Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Availability

Open Access Thesis

Keywords

McCarthy, Mary, --1912-1989--Memories of a Catholic girlhood; Autobiography--Women authors;

Abstract

Modernist and postmodernist writer Mary McCarthy was a unique feminist writer. Throughout her writing career, which spanned nearly fifty years, McCarthy authored three autobiographical volumes, nine volumes of fiction, two books about art, and numerous essays and reviews. Regardless of the critical response to her writing, McCarthy wrote her truth her way. McCarthy did not capitulate to traditional patriarchal notions of autobiographical content and form; rather, she challenged patriarchal autobiographical traditions in her texts. This thesis examines McCarthy's first autobiographical volume, the 1957 Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, which describes McCarthy's orphanhood in post-World War I America. The introductory chapter describes Memories' unusual composition, its paternal text and commentaries, sometimes identified as the maternal text, and analyzes its critical reception over four decades. Chapter 2, "On Being an Orphan," focuses on Memories' Preface, suggesting it can be read as a brief for orphans for it foregrounds the challenges orphans face in respect to personal history and formation. In this chapter the impact of Catholicism on McCarthy's orphanhood is also specifically examined. Chapter 3, "Destructive Mother Substitutes," draws on theorist Jeanne Braham's Crucial Conversations to examine how female orphans such as McCarthy negotiate their identities in their autobiographical texts. Braham suggests that female orphans are often encumbered by mother substitutes, and in this chapter I underscore the ways in which McCarthy's feelings of accountability to mother substitutes tends to overshadow, even imperil, her own life and art. I also examine McCarthy's need to "break silence" in writing her memoirs to achieve liberation and to involve the collaborative reader in this liberation. Chapter 4, "'Farewell to Childhood': Empowering Mother Substitutes," focuses upon the adults who positively impacted McCarthy's girlhood. Drawing on the writings of Susan Friedman, Sheila Rowbotham, and Nancy Chodorow, I examine Memories as a text revealing female identity as comprised of complex interdependence with others. Indeed, my point is that female interdependence can be empowering as well as debilitating. Additionally McCarthy's dual identity formation, based on her dual consciousness, is documented in this chapter. In the final chapter of the thesis, I argue that McCarthy's Memories of a Catholic Girlhood is an important text because it expands the autobiographical tradition in numerous ways. Memories expands our understanding of life writing by both women and orphans. It challenges the historical (largely patriarchal) notion of a stable, "essential self" knowable to the autobiographer, and it boldly innovates the reverse conversion narrative, a narrative describing conversion away from, rather than toward, religious faith.

Year of Submission

2001

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of English Language and Literature

First Advisor

Barbara Lounsberry

Second Advisor

Karen Tracey

Third Advisor

Leah White

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

2001

Object Description

1 PDF file (76 leaves)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Download

Comments?

Share

COinS