Paylor, Lorraine (2024) Friends for a purpose: Friendship and self-fashioning analysed through the correspondence of Geraldine Jewsbury (1812 – 1880). Doctoral thesis, York St John University.

Text (Doctoral thesis) Friends for a purpose - Friendship and self-fashioning analysed through the correspondence of Geraldine Jewsbury (1812–1880).pdf - Published Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 23 April 2027. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (2MB) Request a copy

Abstract

This thesis explores the correspondence of literary figure Geraldine Jewsbury (1812 -1880), and her understanding of friendship through an extensive corpus of eight hundred and thirty letters she sent to her friends, including lesser-known and unpublished ones. These letters provide fascinating insights into Jewsbury’s subjectivity, Victorian society, and the importance of epistolary friendships during the period. Drawing on these sources, the thesis argues that Jewsbury’s letters to her friends had a purpose; they were a
conduit for her construction of self and identity.

As such, the work provides a case study of an individual concept of friendship and self-fashioning analysed through a historical approach that incorporates some literary concepts.

This study draws on a theoretical framework that is closely aligned with studies of life-writing and responds to the turn towards ‘the personal’ among historians of emotions. This study uses quantitative and qualitative methods and close textual analysis to examine the letters as artefacts and texts. Consideration will be given to the practical and ethical issues that arise when working with people from the past and their letters.

Each chapter builds on Jewsbury’s concept of friendship identifying specific themes, including space, networks, otherness, and interrelationships,which are developed as the thesis progresses. The thesis investigates the ways in which Jewsbury’s correspondence shows her deliberately cultivating and manipulating friendship networks that promoted her self-fashioning. Jewsbury’s creation of self through a social network is essentially a new way of thinking about self-fashioning. With this in mind the thesis pays attention to
the performative nature of Jewsbury’s epistolary friendships, with an eye to the specific relations she kept with the recipients of her letters, and how conscious this performance was in the very act of letter-writing.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Status:	Published
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PR English literature
School/Department:	School of Humanities
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/11947

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