Description
Book SynopsisCharts the development of the concept of "character" in the fictional genres, social reform movements, and political cultures of the United States from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century
Trade ReviewSalazar’s splendid study gives this term a cultural history, and in the process shows how the rhetoric of character has profound effects on what we do from child-rearing, to physical exercise, to racial exclusion, to immigrant inclusion, and the contours of democratic citizenship itself. -- Karen Sánchez-Eppler,Amherst College
A comprehensive and original study of the various ways the rhetoric of character appeared in American culture. -- Debra Bernardi * American Literary Realism *
Dense and thought-provoking. -- J.J. Benardete * Choice *
This detailed and carefully argued book charts the development of character...drawing on a rich archive of primary sources. -- William Gleason * The Journal of American History *
James Salazar takes the term & characterpervasive and elusiveand accounts for its centrality by showing how it embodies the contradictions of modern America. In a series of intricate literary readings, he analyzes the ways in which the late-nineteenth-century obsession with building & character vivified social distinctions but also, in its instabilities, became the pivot for critique. -- Samuel Otter,University of California, Berkeley
[Salazar] ably integrates an impressive array of materials into his readings. * New England Quarterly *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: "The Grandest Thing in the World" 1 Philanthropic Taste: Race and Character in Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man 2 Character Is Capital: Manufacturing Habit in Mark Twain's Character Factory 3 Muscle Memory: Building the Body Politic of Character in Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the National Police Gazette 4 "A Story Written on Her Face": Pauline Hopkins's Unmaking of the Inherited Character of Race 5 Character's Conduct: Spaces of Interethnic Emulation in Jane Addams's "Charitable Effort" Notes IndexAbout the Author
