Working Women's Life Writing and Authorial Competency
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WORKING WOMEN’S LIFE WRITING AND AUTHORIAL COMPETENCY A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillments of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Sarah Nicole MacDonald November 2017 Copyright All right reserved Except for previously published materials Dissertation written by Sarah Nicole MacDonald B.A., Southern Illinois University, 2003 M.A., Southern Illinois University, 2006 Ph.D., Kent State University, 2017 Approved by ______________________________, Co-Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Dr. Margaret Shaw ______________________________, Co-Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Dr. Sara Newman ______________________________, Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Dr. Kevin Floyd ______________________________ Dr. Leonne Hudson ______________________________ Dr. Jennifer Larson Accepted by ______________________________, Interim Chair, Department of English Dr. Robert Trogdon ______________________________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Dr. James L. Blank Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Life Writing ................................................................................................................................ 4 Devaluation ................................................................................................................................. 5 Truth in Life Writing .................................................................................................................. 8 Subjectivity ............................................................................................................................... 10 Genre and Class Restrictions .................................................................................................... 13 Text Selection and Methodology .............................................................................................. 16 Theoretical Assumptions and Literature Review ...................................................................... 20 Chapter Outline ......................................................................................................................... 30 Chapter 2: Hannah Cullwick’s Diary ........................................................................................... 33 Biographical Information .......................................................................................................... 34 Victorian Perspectives on Work ............................................................................................... 36 Textual Background .................................................................................................................. 38 Scholarly Background ............................................................................................................... 44 Analysis..................................................................................................................................... 48 Chapter 3: Ellen Johnston ............................................................................................................. 66 Biographical and Historical Background .................................................................................. 69 Mediation .................................................................................................................................. 75 Scholarship ................................................................................................................................ 82 Analysis..................................................................................................................................... 86 The Poems ............................................................................................................................... 103 Chapter 4: Annie Kenney............................................................................................................ 109 iii Historical Background ............................................................................................................ 112 Scholarship .............................................................................................................................. 118 Romantic Structure and Heroic Roles..................................................................................... 124 Analysis................................................................................................................................... 129 Chapter 5: Emma Smith .............................................................................................................. 145 Biographical and Historical Background ................................................................................ 145 The Bildungsroman ................................................................................................................. 159 Analysis................................................................................................................................... 162 Chapter 6: Conclusion................................................................................................................. 178 Summary ................................................................................................................................. 179 Limitations .............................................................................................................................. 182 Future Research ...................................................................................................................... 183 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 185 iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank a few people without whom this work would not be possible. If not for the constant support and encouragement from my husband, Dan, this process would have been much more difficult and boring. My children, Audrey and Keagan, should also receive credit for the joy that they bring to my life. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents, Rick and Karla Smith, for always helping with anything that I might need. Without you all, I would not have completed this work. v Chapter 1: Introduction Scholars who study the influence of material circumstances on creative production are provided one avenue of examination by Marx and Engels (1845), who suggest a connection between work and identity: “Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life” (47). Following this assertion, in my study, I unpack the intimate connection between material circumstances and creative life narratives. I examine the writing and biographies of working women1 writers who constructed narratives which arose from the same conditions that framed their identities as workers. Menial and dangerous occupations, abundant familial/work duties, and poverty limited the available writing models and appropriate topics for working women’s narratives. Through this dissertation, I aim to challenge the limited scope scholars have established for effective life writing. I do so by arguing that nineteenth century scholars and readers alike focused on the bourgeois self while ignoring the lives and writing of working women, viewing them as incapable of producing valuable life writing, and, therefore, denying their creative choices. Readers have continued to discount these writers’ narratives, effectively silencing them. However, not all working 1 Following Swindells, I use the term “working women” throughout this study instead of “working-class women” to establish how work influences class and gender but with the understanding that neither gender nor class make up the whole of an individual’s subjectivity, and neither is more important to his or her subjectivity. 1 women were silenced in this manner, but specifically those from the working classes with limited to no formal education. Some women, such as Martineau and Woolf, were able to gain acceptance.2 Currently, readers and scholars continue to undervalue working women’s texts: few scholars examine their texts as literary nonfiction, despite the attention paid to other life writers, such as John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf. Consequently, the number of surviving texts by Victorian working women is far fewer than that by their male and middle class counterparts, which is a detriment to life writing studies as a whole. As with other genres, readers/scholars accept certain life narratives as worthy of attention based on specific criteria for the genre and not others; therefore, there must be an absence of some characteristic that inhibits the valuation of these women’s work. Working women’s life experiences must be part of the concern. As Regina Gagnier notes in her study on working people’s subjectivity, "Subjects who did not assume creativity, autonomy, and freedom; who expressed themselves in individuated voices with subjective desires; who were regardless of family relations; and who narrated no development or progress or plot never appeared in literature courses" (28). Consequently, my study acknowledges the impact of ideology and concrete circumstances not only on an individual writer’s life (and therefore her narrative), but also on the consumption of her work by readers. The continued lack of scholarship on working women writers and their material lives is another