Communications in Humanities Research ISSN: 2753-7072
Home> Volumes> Volume CHR Vol.112> Article
Research Article

Eliza's Narrative Agency and Historical Memory in Hamilton

Yifan WangWuhan University of Science and Technology*

* Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract

Hamilton concludes the American founding narrative with the question "Who tells your story?". This paper takes the 2015 Broadway version as the research object, selects six core songs and supplements with three related songs, and examines the changes of Eliza in four dimensions: vocal position, consequential actions, archive control, and relational dependence. To make the cross-song comparison have a testable explanatory boundary, this paper constructs a narrative agency index based on the 0-2 level heuristic coding. Close reading shows that she first enters the narrative with choral, marital, and caregiving voices, obtains negative archive sovereignty by burning letters in "Burn", and changes the relationship with almost wordless physical actions in "It's Quiet Uptown", and finally returns to history. The finale grants her narrative power, but still takes maintaining Alexander Hamilton's legacy as the main condition. This paper summarizes this position, which combines action ability and structural limits, as "constrained historical subjectivity", thereby revealing how caring labor transforms into historical production and also revealing the naming boundaries that still exist when women are incorporated into the grand narrative.

Keywords: Hamilton; Eliza Hamilton; Feminist Narratology; Care Ethics; Historical Memory
Published: August 18, 2026
DOI: 10.54254/2753-7064/2026.36144
Volume: CHR Vol.112
pp. 68-73
Download PDF

References

  1. Miranda, L.-M., & McCarter, J. (2016).Hamilton: The Revolution. New York: Grand Central Publishing.
  2. Miranda, L.-M. (2015).Hamilton: An American Musical [Original Broadway Cast Recording]. Atlantic Records.
  3. Muro, A. (2025). Who tells your story: Narration in Hamilton: An American Musical.Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics, 34(3), 231–247. https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470251319912.
  4. Berraf, H. L. D. (2024). Telling her story: The representation of women in Hamilton: An American Musical (2015).New Horizons in English Studies, 9, 185–202. https://doi.org/10.17951/nh.2024.9.185-202.
  5. Vollmann, V. (2024).Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton: Silenced women's voices and founding mothers of color. Berlin: Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/b21448.
  6. Schoch, H. (2023). Grasping the complicity and multiplicity of Hamilton: An American Musical: Genre circulation and the politics of pop culture pedagogy.European Journal of American Studies, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.19286.
  7. Wolf, S. (2021). Hamilton's gendered entanglements. In P. R. Laird & M. J. Lodge (Eds.),Dueling grounds: Revolution and revelation in the musical Hamilton(pp. 73–87). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190938840.003.0006.
  8. Herrmann, R. B. (2021). Hamilton, history, historiography. In P. R. Laird & M. J. Lodge (Eds.),Dueling grounds: Revolution and revelation in the musical Hamilton(pp. 103–116). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190938840.003.0008.
  9. Madison, K. S. (2017). 'Who lives, who dies, who tells your story': The use and representation of records in Hamilton: An American musical.The American Archivist, 80(1), 53–81. https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081.80.1.53.
  10. Huddleston, G. (2022). The curriculum of the jester: An examination of Hamilton, an American musical.Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 37(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.63997/jct.v37i1.1001.
  11. Lanser, S. S. (2024). Trans-forming narratology.Narrative, 32(2), 215–224. https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.2024.a926177.
  12. Lanser, S. S. (1992).Fictions of authority: Women writers and narrative voice. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501723087.
  13. Tronto, J. C. (1993).Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003070672.
  14. Doucet, A. (2023). Care is not a tally sheet: Rethinking the field of gender divisions of domestic labour with care-centric conceptual narratives.Families, Relationships and Societies, 12(1), 10–30. https://doi.org/10.1332/204674322X16711124907533.
  15. Taylor, D. (2003).The archive and the repertoire: Performing cultural memory in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822385318.
  16. Finden, A. E. (2024). Counter-mapping the archive: A decolonial feminist research method.Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 37(4), 461–482. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2023.2285759.