Doctoral Dissertations
Date of Award
12-1991
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Major
English
Major Professor
R. Baxter Miller
Committee Members
George B. Hutchinson, Allison Ensor, Cynthia Griggs Fleming
Abstract
This dissertation adds a comprehensive study to the small body of literary scholarship that has been published about Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a nineteenth-century black American female poet, essayist, short fiction writer novelist, orator and social activist. The document examines the poetry and prose that she penned in support of the anti-slavery movement, the women's rights movement, and the temperance movement. The fundamental focus of this inquiry is whether Harper subordinated her personal artistic voice to become a public voice for the three reform movements mentioned. Also tangential to this question is the veiled tension created between the author's total acceptance of patriarchal Christianity and her personal conviction favoring the emancipation of slaves and women. A combination of the new historical critical approach and a materialist-feminist method was used in the analysis of the author's works. Using both these analytical modes allowed a significant range of social-historical criteria to be considered in examining the quality of Harper's literary voice, and in expanding the range of interpretations of a number of her literary contributions. Harper embraced an aesthetic which viewed the function of literature as a means to delight and instruct. Her experimentation with various literary techniques and forms revealed that she was indeed concerned about the artistic quality of her craft. Even though her literary voice was a public one, she did not compromise its artistic nature when she composed works about the injustice of slavery and the need for women to gain equality before the law. The lack of stylistic innovation and the extreme sentimentality that characterized the temperance poetry, however, yielded it ineffective as literature. On the other hand, the prose written in the area presents a clear portrait of the black woman's role in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the bigotry that guided that organizations policies about blacks.
Recommended Citation
Nettles, Evelyn E., "Literary voices of nineteenth-century reform movement : an examination of the literary works of Frances E. W. Harper. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1991.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/11189