Research Postgraduate students

Rachel Webster

Postgraduate Research Student

Rachel Webster

Research overview

I am interested in tracing chronologically the history of dissent through the lives of five religious women writers of the nineteenth century: Hannah More, Catherine and Susanna Winkworth, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Josephine Butler. What unites these five women, whose lives spanned across a diverse and shifting century, was the ownership of a religious belief, a vital and essential feature of dissenting communities. For women, however, this ability to choose and take responsibility for an important aspect of their lives had a knock-on effect: it created and encouraged a singularity of mind in which their newly found convictions could be vocalised and expressed, through writing, within a particular genre. Their works, often didactic in purpose, covered a variety of personal, collective, social and public interests: female education; theology; rationalism and science; political campaigns; and women’s work. The originality of this study, however, lies in the examination of the dissenting communities which these women were a part of and in assessing the role they played in their literary endeavours. I also want to address the difficulty of defining an individual’s religious faith, believing that to offer a straightforward binary between dissent and protestant orthodoxy is misleading. There were often complicated relationships existing between an Anglican faith adopted in childhood and the adult ownership of belief, initiated in dissenting communities.

These communities were not, on the whole, a self-consciously conceived grouping: fixed times, place of meetings or participating members were rarely spoken of (Hannah More’s involvement with the Clapham Sect is an exception). They were not institutionalised or identifiable by name. Instead, the evidence for an intellectual community of ideas, advice, and encouragement – all synonymous with mentorship – could be found in the spontaneous, often sporadic, communication taking place between individuals, through written correspondence or in social and political settings such as dinner parties and at philanthropic gatherings. There is evidence within these dissenting communities that they were not an exclusive female space, but instead women were mentored (in spiritual and secular areas of life) by male intellectuals, religious and philosophical thinkers, politicians, diplomats and clergy. It is a priority of this thesis (where appropriate) to explore the significance of male mentorship in the lives of these women writers: what was at stake for female development, both spiritually and literary, and how much of it rested on the advice of mentors?

Supervisor

Dr. Richard Salmon: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/site/custom_scripts/people_profile_details.php?profileID=1107

Teaching

'Poetry: Reading and Interpretation' - ENGL1260 (Seminar Tutor during semester 2, 2011/12 session)

My papers

‘“Prove that an artist’s life, even a woman’s, might be a true Christian life”: Mid-nineteenth-century Christianity, Literary Communities and the German translations of Catherine and Susanna Winkworth’.  5-7th July 2011, Brunel University, Futures of Feminism Conference.

Training

  • Starting Your Research Degree [28.10.2010]
  • Introduction to EndNote [02.11.2010]
  • Giving Effective Seminar /Conference Presentations [07.06.2011]
  • Small Group English [14.09.2011]

Academic-related Activities

  • Nineteenth-Century Reading Group
  • Postgraduate Research Seminar
  • Postgraduate Christian Fellowship