Gender politics in American literature of domesticity, 1830-1860
Abstract
This study explores the commensurabilities and contradictions between antebellum domesticity and feminism by examining the ideological assumptions of and linkages among three related species in the archive of domestic writings: conduct books for women, feminist tracts and historical treatises, and domestic novels. Placed in historical context, the conduct book and woman's treatise are useful tools in understanding how domestic values are sanctioned in one novel, questioned or parodied in others, or sanctioned and questioned in the same novel. Thus by triangulating these three genres, this study redescribes and expands the archive of domestic writings. Chapter One discusses the feminist methodology governing this investigation. Chapter Two reviews conduct books and discusses their profile of the ideal woman, one who can best serve God and the republic by raising pious, virtuous children. Conduct books offer a carefully argued rationale for the social control of middle-class women. This prescribed agenda for women serves the interests of a patriarchal culture. Chapter Three charts a range of responses, from conservative to radically progressive feminist, to the contradiction between ideal womanhood and women's involvement in antislavery reform by examining the works of Catharine Beecher, Frances Wright, Lydia Maria Child, Maria Stewart, and Angelina Grimke. It also offers explanations of antebellum feminism by analyzing the feminist historical treatises of Child, Sarah Grimke, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth Oakes Smith. Chapter Four investigates the heterogeneity and subversiveness of the domestic genre by analyzing the alliances among the conduct book, treatise, and novel. Interpreting the depiction of the heroine and the novel's political perspective, it offers three major classifications for the novel. Conservative novels adhere more or less to prevailing codes of domesticity and portray ideal women as heroines. Accommodationist novels depict heroines who depart somewhat from the conventions of ideal womanhood by implicitly or explicitly questioning them. Feminist novels present reformist or revolutionary heroines who oppose prevailing codes of femininity. Among novelists discussed are Catharine Sedgwick, Louisa Tuthill, Eliza Leslie, Harriet Beecher Stowe, E. D. E. N. Southworth, Fanny Fern, and Oakes Smith. The Afterword argues the need for canon revisionism to include this archive and offers suggestions for further research.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Neufeldt, Purdue University.
Subject Area
American literature|American studies|Womens studies
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