Book chapter
Under Physical Siege: The Early Victorian Autobiographies of Elizabeth Storie and Mary Prince
Memoirs of Victorian Working-Class Women, pp.63-84
Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, Springer International Publishing
12/03/2017
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-64215-4_3
Abstract
Few autobiographies of working-class women were published in the early and mid-Victorian period, and these were generally accounts of severe mistreatment which had attracted the compassion and assistance of middle-class patrons. In this chapter I consider two such early memoirs of abused women who, along with their sponsors, strove to present their lives as representative of a larger cause. Each woman had endured violence of the most visceral sort—Elizabeth Storie’s “doctor” almost poisoned her to death, and Mary Prince’s slaveholding “employers” beat, insulted, humiliated, and sexually assaulted her—and each suffered lifelong consequences from the abuse she described. Both Storie and Prince made direct polemical appeals to their intended audiences, and each needed personal assistance and financial subvention to further her cause.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Under Physical Siege: The Early Victorian Autobiographies of Elizabeth Storie and Mary Prince
- Creators
- Florence S. Boos - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Memoirs of Victorian Working-Class Women, pp.63-84
- Publisher
- Springer International Publishing; Cham
- Series
- Palgrave Studies in Life Writing
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-3-319-64215-4_3
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 12/03/2017
- Academic Unit
- English; International Programs
- Record Identifier
- 9984397933502771
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