant discourse discussed in the first unit and thus create a...

<p>My dissertation “Aspirations and Ambivalences of New Woman: French and Chinese Women’s Press and Fiction, 1900-1930” seeks to foster a global understanding of the dilemmas faced by “New Woman” in France and China in the early twentieth century. The thesis operates on two levels: press and fiction, and focuses on three central aspects of women’s lives: heterosexual love, professionalization, and singlehood. It is the first book-length project on the topic in which the East and West converge. </p><p>Studying feminist periodicals, I investigate two opposing discourses in the first chapter: the nationalist and anti-nationalist feminisms. I argue that both French republican feminism and Chinese nationalist feminism appropriated motherhood to defend women’s rights to education and women’s status at home. Along the anti-nationalist axis, I identify the anarcho-feminism in France and China, which remains understudied in current scholarship. I observe that Chinese anarcho-feminism is deeply influenced by French individualist anarchism through the bridge of Chinese anarchists in Paris. Together, they contributed to the plurality and complexity of first-wave feminism and challenged the nationalist feminist discourse.</p><p>Chapter two shifts from studying periodicals to the textual analysis of fiction centered on heterosexual relations. Informed by psychoanalysis, this chapter frames free love discourse as synonymous with the free expression of individuality. Departing from previous scholarship, I highlight the violent and exclusionary nature of free love, which leads to heroines’ death and rejection of other forms of love. Meanwhile, I propose that French protagonists embrace a new philosophical model of love based on preserving one’s individuality instead of the age-old love model of “merging," which obscures women's identity.</p><p>Chapter three employs sociological theories of professionalization to analyze women’s unique challenges and solutions to negotiating family and career. I argue that the female Bildungsroman in the early twentieth century exhibits narrative features different from its nineteenth-century predecessors: the trajectory of girls' development is expanded to include schools and workplaces; love ceases to be the only theme dominating women’s narratives; supportive female communities populate women’s fiction.</p><p>The fourth chapter highlights the singlehood that Chinese and French heroines both embrace as a valid life alternative. I investigate the motivations behind singlehood as well as its social stigmatization. Whereas heroines consider singlehood a valid option, their choice imposes a tremendous emotional and social price. I argue that the ideological tension between single women and the larger society lies mainly in contrasting views about female singlehood: it is conceived by female protagonists as a sign of independence and a means of self-preservation, but as a radical renunciation of femininity by society. </p>