This dissertation examines the periodical essay as a site for women's political activity in the nineteenth century. I suggest that the essays and articles of well-known writers Fanny Fern, Marie Corelli, and Sarah Grand, and others who are less well-known, such as Ignota and Mary Livermore, together form a significant body of prose non-fiction that highlights women's active involvement in political debate. I focus primarily upon women's contributions to general-interest periodicals---where women were competing for space against a wider variety of male writers---rather than on ladies' magazines or the suffrage press, whose more narrow goals diminish the potency of women's appearance in the press. Much of my study focuses on the British Nineteenth Century and the American North American Review , both of which turned to series of articles and carefully organized groups of essays to showcase women's inclusion in the debate, often summarized as the Woman Question, over women's position in nineteenth-century society. Throughout, I posit that women's publication on topics concerning women's rights constitutes culturally and generically sanctioned political activity. The five chapters represent increasingly specific aspects of this activity. The first positions women's involvement within the press's penchant for diversity. The second argues for a connection between the influential function of the periodical press and the role of women as positive influences on others. While this influence is generally interpreted as purely domestic, I suggest an alternative reading that endorses women's publication in periodicals. The third chapter examines how women play on notions of gender and identity to create viable public voices in the press. In chapter four, I turn my attention to the ways in which women occupy the forum of the periodical to comment on and prescribe male behavior. Finally, in chapter five I discuss the ways women exert their powers to interpret and comment upon p
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.38194 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Gillis, Lesley. |
| Contributors | O'Toole, Tess (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001871872, proquestno: NQ78691, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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