This study is a creative and critical exploration of the blog as the latest form of self-writing. In calling for a reconsideration of the literary value of blogs, this project discusses how the online autoblography has evolved into a deeply gendered vehicle that has revolutionised the act of female self-discovery.
At the heart of this thesis is a novel structured as blogs. The story
focuses upon an elderly working class Mother who is forced to blog about her life for a residential home's website. It is a novel that draws upon the history of female self-narratives and a range of theoretical perspectives in order to explore the ways women adopt a plural and more feminised selfhood when online. In using biographical and autobiographical materials, as well as source
based historical analysis, I creatively explore subjects such as gender, identity, self, and selfhood, in context of the intersection between the act of self-discovery and the art of telling a life story.
This study is also a gendered investigation into blogging practice that draws critical comparisons with the first female ventures into the patriarchal realms of self-analysis and, in particular, the 17^th century conversion narratives. In taking four distinct narrative characteristics that defined how women approached the act of self-writing, I discuss how bloggers emulate these characteristics as they pass through a series of online identification
procedures as part of their autoblographical experience.