Women's Rhetorical Agency in the American West: The New Penelope

Abstract

This essay theorizes women's rhetorical agency in the nineteenth-century American West. Contrast between fluid gender norms in frontier life and the Cult of True Womanhood highlights how agency is confined by materiality. Agency is the capacity to recognize and act in moments when material structures are vulnerable to resignification. I offer an analysis of Frances Fuller Victor's novella The New Penelope to demonstrate how pioneer women writers reinvented womanhood in light of socioeconomic changes.

Keywords:

• Rhetorical Agency
• Habitus
• Frances Fuller Victor
• Cult of True Womanhood
• American West