The purpose of this study is to understand the connections between the public and private worlds of American women as described in their journals and diaries and to show how the interaction between the two realms changed the way women thought about themselves, their roles, and their environment.A total of ninety-four personal narratives were examined for the study and from that number, four were profiled. Two personal narratives were examined that were published following the Suffrage Movement and two personal narratives were chosen that were published following the Liberation Movement. Methods of rhetorical analysis were used to focus on changing levels of women's awareness of self, community, roles available to women, and issues appropriate for women's attention. I examined text divisions and organization, sentence structures, and markers of audience awareness.A pattern emerges demonstrating five metamorphoses: as the twentieth century continues, women's personal narratives are exhibiting greater self-awareness, greater audience-awareness, awareness of responsibility to the community of women, and awareness of expanding opportunities for women as well as generating an ever increasing readership. / Department of English
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/178176 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | McCann-Washer, Penny |
| Contributors | Hanson, Linda K. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | 171 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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