Abstract
This article explores Eliza Davies' 1881 autobiography The Story of an Earnest Life through the lens of nineteenth-century spiritual autobiographic genres. It analyses Davies' use of the spiritual autobiography to create a subjectivity beyond the culturally-sanctioned role of wife and mother, a sense of self that is closely linked to her legal identity. In South Australia in the early 1840s, Davies found herself trapped in a position of legal non-subject through her marriage to a violent, alcoholic husband. Her autobiography charts not only her spiritual journey as Christ's missionary, but also he recreation as a legal subject through the divorce proceedings she brought against her husband in the 1860s. Through her interrogation of legal identity, Davies registers a dissenting voice in contemporary religious and imperial discourses regarding women's social and legal position
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 433-444 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Life Writing |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2011 |