The New Zealand New Woman: Representations of White Women in Settler Colonial New Zealand
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Abstract
In recent decades, settler colonial theory has been a a field of continuosuly growing
academic interest and research. However, the role of white women within the settler
colonial framework so far has often been neglected, especially in front of a specific
New Zealand backdrop. Thus, this dissertation examines how the structures of settler
colonialism affect and influence the role and ideal of white New Zealand women.
A survey of the development of New Zealand suffrage, as well as of the female
ideals shaping and being shaped in the Anglosphere over the course of the nineteenth
century will provide the backbone to a comparative approach which will contrast
New Zealand with the Empire's home Britain, and the United States of America, as
fellow settler colonial nation, in order to show what sets New Zealand women apart
from their peers. The rich archival material available in the New Zealand context will
be explored thoroughly, and the representations of white New Zealand women in
personal accounts and historical pieces of life-writing, as well as in historical
newspapers will be compared to their portrayal in autobiographical/autofictional
narratives and historical novels by contemporary women authors. Focusing on the
particular area where life-writing studies, gender studies, and settler colonial theory
overlap, literary analysis and archival work will be the two cornerstones on which
this dissertation is founded.
Reading personal reminiscences in continuity with pieces of life-writing and
fiction will allow me to address the question whether there is such a thing as a New
Zealand New Woman and what role she assumes within settler colonial New
Zealand. Ultimately my research will reveal whether settler colonialism, due to its
nature as on-going phenomenon, still resonates in New Zealand writing until today in
order to come to terms with a settler colonial past and present.