TY - JOUR
T1 - The Romance of Independence
T2 - Working Women in Nineteenth-Century Telegraph Literature
AU - Harner, Christina Henderson
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 University of Tulsa. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022/3
Y1 - 2022/3
N2 - This article examines the ways in which telegraph fiction by women authors imagined heroines whose jobs allowed them to subvert gender norms and take control of their lives. This fiction simultaneously challenged the assumptions of male writers about women telegraph operators and rewrote the genre conventions of sentimental fiction. Writers such as Lida A. Churchill and Ella Cheever Thayer represented the telegraph office as a site of professional and personal development in which disembodied communication over the telegraph uniquely transcended divisions of gender, space, and social sphere. This essay will discuss three areas in which telegraph work benefited women: financial independence, greater romantic freedom, and increased peer community support. It argues that this long-overlooked microgenre of fiction is significant from both a literary and historical perspective.
AB - This article examines the ways in which telegraph fiction by women authors imagined heroines whose jobs allowed them to subvert gender norms and take control of their lives. This fiction simultaneously challenged the assumptions of male writers about women telegraph operators and rewrote the genre conventions of sentimental fiction. Writers such as Lida A. Churchill and Ella Cheever Thayer represented the telegraph office as a site of professional and personal development in which disembodied communication over the telegraph uniquely transcended divisions of gender, space, and social sphere. This essay will discuss three areas in which telegraph work benefited women: financial independence, greater romantic freedom, and increased peer community support. It argues that this long-overlooked microgenre of fiction is significant from both a literary and historical perspective.
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U2 - 10.1353/tsw.2022.0003
DO - 10.1353/tsw.2022.0003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85132043026
SN - 0732-7730
VL - 41
SP - 65
EP - 90
JO - Tulsa Studies in Womens Literature
JF - Tulsa Studies in Womens Literature
IS - 1
ER -