Exploring the Nature of the Dialogical Self: The Young Widow Memoir

Abstract

This paper intends to contribute to the ongoing debate on identity construction by offering a textual analysis of two memoirs that depict the experience of young widowhood: Unremarried Widow by Artis Henderson (2014) and When it Rains by Maggie MacKellar (2010). I refer to the texts as young widow memoirs and identify them as a sub-genre of the grief memoir. Drawing on Paul Eakin’s concept of narrative identity and Hubert Hermans’ dialogical self theory, the analysis investigates how the memoirists use narrative to negotiate and represent the multiple subject positions and conflicting voices that arise out of the experience of young widowhood, and how they position selves which existed prior to their loss in relation to their post-loss selves. The memoirs under review are shown to rebuild a relatively stable sense of self out of the multiple voices of loss.

Keywords

• grief
• memoir
• identity
• young widowhood