Type
Text
Type
Dissertation
Advisor
Bona, Mary Jo | Scheckel, Susan | Hesford, Victoria | Scott, Helen.
Date
2013-12-01
Keywords
Civil Rights Movement, Consciousness-Raising, Feminism and Psychology, Feminist Fiction and Form, New Left, Second-Wave Feminism | American literature
Department
Department of English.
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/77542
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
Second-wave feminism made famous the slogan, " The personal is political." This dissertation explores the relationship between the personal and political in fictional narratives associated with the development of second-wave feminism in the United States in the 1960s and 70s. Deeply engaged with the political movements that arose amidst this turbulent period in American history, these narratives reflect--in both form and content--the political discourses that dominated both the women's liberation movement and the New Left. The first-person fictions of feminist writers that emerge in this period traverse, and subvert, the boundaries between truth and fiction as well the personal and political while probing the limits of conventional literary forms. These narratives emphasize the validity of personal experience and assert narrative authenticity and " truth" despite the fictional dimensions of the text. Many of these writers turn to meta-fiction to challenge the limits of conventional novelistic forms so as to highlight the personal and political role of the woman writer within the feminist movement. The realm of psychology also features prominently as feminist writers engage with the notion of " madness" as a metaphor for both the condition of women in society and society itself. This dissertation focuses on emblematic texts, beginning with Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. These works played a critical role in shaping later feminist literary narratives such as Dorothy Bryant's Ella Price's Journal, a prime example of the " consciousness raising" novels that gave expression to the growing radicalization of women in the 1960s and 1970s. The impact of the civil rights and Black Power movements--and their relationship to the feminist movement--is also explored through an analysis of Octavia Butler's Kindred. The project concludes by investigating the political trajectory from feminism to post-feminism through an analysis of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary and Erica Jong's Fear of Flying. The focus throughout the dissertation is on the political implications of each narrative and its relationship to the women's liberation movement as well as the political implications of form, as each narrative struggles with--and defies--conventional literary forms. | 231 pages
Recommended Citation
Behrent, Megan Elizabeth, "When the Personal Became Political: First-Person Fictions and Second-Wave Feminism" (2013). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 3342.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/3342