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Reformer’s Rhetoric: The Ethos of Mid-Nineteenth Century American Women Writers
Department: English & Philosophy
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Pocatello
Unknown to Unknown
Emily Treasure
Idaho State University
Dissertation
No
6/25/2025
digital
City: Pocatello
Doctorate
In antebellum America, especially in the 1830s-1860s, there were many women writers making a name for themselves by daring to speak out in support of two nascent reform movements: the abolition of slavery and women’s rights. Many of the women who were convinced of the moral rightness of abolition learned that they had to persuade the public of their own right to be heard in order to write about such controversial topics credibly. This study focuses on these women writers’ creative use of ethos to claim their right to speak and to persuade their nation-wide audience to join both causes. Scholars and activists today can learn from the way these writers carefully shaped their literary reputations and appreciate the patterns that have given certain women writers more lasting credibility—such as a refusal to prioritize one group’s rights over another’s and a consistent equal rights message. The work of many of the women writers in this study such as the Grimké sisters, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Harper, Sojourner Truth, Margaret Fuller, and Lydia Maria Child helped push reformist thinkers into calls for equality, including suffrage for women and all other marginalized populations, as well as an end to other discriminatory practices based on race, class, and gender. This study examines ways to teach the rhetoric of these women writers not just in literature classes but also in composition classes and other interdisciplinary spaces, especially since some of these writers’ work has only recently been recovered. It also justifies more frequent teaching of difficult or controversial texts such as this kind of historical protest literature. Keywords: abolition, antebellum, ethos, protest literature, rights, women

Reformer’s Rhetoric: The Ethos of Mid-Nineteenth Century American Women Writers

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