Romancing the vote : feminist activism in American fiction, 1870-1920 / Leslie Petty.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Petty, Leslie, 1970-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Feminist fiction, American--History and criticism.

Feminist fiction, American.

Political fiction, American--History and criticism.

Political fiction, American.

Feminism and literature--United States--History.

Feminism and literature.

Politics and literature--United States--History.

Politics and literature.

Women--Suffrage--United States--History.

Women.

Women's rights in literature.

Suffrage in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (240 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens, Ga. : University of Georgia Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

As the nineteenth century progressed into the twentieth, novels about politically active women became increasingly common. Until now, however, no one has studied this body of writing as a distinct tradition in American literature. In Romancing the Vote, Leslie Petty recovers this tradition and also examines how the fiction written about the women's rights and related movements contributed to the creation and continued vitality of those movements. Petty examines the novels as paradigms of feminist activism and reform communities and elucidates how they, whether wittingly or not, model ways to create similar communities in the real world. She demonstrates how the narratives provide insight into the hopes and anxieties surrounding some of the most important political movements in American history and how they encapsulate the movements' paradoxical blend of progressive and conservative ideologies. The major works discussed are Elizabeth Boynton Harbert's Out of Her Sphere (1871), Lillie Devereux Blake's Fettered for Life (1874), Henry James's The Bostonians (1886), Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Iola Leroy (1892), Hamlin Garland's A Spoil of Office (1892), Marjorie Shuler's For Rent-One Pedestal (1917), Elizabeth Jordan's edited volume The Sturdy Oak (1917), and Oreola Williams Haskell's Banner Bearers: Tales of the Suffrage Campaigns (1920). Although these works discredit many traditional notions about gender and inspire their readers to seek fairness and equality for many American women, they often simultaneously perpetuate discriminatory ideas about other marginalized groups. They not only privilege the experiences of white women but also rely on widespread anxieties about racial and ethnic minorities to demonstrate the need for gender reform. By focusing on such tensions between conventional and unconventional ideas about gender, race, and class, Petty shows how the fiction of this period helps to situate first-wave feminism within a larger historical and cultural context.

Contents:

True Christian philanthropy, or, A release from the "prison-house" of marriage : fictional representations of feminist activism in the 1870s

Expanding the vision of feminist activism : Frances E.W. Harper's Iola Leroy and Hamlin Garland's A spoil of office

Making it new : middlebrow literary culture and twentieth-century suffrage fiction

The political is personal : what Henry James's The Bostonians can teach feminist activists.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [211]-221) and index.

ISBN:

9786613253217

9781283253215

1283253216

9780820342894

0820342890

OCLC:

759160202