Beyond the Gibson Girl : reimagining the American new woman, 1895-1915 / Martha H. Patterson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Patterson, Martha H., 1966-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--Women authors--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Feminist fiction, American--History and criticism.

Feminist fiction, American.

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

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

Feminism and literature--United States.

Feminism and literature.

Women and literature--United States.

Women and literature.

African American women in literature.

Women in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (245 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Challenging monolithic images of the New Woman as white, well-educated, and politically progressive, this study focuses on important regional, ethnic, and sociopolitical differences in the use of the New Woman trope at the turn of the twentieth century. Using Charles Dana Gibson's "Gibson Girls" as a point of departure, Martha H. Patterson explores how writers such as Pauline Hopkins, Margaret Murray Washington, Sui Sin Far, Mary Johnston, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, and Willa Cather challenged and redeployed the New Woman image in light of other "new" conceptions: the "New Negro Woman, " the "New Ethics, " the "New South, " and the "New China." As she appears in these writers' works, the New Woman both promises and threatens to effect sociopolitical change as a consumer, an instigator of evolutionary and economic development, and (for writers of color) an icon of successful assimilation into dominant Anglo-American culture. Examining a diverse array of cultural products, Patterson shows how the seemingly celebratory term of the New Woman becomes a trope not only of progressive reform, consumer power, transgressive femininity, modern energy, and modern cure, but also of racial and ethnic taxonomies, social Darwinist struggle, imperialist ambition, assimilationist pressures, and modern decay.

Contents:

Selling the American new woman as Gibson Girl

Margaret Murray Washington, Pauline Hopkins, and the new Negro woman

Incorporating the new woman in Edith Wharton's The custom of the country

Sui Sin Far and the wisdom of the new

Mary Johnston, Ellen Glasgow, and the evolutionary logic of progressive reform

Willa Cather and the fluid mechanics of the new woman.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-220) and index.

ISBN:

9786613895929

9781283583473

128358347X

9780252092107

0252092104

OCLC:

811409948