Models of Claim, Resistance, and Activism in the Novels of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, and Frances Burney

Using corpus linguistics and feminist approaches, this thesis examines the usage and construction of the term “claim” in Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman, Mary Hays’s Memoirs of Emma Courtney, and Francis Burney’s The Wanderer. By tracking the frequency of “claim” and its collocates through corpora, this thesis explicates each author’s distinct construction of the term and the ways in which it is used to explore the conditions of eighteenth-century womanhood, specifically in regards to women’s lack of fundamental human rights. In examining each text’s utilization of “claim,” I found that, while each author explores a different type or facet of eighteenth-century women’s sociopolitical experience, they all employ the term to construct a discourse on women’s rights that predates formal feminist movements. In doing so, Wollstonecraft, Hays, and Burney propose models of resistance to catalyze their readers to engage in a process of sociopolitical reclamation, foreshadowing the discourses and tensions that would develop in modern feminist movements.

Grantor dc:publisher

Wake Forest University

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Smith, Emily Carlyle

• corpus linguistics

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/82250

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:wakespace.lib.wfu.edu:10339/82250