Women, Compulsion, Modernity: The Moment of American Naturalism (Women in Culture and Society)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.11 (888 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0226253104 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-11-12 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Fleissner's exuberantly intelligent and beautifully written texttells an entirely new and breathtaking story about naturalism." -- Hildegard Hoeller, _American Literature_"remarkably insightfulpotentially revolutionarythis book has the potential to reorient how we see the connections between naturalist, regionalist, and realist literature." -- Nicolas Witschi, _American Literary Scholarship_"Fleissner's book is clearly an important event, innovative, sophisticated, and often brilliant in its arguments, and its discussion of history, gender, and critical method deserves a wide and attentive hearing." -- Rita Felski, _Modern Language Quarterly_"Fleissnermasterfully achieves the goal she sets for herselfThe `moment of American naturalism' startlingly becomes the lens through which we can read the history of modernity and women's lives in a new way.The language of compuls
"Terrific scholarship" according to Seaboard Lit Prof. Fleissner's book combines intellectual history, literary criticism, and historical analysis. It is written chiefly for scholars and students of literature, but it is lucid and sharply argued. For several decades, critics have thought of American literary naturalism (the fiction of Crane, Dreiser, Norris, and other fellow travelers like Edith Wharton and Jack London) as a distinctly masculinist body literature--obsessed with male selves
With Women, Compulsion, and Modernity, Fleissner creates a new language for the strange way the writings of the time both broaden and question individual agency.. Fleissner boldly argues that feminist claims in fact shaped the period's cultural mainstream. Women, Compulsion, Modernity reopens a moment when the young American woman embodied both the promise and threat of a modernizing world.Fleissner shows that this era's expanding opportunities for women were inseparable from the same modern developments—industrialization, consumerism—typically believed to constrain human freedom. The 1890s have long been thought one of the most male-oriented eras in American history. But in reading such writers as Frank Norris with Mary Wilkins Freeman and Charlotte Perkins Gilman with Stephen Crane, Jennifer L