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Modern Domestic Fiction

Popular Feminism, Mass-Market Magazines, and Middle-Class Culture, 1905–1925

Christ, Birte

American Studies – A Monograph Series, Bd. 229

2012

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Abstract

The nineteenth-century genre of domestic fiction continues to perform important cultural work for women readers in the early twentieth century – this is the argument of ‘Modern Domestic Fiction’. Discussing texts by Dorothy Canfield, Zona Gale, and Inez Haynes Irwin, this study demonstrates how between 1905 and 1925 domestic fiction took a central role in promulgating popular feminist ideas, creating a mass magazine market geared to women, and shaping new middle-class identity.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS V
CONTENTS IX
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS XIII
LIST OF FIGURES XV
INTRODUCTION: MODERN DOMESTIC FICTION 1
1 Conceptualizing Modern Domestic Fiction: Object of Study and Aims 6
2 The Cultural Work of Modern Domestic Fiction: Approaches and Theses 13
3 Selling Popular Feminism: The Authors 18
4 Modern Domestic Fiction: Overview of Chapters 26
PART I - DOMESTIC FICTION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 31
I: POSITIONING MODERN DOMESTIC FICTION, READING POPULAR FEMINISM 33
1 Modernism, Re-Canonization, and Reading the Mainstream 35
2 The “Middlebrow”: Ideological In-Between-ness and Literature as Sentimental Education 51
3 Domestic Fiction, Sentimentalism, Melodrama 61
4 Popular Feminism in the Text: A Structure of Feeling 74
5 The Feminist Context: From Difference to Equality in the 1910s 84
6 Reading Modern Domestic Fiction in the Popular Magazine 95
PART II - 1905-1915: CRISIS OF COMMUNITY—PROGRESSIVIST FEMINISM 109
II: THE REGIONAL SHORT STORY CYCLE: HILLSBORO PEOPLE AND STORIES OF FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE 111
1 Women Writers and the Regional Short Story Cycle 115
2 Reclaiming Regionalism in “At the Foot of Hemlock Mountain” 124
3 Reclaiming Relational Reading in “A Drop in the Bucket” 131
4 “Bein’ useful is bein’ alive”: On the Way to Municipal Housekeeping in Friendship Village 141
III: MUCKRAKING AND UTOPIANISM: THE SQUIRREL-CAGE AND ANGEL ISLAND 159
1 An Education in Facts and Domestic Escapism in The Squirrel-Cage 167
2 A Muckraker’s Melodrama: Serial Education in The Squirrel-Cage 177
3 The Third Sphere of Woman: Angel Island as a Text of Feminist Transition 187
4 “A Full-Blooded, Thrilling Romance”: Selling Angel Island in American Magazine 201
PART III - 1916-1925: CRISIS OF THE SELF - LIBERALIST FEMINISM 219
IV: DOMESTICATING PASSION, POLITICS, AND THE “HIGHBROW”: THE LADY OF KINGDOMS AND THE BRIMMING CUP 221
1 From Passion to Companionship, From Sexual Desire to Motherly Love 230
2 Hester Crowell, Hester Prynne, and Sexual Morality 243
3 Personalizing and Depoliticizing the Political 247
4 “Middling” the “Highbrow”: Boys’ Books and Country Choirs 257
V: WOMEN BEYOND DOMESTICITY?— A DAUGHTER OF THE MORNING AND THE HOME MAKER 265
1 A Daughter of the Morning: Class Issues and the Problem of the Guardian Figure 269
2 The Home-Maker: Sham Existence and Domestic Ideology in Reverse 280
3 Domesticating Women’s Non-Domestic Work 290
4 Taking the Radical Edge Off: The Cultural Work of the Companion 296
MODERN DOMESTIC FICTION: CONCLUSION 315
BIBLIOGRAPHY 335
I: Dorothy Canfield, Zona Gale, Inez Haynes Irwin: Bibliography of Fictional Works 335
II: Dorothy Canfield, Zona Gale, Inez Haynes Irwin: Complete Bibliography of Secondary Sources 342
III: Works Cited 349