Authors Marietta Holley, Fanny Fern and Harriet Beecher Stowe produced works of humorous fiction, parody and satire to advance discussion on the question of women's suffrage and equality. Using The General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo and Raskin, 1994; Attardo, 1994) to analyze some of the joke targets used by these women writers, the dissertation argues that some works of early feminist humor are easily recast as proto feminist humor. Additionally, the dissertation argues that anti-feminist humor authored by Marietta Holley and Harriet Beecher Stowe was created to control the rhetorical discourse of more radical elements of the early suffrage movement. Finally, the dissertation recognizes the complexity of the development of feminist humor and acknowledges the importance of humor as a form of rhetorical persuasion used by these women writers.
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