Graduation Term

Summer 2026

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of English

Committee Chair

Katherine Ellison

Committee Member

Chris Breu

Committee Member

Brian Rejack

Abstract

This dissertation examines the relationship between women and objects in eighteenth-century British literature through Katherine Behar's Object-Oriented Feminism (OOF). By examining narratives of female characters written by women writers, I argue that objects function as active participants in the construction, performance, and negotiation of female identity under patriarchal control to restructure the power dynamic. Rather than asking how objects are used, this study asks what objects do in collaboration with female characters, demonstrating how agency emerges through networks of human and nonhuman relations while being objectified through self-defined objectification. Through close readings of Aphra Behn's The Rover (1677), Jane Barker's Love Intrigues (1713), Eliza Haywood's Fantomina (1725), and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's “The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to write a Poem called ‘The Lady's Dressing Room’” (1734), this dissertation demonstrates how clothing, masks, cosmetics, letters, money, information, and female bodies participate in a dynamic that conceals, enables, and transforms women's identities within patriarchal social structures such as the marriage market and sex work. Influenced by Timothy Morton’s hyperobject, I provide a new term, “metaobject,” to describes a female protagonist who exists in three timeframes as past, present, and future to recreate her agency and identity to exist as multiple women. By bringing Object-Oriented Feminism into conversation with eighteenth-century women's writing, this dissertation contributes to feminist literary criticism and eighteenth-century studies by demonstrating how modern technology terms and practices, such as data classification and algorithms, are observed before those digital technologies existed, offering a relational model for female agency that moves beyond the subject/object binary. Finally, the dissertation extends this theoretical framework into the classroom through practices that integrate feminist pedagogy, trauma-informed pedagogy, and post-humanist teaching to encourage students to rethink agency, embodiment, gender, and the role of objects and information in literary interpretation while strengthening historical understanding and critical analysis.

Access Type

Dissertation-Open Access

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Available for download on Thursday, October 12, 2028

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