A new type of womanhood : discursive politics and social change in antebellum America / Natasha Kirsten Kraus.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kraus, Natasha Kirsten, 1966-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--United States--History--19th century.

Women.

Women--United States--Social conditions--19th century.

Women--Legal status, laws, etc--United States--History--19th century.

Women--Legal status, laws, etc.

History.

Social conditions.

United States.

Physical Description:

xvi, 262 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2008.

Summary:

In a new type of womanhood, natasha kirsten kraus retells the history of the 1850s woman's rights movement. She traces how the movement changed society's very conception of "womanhood" in its successful bid for economic rights and rights of contract for married women. Kraus demonstrates that this discursive change was a necessary condition of possibility for U.S. women to be popularly conceived as civil subjects within a Western democracy, and she shows that many rights, including suffrage, followed from the basic right to form legal contracts. She analyzes this new conception of women as legitimate economic actors in relation to antebellum economic and demographic changes as well as changes in the legal structure and social meanings of contract. Enabling Kraus's retelling of the 1850s woman's rights movement is her theory of "structural aporias," which takes the institutional structures of any particular society as fully imbricated with the force of language. Kraus reads the antebellum relations of womanhood, contract, property, the economy, and the nation as a fruitful site for analysis of the interconnected power of language, culture, and the law.

Contents:

True womanhood, the economy, and woman's rights

Reading antebellum history aporetically : renarrating womanhood, property rights, and the 1850s woman's movement

Gendered economies : the social meanings of womanhood

Gendered law : antebellum institutions regulating women, property, and contract

The antebellum woman's movement : reshaping the interimplicated relations of womanhood and contract

Conclusion: Structural aporias : questions, thoughts, and contemporary politics.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [233]-255) and index.

ISBN:

9780822343332

0822343339

9780822343684

0822343681

OCLC:

217263300