Femininity to Feminism: Women and Literature in the Nineteenth CenturyThe nineteenth century, a period marked by intense social, economic, and intellectual ferment, spawned the creation of lively and varied literary works by women. The writings of artists who were also social commentators--the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Harriet Martineau, George Eliot, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kate Chopin--to name only a few--provide a vivid portrait of a tumultuous century. Most literary histories of the period have highlighted men's interpretations of the events and issues of the time, and have focused primarily on the public (and therefore predominantly male) social sphere. The facts of women's experience in this century, and of their increasingly public struggle to define themselves as whole and independent beings, has not been thoroughly examined in relation to their literary creation. In Femininity to Feminism, Susan Rubinow Gorsky combines social history research--including statistics about family life, women's education, and women in the work force--with an examination of the way these issues are presented in literature by and about women. Gorsky's work illuminates women's lives and writings in relation to the cultural attitudes that influenced their creation. Focusing on the intensity of women's struggle to find their own literary and political voices and to be heard in the public sphere, Gorsky traces the emergence of a shared self-consciousness that began to express itself in literary and social resistance to patriarchy. Her study looks at both male and female writers, examining works by such prominent authors as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Louisa May Alcott, as well as by Charlotte Yonge, Sarah Grand, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Elizabeth Gaskell--authors popular at the time but rarely read in the twentieth century--to provide a complete, balanced, and accurate portrait of how women's experience was utilized and transformed for literary purposes. The volume is foreworded by noted feminist scholar Nancy Walker. A lively, accessible, and thoroughly informed study of women's history and literature in the nineteenth century, Femininity to Feminism provides an enriching synthesis of the social and literary issues affecting women of the time. |
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