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Title: Motherhood and the Periodical Press: The Myth and the Medium

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2019

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Abstract: In this study, I utilize close readings of the periodically published works of three women writers – Kate Chopin, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Elia Peattie –through the lenses of historical/biographical, affective, and biosocial theories. Examining these works against the backdrop of America’s mythologized mother exposes the social ubiquity of the myth and the realities of motherhood nineteenth-century women experienced. Chapter one examines the mythological nature of American motherhood as it evolved from a politically and socially nuanced Republican Mother and the role of American periodicals as a medium of perpetuating that myth. Historically, American motherhood was an extended function of the biological reality women experienced, but colonial mothers soon accepted the higher calling of political guardianship, a calling that demanded piety, purity, and domesticity. The systematic layering of these motherly expectations through domestic literacy practices, female education, and reinforcement in the pages of America’s ever-growing periodical press immortalized this mythological mother as the standard bearer for American women...

Url: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1170&context=englishdiss

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Authors: Malcom, Susan

Institution: University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Department: English

Advisor: Melissa J. Homestead

Degree: Ph.D.

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage

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