Nineteenth-Century Women Learn to Write » (1st Edition)

Catherine Hobbs is Assistant Professor of English and a member of the Women's Studies faculty at the University of Oklahoma.

The essays in this volume address questions exploring the nature of education in the nineteenth century. Literacy has been called a double-edged sword because it can be used for both social control and social reform. During the nineteenth century it became a key element in the social transformation to Victorian culture with its cult of true womanhood advocating piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. But both black and white women could resist the intended uses of the literacy they were taught in order to achieve social reform.

Nineteenth-Century Women Learn to Write interweaves thick feminist social history with theoretical perspectives from such diverse fields as linguistics and folklore, feminist literary theory, and African American and Native American studies. The volume constitutes a major addition to traditional social science studies of literacy.

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Explores the gendered nature of literary education in the US during the 19th century, considering upper-class white women participating in writing circles and attending Radcliffe, diarists on the western frontier, and African-American and Native-American women creating leadership roles. Suggests that lessons can be learned for developing countries today. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)