The Revisionist Literary Practices of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, 1854-1892

My thesis explores black womanhood and black maternity as units of political and moral power in Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s oeuvre. By revising, reusing, and remixing language, Harper places her texts in conversation with one another and connects them through themes of black womanhood, black maternity, and political resistance. Specifically, I examine Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854, 1857), a series of stories called “Fancy Etchings” and “Fancy Sketches” (1873-1874), and Harper’s novel Iola Leroy; Or, Shadows Uplifted (1892). Each work explores past current events to expose problematic sociopolitical values. Harper’s writing thus becomes a form of resistance and a medium to reimagine America. Her revisionist practices among bodies of work and on bodies of work launched arguments against widely-held cultural biases, and demonstrate how repetition and revision enabled writers to actively engage social and political issues during the nineteenth century.

INDEX WORDS: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, African American Literature, Black Womanhood, Black Maternity, Repetition, Revision