Portraying the lady technologies of gender in the short stories of Henry James / Donatella Izzo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Izzo, Donatella.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women in literature.

Sex role in literature.

Repression (Psychology) in literature.

Feminist fiction--History and criticism.

Feminist fiction.

James, Henry, 1843-1916--Characters--Women.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 312 p. )

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2012

Place of Publication:

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

From Daisy Miller to Isabel Archer to Maisie, female characters dominate the work of Henry James and, often, critical discussion of James's work. Donatella Izzo shifts that discussion to a different, more revealing, plane in this original interpretation of James's short fiction. By redirecting criticism from a biographical emphasis to a focus on James's engagement with the issues of representation, Izzo shows how these short stories actually question and investigate the cultural and ideological practices that produced women, both in literature and in society. Portraying the Lady brings to light the experimental quality and inherent consistency of stories that have received little critical attention, all of which revolve around ideas at the core of the cultural representation of femininity at the time. Izzo shows how James, by testing and stretching these ideas in his imagery and plots, exposed and exploded the perverse logic and the ultimate implications of such culturally shared versions of femininity, thus revealing their oppressive quality for women and laying bare literature's complicity in reproducing and circulating them. Exposing James's texts as sensitive registers of women's roles during the Victorian-Edwardian era, this book demonstrates that his texts make readers aware of how those stereotypes operated. Blending literary, art, and feminist criticism with narratological analysis and postmodern theory, this groundbreaking work restores a formal awareness to James studies within the wider theoretical concerns of feminist, gender, and cultural critiques.

Contents:

Introduction: The Manifold Arts of Re-vision

pt. 1. The Gaze: In the Museum of Women. 1. Women, Portraits, and Painters: "The Madonna of the Future" and "The Sweetheart of M. Briseux" 2. Women, Statues, and Lovers: "The Last of the Valerii" and "Adina" 3. Woman as Object: "Rose-Agathe" 4. Woman as Image: "Glasses" Epilogue 1: Woman as Museum: "Maud-Evelyn"

Epilogue 2: The Memoirs of an Objectified Woman: "Julia Bride"

pt. 2. The Voice: Discourses of Silence. 5. Of Shame and Horror: "A London Life" and the Theatricals of Femininity. 6. Dying to Speak: "The Visits" 7. Gender Trouble: "Georgina's Reasons" 8. The Word Not to Say It: "The Story in It" Epilogue 3: The Silence of the Sphinx: "The Beast in the Jungle."

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780803201019

080320101X

OCLC:

50760599