Margaret Keenan Harrais: A Biography In Four Voices

Abstract

Narrative strategies available to biography are explored through the life of Margaret Keenan Harrais---teacher, educational administrator, judge, and activist. Biography is a particular endeavor requiring flexible inquiry and creative presentation. Margaret is viewed through multiple lenses that explore personhood, encourage readers' introspection, and imply the importance of the individual in history. The four voices indicated in the title of this dissertation are editorial, analytical, sparsely Romantic, and expository. This biography aims to complicate readers' notions of what it means to be a person in relation to other people by focusing closely on selected episodes in Margaret's career; analyzing their historical, social, and literary import; and finally broadening the perspective to include the entirety of Margaret's life. The roles of the biographer and the reader are examined throughout in an attempt to explore the interconnections between biography and autobiography. Margaret's life is presented within the contexts of other women teachers in rural areas, as well as other men and women who wrote about territorial Alaska for a non-Alaskan audience. At heart this biography seeks to experiment with the narrative possibilities available to biographers, and to explore the ways in which the effects of these narratives allow for the contribution to general scholarship on the basis of particular experiences.