Nancy Reagan‘s My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan (1989) and Hillary Clinton’s Living History (2003): Two First Ladies in the Public and Private Spaces
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Date
2020
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou
Abstract
This present work is a comparative study that explores the public and private spaces of two
American First Ladies, Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton in their respective autobiographies My
Turn (1989) and Living History (2003). For this purpose, we have borrowed two concepts: The
‘Public Sphere in the Political Domain’ and the ‘Public Sphere in the World Letters’, from the
German sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas, which he discusses in his work The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois
Society (1962). This dissertation focuses mainly on the representation of First Lady Reagan and
First Lady Clinton’s public and private spaces in their respective autobiographies. It discusses their
implications in the public space as well as how they both portray it in their autobiographies. It also
addresses their private spaces and explores their different relationships with their respective parents,
husbands and children and how that shaped them to become the women they are today. Through the
analysis of such interesting literary works and First Ladies, we have come to one major finding
which is that both First Lady Reagan and First Lady Clinton had a significant impact on redefining
the role of First Ladies from only wives and mothers to powerful women who can make a change
and effectively impact the world.
Description
30cm ; 56p.
Keywords
Public/Private Spaces, First Ladies, Autobiography, Power, Motherhood.
Citation
Literature and Interdisciplinary Approaches