Slavery, capitalism, and women's literature : economic insights of American women writers, 1852-1869 / Kristin Allukian.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Allukian, Kristin, author.

Series:

Gender and Slavery Series

Gender and Slavery Series ; v.4

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slavery in literature.

Capitalism in literature.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896. Uncle Tom's cabin.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher.

Larcom, Lucy, 1824-1893. Weaving.

Larcom, Lucy.

Jacobs, Harriet A. (Harriet Ann), 1813-1897. Incidents in the life of a slave girl.

Jacobs, Harriet A.

Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins, 1825-1911. Minnie's sacrifice.

Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (230 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens, Georgia : The University of Georgia Press, [2023]

Summary:

"With Slavery, Capitalism, and Women's Literature, Kristin Allukian makes an important contribution to slavery and capitalism scholarship by including the voices of some of the best-known nineteenth-century American women writers. Women's literature offers crucial and previously unconsidered economic insights into the relationship between slavery and capitalism, different from those we typically find in economics and economic histories. Allukian demonstrates that because women's imaginative and creative texts take the material-historical connection of slavery and capitalism as their starting point, they can be read for the more speculative extensions of that connection, extensions not possible to discover on a material-historical level. Indeed, Allukian contends, these authors and texts disclose unique economic insights, critiques, and theories in ways that are only possible through literary writing. The writers featured in this study-Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucy Larcom, Harriet Jacobs, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper-published written accounts of the continuities between slavery and capitalism including between language and activism, accounting and sentimentalism, labor and technology, race and property, and inheritance and reparations. Their essays, novels, poems, and autobiographies provided forums to document data, stimulate debate, generate resistance, and imagine alternatives to the United States' developing capitalist economy, engined and engineered by slavery. Without their unique economic insights, the national narrative we tell about the relationship between slavery and capitalism is incomplete"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: Nineteenth-century women writers and the slavery and capitalism debates

Accounting for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin

Slavery's cotton market in Lucy Larcom's "Weaving"

Property knowledge in Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the life of a slave girl

Reconstruction's inheritance in Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Minnie's sacrifice.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version: Allukian, Kristin Slavery, Capitalism, and Women's Literature

ISBN:

9780820364612

OCLC:

1375662918