In this Book
- The Color of Democracy in Women's Regional Writing
- Book
- 2009
- Published by: The University of Alabama Press
- Series: Studies in American Literary Realism and Naturalism
summary
An exciting addition to the ongoing debate about the place of regionalism in American literary history.
American regionalism has become a contested subject in literary studies alongside the ubiquitous triad of race, class, and gender. The Color of Democracy in Women's Regional Writing enters into the heart of an ongoing debate in the field about the significance of regional fiction at the end of the 19th century. Jean Griffith presents the innovative view that regional writing provided Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, and Willa Cather with the means to explore social transformation in a form of fiction already closely associated with women readers and writers.
Griffith provides new readings of texts by these authors; she places them alongside the works of their contemporaries, including William Faulkner and Langston Hughes, to show regionalism's responses to the debate over who was capable of democratic participation and reading regionalism's changing mediations between natives and strangers as reflections of the changing face of democracy.
This insightful work enriches the current debate about whether regionalism critiques hierarchies or participates in nationalist and racist agendas and will be of great interest to those invested in regional writing or the works of these significant authors.
American regionalism has become a contested subject in literary studies alongside the ubiquitous triad of race, class, and gender. The Color of Democracy in Women's Regional Writing enters into the heart of an ongoing debate in the field about the significance of regional fiction at the end of the 19th century. Jean Griffith presents the innovative view that regional writing provided Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, and Willa Cather with the means to explore social transformation in a form of fiction already closely associated with women readers and writers.
Griffith provides new readings of texts by these authors; she places them alongside the works of their contemporaries, including William Faulkner and Langston Hughes, to show regionalism's responses to the debate over who was capable of democratic participation and reading regionalism's changing mediations between natives and strangers as reflections of the changing face of democracy.
This insightful work enriches the current debate about whether regionalism critiques hierarchies or participates in nationalist and racist agendas and will be of great interest to those invested in regional writing or the works of these significant authors.
Table of Contents
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- Cover Page
- p. 1
- Title Page
- pp. 2-7
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-13
- Part I: “Is New York Such a Labyrinth?”: Street Life and Amalgamation in Wharton’s and Glasgow’s City
- Part II: “Virginia Is Not Dead but Sleepeth”: Segregation and the “Family Black and White” in Glasgow’s and Cather’s South
- Part III: “Fortunate Country”: Old Immigrants and New Women in Cather’s and Wharton’s West
- 5. How the West Was Whitened
- pp. 131-155
- 6. New Women and the World of Business
- pp. 156-176
- Conclusion: “Always, Everywhere, Inferior"
- pp. 177-182
- Bibliography
- pp. 201-212
Additional Information
ISBN
9780817382391
Related ISBN(s)
9780817316617
MARC Record
OCLC
747305645
Pages
229
Launched on MUSE
2014-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2009