I have read and studied quite a bit of women’s literature as an English major, but upon taking this class, I find myself wondering about the rhetorical devices and strategies at play in not only the works I have studied but those of other women writers as well. During this research process, I plan to explore the historical contexts and implications of rhetoric in women’s poetry and fiction. When did women begin discovering rhetorical strategies and when did they begin to carve out their own gendered traditions? How do these differ from those of their male literary counterparts? How have these trends of the past affected women’s rhetoric in the twenty-first Century? Is there a way to look at the past and make predictions about where women’s rhetoric will go next? Is women’s rhetoric genuinely different from men’s? A few of the primary sources I plan on using to establish historical trends are: Race, Gender, and Rhetoric by John P. Fernandez, Cold Warriors: Manliness on Trial in the Rhetoric of the West by Suzanne Clark, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre by Paula R. Backscheider, and Reading Rape: The Rhetoric of Sexual Violence in American Literature and Culture 1790-1990 by Sabine Sielke.

While these texts, by themselves, will not render enough information for me to make factual claims or accurate assertions, I hope that by exploring them, I will find leads on where to go next, the beginnings of understanding, and a means of situation women’s rhetoric in American literature both contextually and historically. Most importantly, I feel that these books may aid me in discovering the limitations women writers have experienced when constructing their arguments or voices in the past and whether those same limitations still exist today.

While I have not found adequate support as of yet, the one area I would like to focus on in-depth is the rhetoric of female authors outside the canonical scope: women who are “othered” by race, class, gender, ethnicity, or orientation. What I hope to discover is whether their existence outside the borders of mainstream literature allows them more rhetorical freedom or less, whether they are judged more harshly by academia or worse, whether they even get noticed. From slave narratives through regional fiction through lesbian erotica, the last two centuries have offered a multitude of female voices spanning the lines of time, genre, and audience, and while some differences are apparent between theirs and “similar” male-authored texts, I find myself convinced that their persuasive voices, ideals, and arguments need to be sought out, analyzed, and broadcasted as a means of attaining understanding and allowing for their acceptance in more mainstream arenas.

In order to do justice to this project, it will be important for me to understand the way society, politics, and class operated and influenced female authors during different periods, and it will be no less important for me to attempt to ascertain the relationships, intentions, and audiences of various women authors as a way of establishing a rounded and accurate view of women’s rhetoric. I have found several articles which will function as a starting point for achieving these two ends: “Sister-to-Sister Talk” by April L. Few, “Older Sisters are Very Sobering Things” by Jane Dawson, “What American Renaissance? The Gendered Genealogy of a Critical Discourse” by Charlene Avallone, “Anthologizing Women: Women Poets in Early Victorian Collections of Lyric” by Linda Peterson, and “But is it Any Good?: Evaluating Neneteenth-Century American Women’s Fiction” by Susan K. Harris. This last text points to one facet of my question: by whose standards is women’s writing judged by? What is the criteria that makes it acceptable? Who decides what women’s texts will be celebrated while others berated, and do either of these reactions occur, at least in part, because of rhetoric?

The sources that I’ve chosen thus far seem promising for a number of reasons: first, the majority are written by women writers about women writers, and while I did not intentionally seek out female authors, I find it more than interesting that most of the sources I have come across, both the ones I have kept and the ones I have discarded, have been written by women. Second, It leads me to believe that much of the male-driven and male-dictated academic and educational realm of literature and rhetoric is probably still interested in the canonical classics and the very same studies and subjects which they have been concerned with in the past. It is for that reason I find this topic so intriguing. Perhaps there will come a time when the voice and arguments of women will carry the same merit and magnitude as those of their male counterparts, but until then, we need to continue to highlight the authors and aspects outside of the traditional scope, and that is what I hope my project will help towards. In researching the argumentation and persuasion of women authors, I hope to make their voices just a little bit louder.