Romantic subjectivity

: women’s identity in their nineteenth-century travel writing about Scotland

Abstract

Women’s identities are created and performed relational to the contexts in
which they live and by which they are bound. Identities are performed within
and against those contexts. Romantic subjectivity: women’s identity in their
nineteenth-century travel writing about Scotland, is concerned with the
location of women and their creation and construction of relational identity in
their personal narratives of the nineteenth century.
The texts taken for study are travel journals, memoirs, and diaries, each of
which narrates times and journeys in Scotland. The subjects of study are
Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Elizabeth Grant. The texts
considered are Journal of My Trip to Scotland, written by Sarah Stoddart
Hazlitt in 1803; Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, 1803 and Journal of
my second tour in Scotland, 1822, written by Dorothy Wordsworth; and
Memoirs of a Highland Lady, written by Elizabeth Grant about her life before
1830.
The focus of study is Romantic subjectivity in the texts of the three women
writers. Women’s relational performativity to the prevailing social and
cultural norms is examined and considered in the context of women as
authors, women’s travel writing, and ideologies of women’s place in the
nineteenth century.

Date of Award	5 Jun 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Edinburgh
Supervisor	Donna Heddle (Supervisor), Penny Fielding (Supervisor) & Alison Lumsden (Supervisor)