Throughout the late nineteenth century, while authors of numerous handbooks and advice manuals propounded the significance of the home and women's roles within it, female authors such as Elizabeth Stuart Phelps in <italic>The Silent Partner</italic>, Louisa May Alcott in <italic>Work: A Story of Experience</italic>, and Frances E. W. Harper in <italic>Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted</italic> demonstrate the impossibility of this home for working-class women. These writers show that the home and its ideals are necessary for these working women, so that they should not be excluded from them, but they also use their novels to revise the concept of home in a way that includes and empowers working women to gain their ultimate purpose through speaking beyond its walls. Ultimately, I argue that these women gain empowerment through their labor in association with their homes; they cannot gain agency and their own voice without being allowed to possess both.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TCU/oai:etd.tcu.edu:etd-05012009-114456 |
| Date | 01 May 2009 |
| Creators | Knezek, Lillian Ruth |
| Contributors | Theresa Strouth Gaul |
| 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-05012009-114456/ |
| 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. |
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