Description
Book SynopsisWorking Women in American Literature, 18651950 consists of eight original essays by literary, historical, and multicultural critics on the subject of working women in late-nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century American literature. The volume examines how the American working woman has been presented, misrepresented, and underrepresented in American realistic and naturalistic literature (18651930), and by later authors influenced by realism and naturalism. Points explored include:the historical vocational realities of working women (e.g., factory workers, seamstresses, maids, teachers, writers, prostitutes, etc.); the distortions in literary representations of female work; the ways in which these representations still inform the lives of working women today; and new perspectives from queer theory, immigrant studies, and race and class analyses.These essays draw on current feminist thought while remaining mindful of the historicity of the context. The essayists discuss important women wri
Trade ReviewThese thoughtful, interesting essays examine texts that explore the figure of the working woman during an era of enormous social transformation in the US. Arranged in four sections ("Naturalism and the Working Woman," "The 'New Woman,'" "Race, Sex, and Class," and "Working Women in Drama and Film"), the eight essays scrutinize work from a range of authors, including William Dean Howells, Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ellen Glasgow, Ann Petry, and Rachel Crothers. The book concludes with an examination of career women in 1940s cinema. A helpful introduction covering women’s rapidly changing roles in society during this era will be particularly helpful for readers unfamiliar with the period. . . Readers interested in feminist and historical approaches to literature will profit most from this book, and it will serve as a helpful supplement to more broad-based studies of literature from the period. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. * CHOICE *
Table of ContentsIntroduction, by Miriam S. Gogol Part I: Naturalism and the Working Woman “The Female Domestic in Naturalistic Fiction,” by Miriam S. Gogol “Sister Carrie, Fashion and the Working Woman in American Realism,” by Irene Gammel Part II: The “New Woman” “Women Doctors in Henry James and William Dean Howells,” by Lara Hubel “Women, Work and Cross-Class Alliances in the Fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman” by Nancy Von Rosk “Naturalism and the New Woman in Ellen Glasgow’s Barren Ground: “How Hard She Had Worked!” by Jessica Schubert McCarthy Part III: Race, Sex, and Class “Work, race, and the performance of gender in Ann Petry’s The Street” by Jochem Riesthuis Part IV: Working Women in Drama and Film “Feminism, Sentimentality and Realism in Rachel Crothers’ Working-Women Plays” by Anna Andes “Career Women in 1940s Cinema: The Heroine as Executive Editor,” by Pedro Ponce
