Writing themselves into consciousness: Creating a rhetorical bridge between the public and private spheres

• Published in: The Quarterly journal of speech Vol. 84; no. 1; pp. 41 - 61
• Main Author: Gring-Pemble, Lisa M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Annandale, Va., etc Taylor & Francis Group 01-02-1998; Speech Communication Association, etc; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Antoinette Brown Blackwell; Blackwell (Antoinette Brown); Blackwell, Antoinette Brown (1825-1921); Case studies; Communication Research; Consciousness Raising; Content Analysis; Empowerment; Female Bonding; Females; Feminism; Feminist Scholarship; Higher Education; History; letter writing; Letters; Letters (Correspondence); Lucy Stone; Minority Groups; Nineteenth Century; Political Attitudes; Public Opinion; public sphere; Rhetoric; Sex Role Identity; Social Change; social movements; Stone (Lucy); Stone, Lucy (1818-93); Womens Education; Womens rights movements
• ISSN: 0033-5630; 1479-5779
• DOI: 10.1080/00335639809384203

Through an analysis of Antoinette Brown Blackwell's Oberlin College correspondence with Lucy Stone, this case study explores one way-letter writing-that nineteenth-century women developed a shared feminist consciousness: how they explored their identity as women, became aware that other women shared their experiences, and felt empowered to enact specific changes in society. The central argument developed in this essay is that the consciousness-raising process constructed in these letters functioned as a "pre-genesis" stage of the social movement we now identify as the women's rights movement.