Women Writing the American Artist in Novels of Development From 1850-1932
The Artist Embodied
Abstract
In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artist novels, American women writers challenge cultural, social, and legal systems that attempt to limit or diminish women’s embodied capabilities outside of the domestic. Women writers such as E.D.E.N. Southworth, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, Jessie Fauset, and Zelda Fitzgerald use the artist novel to highlight the structural and material limitations that women artists face when attempting to achieve critical success while navigating inequitable marriages and social codes that restrict women’s mobility, education, and pursuit of vocation. These artist-rebel protagonists find that their very bodies demand an outlet to articulate desires that defy patriarchal rhetoric, and this demand becomes an artistic drive to express an embodied knowledge through artistic invention. Ultimately, these women writers empower their heroines to move beyond prescribed patriarchal identities in order to achieve autonomous subjectivity through their artistic development, challenging stereotypes surrounding gender, race, and ability and beginning to reshape cultural notions of marriage, motherhood, and artistry at the turn of the twentieth century.
Schlagworte
American literature Kate Chopin Women's Studies Zelda Fitzgerald women writers- Kapitel Ausklappen | EinklappenSeiten
- i–x Preface i–x
- 1–30 Introduction 1–30
- 211–214 Epilogue 211–214
- 215–228 Works Cited 215–228
- 229–232 Index 229–232
- 233–234 About the Author 233–234