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Womanly Genres
Womanly Genres
Most women at this time wrote in “autobiographical”
genres. Letters
were the primary method of correspondence between women;
many authors published a collection of their letters
to represent their writing style. Memoirs, discourses
on the past, were written to raise money, defend their
reputation, and promote their position as writers. Life
writings allowed women to subjectively present their
lives, without necessarily maintaining themselves as
autobiographical subjects. More “serious”
writings were essays, where women could portray moral
and periodical arguments, and dialogues, where women
took on a conversation with an important, generally
fictitious, subject.
It was perceived as uncommon for women
to tackle more "masculine" or traditional
genres - despite this fact, many of the Bluestocking
members created interesting and important works. For
example, Bluestockings dabbled in historical writings,
such as Catherine
Graham's The History of England from the Accession
of James I to that of the Brunswick Line (1783),
or educational treatises, such as Hester
Chapone's Letters on the Improvement of the
Mind: Addressed to a Young Lady (1773). In additional,
others tackled such subjects as proper grammar (Hester
Thrale's Synonymy - 1794) or literature
discussions (Elizabeth
Carter's An Examination of Mr. Pope’s
Essay on Man - 1739).
Despite all these clear examples of the
diversity of women's writing, it was still perceived
that women only wrote letters, poems and miscellanies.
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