Using the primary lens of rhetorical criticism to examine eight literary narratives by American women writers from 1850-1900, this dissertation argues that the inclusion of arguments by narrators and characters regarding theories about naturalism is a feminist negotiation of contemporaneous social and scientific debates leading to rhetorical choices which mediate, hybridize, or refute specific aspects of deterministic theories; moreover, these negotiations of theories about naturalism lead to the conclusion that the authors expected to change readers attitudes or beliefs toward commonly held racial, gender, and class prejudices.
The writers in this study, Harriet Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, Rebecca Harding Davis, Pauline Hopkins, Helen Hunt Jackson, Ellen Glasgow, and María Amparo Ruiz de Burton are rarely associated with American literary naturalism; however, even though their texts would not be considered naturalistic novels (novels in which characters lives are determined by hereditary, economic, and social forces beyond control), their rhetorical approach to debating various kinds of determinism establishes these writers as precursors to or participants in the genre of American literary naturalism.
In chapter one, I argue that Wilson and Jacobs negotiate naturalism in literary narratives for the rhetorical purpose of changing attitudes toward commonly held pseudo-scientific views of race.
In chapter two, I demonstrate that Hopkins and Jackson theorize a balance among biological and social forces beyond ones control to put an end to cultural fears of hybridity.
In chapter three, by examining physical, mental, and moral motivations, either naturally or socially located, Davis and Glasgow offer a view of social order built on moral responsibility or personal spirituality instead of a pure theory of hereditary, economic, or environmental determinism.
Chapter four shows that Davis and Ruiz de Burton argue human natures aggression in the marketplace, although affected by heredity and economic forces beyond control, should still be mediated by moral standards.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TCU/oai:etd.tcu.edu:etd-12072007-113413 |
| Date | 07 December 2007 |
| Creators | Ainsworth, Diann Smith |
| Contributors | Australia Tarver |
| Publisher | Texas Christian University |
| Source Sets | Texas Christian University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/msword |
| Source | http://etd.tcu.edu/etdfiles/available/etd-12072007-113413/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to TCU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0168 seconds