The Laws of God and Men
Eliza Davies' Story of an Earnest Life
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12648907 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sarah Ailwood (0000-0001-5153-625X, Ministry of Law and Justice, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 433-444 |
| Publication date | 2011-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Life Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1448-4528 • E-ISSN: 1751-2964 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14484528.2011.619717 |
| OpenAlex | W2057383106 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
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
Aesthetics · Art · Biography · Identity (music · Life writing · Political science · Sociology · Subject (documents · Subjectivity · Wife · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Gender Studies · History · Law · Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies · Philosophy · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment · Religious studies · Religious Studies
| Highly cited | No |
|---|