ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author tells us about Carolyn Ellis the individual—her feelings, thoughts, actions, and relationships. The author read Carolyn’s story this way: she struggles and then comes to terms with the cultural changes and changes in self that have accompanied her social, generational, and geographic mobility. On the one hand, she wants to be the Good Daughter who cares for her parents during a crisis without complaining about the death rituals she finds estranging or the feeling rules she has rejected in her current life. On the other hand, she wants to retain her integrity of self; the rituals she’d prefer and the feeling rules she now embraces are also moral matters, central to her current definition of self. Ironically, Carolyn’s academic self allows her to appreciate her pre-academic life. Her emerging intellectual perspective—her post-positivist self—helps her incorporate elements of her working-class background.
