"A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life" En kritisk diskursanalys av Margaret Cavendishs köns- och identitetsskapande och konstruktionen av genushegemoni

Sammanfattning: This essay studies the construction of femininity as it appears in the early modern thinker Margaret Cavendish’s biographical work "A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life". The theoretical and methodological framework consists of a development of Raewyn Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity based on Judith Butler’s heterosexual matrix and Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis. The result demonstrates the emergence of gender hegemony in the construction of femininity, but also contradictory elements and qualities where femininity is produced as both active and passive.