Item Detail
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11886
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2
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0
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English
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I've a Mother There : Identity, Language, and Experience in Mormon Women's Literature
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University of Iowa
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Ph.D. diss.
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"This dissertation demonstrates the extent to which Mormon women writers Eliza R. Snow, Susa Young Gates, Maurine Whipple, Virginia Sorensen, and Terry Tempest Williams transform the Church's Mother in Heaven doctrine to a pursuit of self based upon inter-relationships within a community. This "feminine" autonomy is articulated in a gynocentric language exemplified by feminine myths, metaphors, images, and maternal signs; glossolalia; fluidity of textual form; intuitive communication; nearness and touch as a means of dialogue; and inter-weaving of narrative configurations within the texts. Also central is the Mormon errand into the wilderness, meant to establish a "city on a hill." In this endeavor Mormon women are not unlike other pioneer women who viewed the West as a new Garden of Eden emphasized in their narratives homes, gardens, families, and communities. But Mormon women, because of their belief in a female deity, their understanding of the spiritual nature of the land, and their conviction that women were an integral part of the "restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ," defined themselves first as a part of a religious subgroup and second as women. Examining the work of these Mormon writers, this study draws upon the contributions of Nancy Chodorow, Carol Gilligan, and Jean Baker Miller. Their discussions of object-relations theory emphasize the relation of the individual to the social context in which individuality develops and focus on the pre-oedipal dyad of mother and daughter. Also essential are Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray who stress the cultural debt to maternity; the representation of the mother's authority; the construction of an autonomous female sexuality, identity, and discourse; and the profound importance of difference in the representation of self in language. Close readings of the texts are bracketed with historical and scriptural data that overlap biological, linguistic, and psychoanalytic disciplines. The works by these Mormon women reveal a self defined within a community of others that can hasten the realization of a "Zion" society by generating an ethic of reciprocal inter-dependence and care." [Author's abstract]