The Feminization of American Culture

Ann Douglas

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977 - Literary Criticism - 403 pages

This modern classic by one of our leading scholars seeks to explain the values prevalent in today's mass culture by tracing them back to their roots in the Victorian era. As religion lost its hold on the public mind, clergymen and educated women, powerless and insignificant in the society of the time, together exerted a profound effect on the only areas open to their influence: the arts and literature. Women wrote books that idealized the very qualities that kept them powerless: timidity, piety, and a disdain for competition. Sentimental values that permeated popular literature continue to influence modern culture, preoccupied as it is with glamour, banal melodrama, and mindless consumption.

This new paperback edition, with a new Preface, will reach yet more readers with its persuasive and provocative theory. Richard Bernstein of The New York Times said: "Her remarkable scholarship is going to set the standard for a long time to come."

What people are saying

Review: The Feminization of American Culture

User Review  - RK Byers - Goodreads

interesting premise: women replaced the clergy as the nation's leading influence. and i say, it's all right.

Review: The Feminization of American Culture

User Review  - El - Goodreads

The premise here was immediately interesting to me: The partnership between the clergy and women created a "sentimental society" during the Victorian period in America. Unfortunately the book turned ...

About the author

Ann Douglas, author of Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s, has taught American studies at Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, where she is now Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature. She lives in New York City.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Feminization of American Culture
• Author: Ann Douglas
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977
• ISBN: 0374525587, 9780374525583
• Length: 403 pages
• Subjects: Literary Criticism / American / General; Literary Criticism / Women Authors; Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural; Social Science / Feminism & Feminist Theory