Fourteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Conway Dobbs and Maria Sophia Dobbs, a nineteenth century upper-class Anglican Irish couple, had 8 children, five of them daughters. The eldest three daughters, Jane, Maria and Harriet were all married around the same time and scattered throughout the British Empire, whereas the younger two sisters, Kate and Madeline, remained at home in Dublin. These sisters, despite distance, difficulty and tragedy, remained in close contact. This is in part due to the efforts of their mother, Maria, who clearly was the centre of the letter exchange between the siblings and their parents. The focus of this paper is to examine the emotional bond between Jane, Maria, and Harriet, and how this was intertwined with their experiences of empire and the ways their lives in many ways mirrored each other. This type of collective biography is known as ‘prosopography’. These sisters lived separate and individual lives in the broader colonial world, and yet there were so many similarities between their experiences. The relationship between these sisters explores what empire meant to the women who lived in it, and whose actions created and enforced colonialism. This presentation will specifically use the method of critical feminist biography, which aims to bring the lives of female subjects to the centre of historical studies. The Dobbs sisters’ letters offer a unique opportunity for understanding the complexities of subjective human experience and essential personal relationships.