Women's History Commons^™

Public Wife: The Life Of Jessie Benton Fremont, Lorraine D. Herbon

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the life of Jessie Benton Frémont (1824-1902) and the ways in which she performed the role of a “public wife” through her marriage to John C. Frémont. This re-examination of a woman immensely popular in the nineteenth century offers a new way of thinking about the wives of famous men and the steps they took to both participate in, and direct the narrative of, American history.

Jessie Benton was the daughter of Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton. At sixteen, Jessie met a young man from the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers who came to meet with …

Seeing With The Eyes Of The Soul: Visionary Women, Meditative Lives Of Christ, And Their Readers In Late-Medieval England, Caitlin J. Branumthrash

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the interactions in the transmission and reception of visionary women’s texts, devotional retellings of Christ’s life, and female book cultures in late-medieval England (ca.1350-1550). Surveying English manuscripts and texts containing the texts of St. Birgitta of Sweden and Mechthild of Hackeborn indicates a link in the commensurate popularities of the Life of Christ genre and the visionary women. Devotional Lives of Christ written by men incorporate visionary texts, though they reflect implicit medieval misogyny even as they celebrate the holy women. In contrast, a Life of Christ written by a medieval English nun blends the lived experiences …