Abstract
This thesis examines the relationship between portrait photography and rhetorical ethos in nineteenth-century women rhetors. Facing a challenging rhetorical situation in which credible women were relegated to the home, the women featured in this study were able to enter the public sphere by very carefully configuring their ethos. In this project, I examine photographic portraits of some of the nineteenth-century’s most illustrious women rhetors in order to argue that not only was ethos constructed visually, but also that photographs specifically served as a means to establish a credible ethos. The nineteenth century was marked by an intense focus on visuality: the new medium of photography was understood as a transparent representation of reality while dominant belief held that an individual’s character could be read through external markers. This led to the unique and powerful role of photographic portraiture in the nineteenth century.
My analysis builds on the existing scholarship on nineteenth-century women rhetors and then extends this scholarship to examine responses to photographic technologies. I offer close readings of portraits of Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Frances E. Willard to identify the ways in which they indicated the three constitutive elements of Aristotelian ethos (phronesis, aręte, and eunoia) and visually crafted a deliberate, legitimate ethos. I argue that photographic portraits of these women draw on image vernaculars of the nineteenth century, which enabled audiences to identify specific traits which worked to craft a rhetorical ethos and identity. For these women, whose rhetorical activity was quite constrained, photography was a useful way to construct and communicate the essential rhetorical appeal of ethos.
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