Invisible Hosts
Subtitle
Performing the Nineteenth-Century Spirit Medium's Autobiography
This book provides a rhetorical analysis of female spirit mediums’ autobiographies in the historical and social contexts of Victorian-era America.
"Invisible Hosts" explores how the central tenets of Spiritualism influenced ways in which women conceived of their bodies and their civic responsibilities, arguing that Spiritualist ideologies helped to lay the foundation for the social and political advances made by women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As public figures, female spirit mediums of the Victorian era were often accused of unfeminine (and therefore transgressive) behavior. A rhetorical analysis of 19th-century spirit mediums’ autobiographies reveals how these women convinced readers of their authenticity both as respectable women and as psychics.
The author argues that these women’s autobiographies reflect an attempt to emulate feminine virtues even as their interpretation and performance of these virtues helped to transform prevailing gender stereotypes. She demonstrates that the social performance central to the production of women’s autobiography is uniquely complicated by Spiritualist ideology. Such complications reveal new information about how women represented themselves, gained agency and renegotiated 19th-century gender roles.
Bio
Elizabeth Schleber Lowry is a lecturer of English in writing, rhetorics and literacies at Arizona State University, where she also earned her PhD in English in 2012.
Praise for this book
This brief study will benefit scholars of new religions, the history of feminism and 19th-century American culture. It is a solid contribution to the growing body of scholarly work that is expanding our understanding of the significance of Spiritualism and its practitioners.
Nova Religio
There is much solid historical scholarship within these contents, and newcomers to the field will appreciate Lowry’s clarity of expression and useful summations of key events in spiritualist history.
Aries
