The Feminist Stylistics Analysis of Representation of Agency in Educated

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to provide a feminist stylistic analysis of how agency is portrayed in  Westover's book, Educated. Using an eclectic linguistic model that combines Leech and Short's (2007) figures of speech and tropes with Mills's (1995) phrase and sentence-level framework, as well as Jeffries's (2010) examination of parallelism and chiasmus, the study explores how agency is linguistically constructed and negotiated within the text. Metaphor, simile, personification, irony, parallelism, schemas, and chiasmus are among the figures of speech that are examined in this approach. The study examines how these stylistic strategies create and convey female agency in the memoir using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The quantitative analysis finds patterns and frequencies that reinforce the systematic nature of these linguistic choices, while the qualitative study offers deep insights into how these stylistic devices work to reveal resistance, self-definition, and transformation. The findings demonstrate how Westover highlights the narrator's growth of selfhood and resistance to imposed identities through the use of figurative language and grammatical patterns. The study comes to the conclusion that Westover's memoir advances feminist literature by expressing complex depictions of female empowerment, identity, and resiliency through deliberate and multi-layered stylistic choices.