Date of Award
2000
Document Type
Thesis
Publication Status
Version of Record
Submission Date
October 2026
Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]
Buckton, Oliver
Abstract
Despite the designation of Olive Schreiner's Lyndall in The Story of an African Farm as the first "New Woman" in literature, the nineteenth-century New Woman, with her high ideals and belief in an androgynous compromise of sex roles, is exemplified by Fanny Fern's heroine Ruth in the novel Ruth Hall. While Lyndall speaks of social injustice done to women, the limitations of her provincial setting preclude her protests from achieving the level of social activism; however, Ruth's protests, in the form of newspaper articles, do reach the level of social activism. Schreiner's androgynous ideal becomes lost in a role reversal rather than role dissolution, while Fern's Ruth achieves the metamorphosis from voiceless stereotype to empowered woman, breaking established gender conventions. Ruth, revealed to the literary world before Schreiner's Lyndall, is not only an earlier New Woman but also a stronger and more successful New Woman.
Extent
88 p.
Recommended Citation
Richardson, Dana Jo, "new woman before she was new: Olive Schreiner's "The Story of an African Farm" and Fanny Fern's "Ruth Hall"" (2000). Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009. 98.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general_5/98
Identifier
FADT15771
Comments
Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2000.|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters