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Dissertation Information for Janice E. Blathwayt

NAME:
- Janice E. Blathwayt

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Women's Studies

SCHOOL:
- York University (USA) (2002)

ADVISORS:
- Ann B. Shteir

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Jane Couchman
- Joan Gibson
- Marie-France Silver
- Heather Campbell
- Betty Schellenberg

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: More than distinguished for 'piety and virtue': New perspectives on Elizabeth Carter

Abstract: Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806) was a strong, authoritative woman and a brilliant scholar. During her lifetime she was known as a poet, translator and learned woman who made the first English translation of the Greek philosopher Epictetus. With the posthumous publication of seven volumes of letters to her Bluestocking friends, her image was altered for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to one of feminine piety. This transformation was achieved by the selective editing of her letters by her nephew, Montagu Pennington.

This dissertation introduces a different Elizabeth Carter, one who had always been there, but who was masked for her readers by this editing. It places her within the context of eighteenth-century ideologies about women, gender, marriage, learnedness and sexuality, drawing on contemporary feminist theories in order to appreciate what was written, what was unwritten and what was between the lines of her texts.

Previously unpublished letters written by Carter are now available to show new facets of her personality and how she, as a woman with intellectual aspirations, negotiated gender ideologies of her day. New feminist theories supported by gender analysis open a range of questions for investigating her life through the understanding of her writings. Her poems, for example, indicate both the depth of her scholarship and the possibility that she was attracted to women rather than men. This dissertation also considers the various genres in which Carter wrote--letters, translations, poetry, essays and religious writings--as life writings rather than literature. Most of these writings have never been considered before in this way and therefore can offer new insights.

The five chapters discuss Carter's life as an intellectual woman, a single woman, a friend, and a writer, and also as resident in an eighteenth-century body. Topics discussed include Carter's scholarship, her avoidance of marriage and her reasons for doing so, the value of friendship in her life, the question whether that friendship extended into a deeper relationship, revelations from her writing, the meaning of walking to her life and thought, and her personal efforts to maintain a healthy body while suffering from migraines and depression.

The study of Carter's life and work provides students of women's studies and others with another valuable example of the life of a woman who, without being recognized as a feminist according to twenty-first-century standards, was one of the foremothers on whose shoulders contemporary feminists stand. It is also a cautionary tale for writers and readers alike about the perils of an honest approach to the life of a biographical subject.

MPACT Scores for Janice E. Blathwayt

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calculated 2008-04-21 13:42:56

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