Maternal Realism: Public Mothering in the Work of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins
Bergman, Jill Annette
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/81503
Description
Title
Maternal Realism: Public Mothering in the Work of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins
Author(s)
Bergman, Jill Annette
Issue Date
1999
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Baym, Nina
Department of Study
English
Discipline
English
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Women's Studies
Language
eng
Abstract
"This project explores the place of women writers generally excluded from studies of literary realism. Writing in response to the same cultural and economic changes taking place in America as more conventional realists, Phelps, Gilman, and Hopkins retain elements of popular domestic fiction to create a new form: maternal realism. Their fictions conceive of an America in need of motherly guidance, offering a maternal value system and the practice of public mothering as a viable alternative to the nation's increasingly individualistic and capitalistic ethos. Challenging the Howellsian notion that realism must portray ""the world of men's activities,"" these writers deploy the feminine, maternal ethic of domestic fiction as a means of rewriting the codes of realism and valorizing women's experiences."
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