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Module 3: American voices through the Civil War into the 20th century -…
Module 3: American voices through the Civil War into the 20th century
Interlude: American Transcendentalism
philosophical movement ca. 1830-1860
based in New England >> Concord, MA and Cambridge,MA/Harvard University
center: Hedge Club
heterogeneous group
name/term
connection with idealist philosophies (e.g. Kant, Critique of practical Reason, 1788)
"transcent/transgress"
non-conformity
new alternative ways of living, writing etc.
context of women's movements and abolitionist movements
characterized by diversity, hybridity and multivocality
vs
conventionality of much of popular literature of that time
MAJOR REPRESENTATIVES
Ralph Waldo Emerson, e.g. Nature, The American Scholar, ...
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) e.g. Little Women(1868), Little Men(1871)
Henry David Thoreau, e.g. Walden, or , Life in the Woods, Resistance to Civil Government/Civil Disobedience (1849/1866)
major positions and concerns.
dissent
literature
social & political ideologies
imagination
language
self/individualism: self- determined, self-reliant, self-confident
sure of their own worth
not limited by tradition, convention, or institution/conformity
disregard of external authorities
follows their creative potential
replaces previous beliefs in god by self-reliance
the poet
intensified imagination
the before mentioned aspects come together
reformatory impulse
simplicity of life and life with nature
nature is a key elements
the space where mystic experiences happen
like an open book to be read
all of nature and creation is believed to be good
The place and source of introspection, where the individual experiences theirselves and spirituality/regeneration, a place of simplicity, beauty and truth, which are the essentials of life
maintain that any linguistic exploration is always and by definition open to different readings
interpretations...
emphasis of the author to the reader
the reader is asked to participate in the creative imagination contained in the text
Thoreau:
Walden: on, LIFE IN THE WOODS
the individual as a source for a perfect society
reformatory impulse
communitarian, utopian experiments
-> attacks on technology, the communication industry etc.
experiments:
Brook Farm
Ripley, letter to Emerson
1 more item...
Fruitlands (1844-1845)
vegetarian living, tradition of agrarianism
in Harvard, MA
Bronson Alcott & Charles Lane
major platform:
The Dial
(1840-1844)
"an outbreak of Romanticism on Puritan soil"
diversity, hybridity, multivocality
Womens' Movements through the 19th Amendment
major ideological frameworks
continuing discrepancy >> foundational documents vs. actual circumstances
separation of spheres
male vs female spheres, decisive for womens experiences
based on assumption that women and men are by nature different
inferiority on the side of the women, superiority on the side of men
men as rational, women as emotional
Four Seasons of Life. 1868
Childhood- Season of Joy.
Youth- Season of Love.
Middle Age-Season of Strength.
Old Age-Season of Rest.
wife confined to the domestic sphere
Republican motherhood
Assumption that the woman finds her fulfillment in the role of being a mother
raise son's who will become leaders of politics in the space of the public
public morality, social stability
Family Devotion
cult of true womanhood: piety, purity, submissiveness, domesticity
American Woman's Home or, Principles of Domestic Science
Women's rights-early proponents
Early proponents: Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
Abigail Adams (1735-1818)
Remember the Ladies (letter) > John Adams (2nd President of US)
Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820)
"On the Equality of Sexes" (1790)
"differences between men and women are not given by nature" but "come from the system men invented"
Margaret Fuller
Woman in the Nineteenth Century
emergence of a women's movement
into the 19th century >> reform movements
women's movement <> abolitionism
black women
voiced feminist perspectives
Sojourner Truth, 1979-1883
"Ain't I a Woman?"
forced to marry another slave instead of marrying who she wanted to marry
part of the abolitionist movement
fleed from her family and became an "outlaw"
Sojourner Truth's speech (Women's Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio)
Early proponents:
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
climax >> 1848: Seneca Falls (upstate NY)
convention
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott
Declaration of Sentiments"/"Seneca Falls Declaration (1848)
right to vote
vs. law of coverture (goal: Married Women's property Act)
at that time women were not allowed to have property after being married
during the civil war
disappointment of high expectations
See esp. Amendment #15
Civil War Amedments
13 prohibits slavery (1865)
14 citizenship > all persons born/naturalized in the U.S. (1868)
15: prohibits denial of suffrage because of race,color or previous servitude(1870)
major national organizations
1869: formation of two
NWSA
AWSA
1890: NAWSA
developments
voting rights
1919: 19th constitutional amendment
higher education
by 1900, women = 30% of college students
new woman around 1910 >> term "feminism"
independent, self confident woman who moves around in the public -> bycycle, smokes, ...
The Great Gatsby
sexual liberal woman
Women's fiction
Popular women writers of the first half of the 19th century and the cultural work of sentimentality
David S. Reynolds: Beneath the American Renaissance (1988)
Jane Tompkins: Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction
major concepts
(growing) reading public
"the feminization of American culture" (Ann Douglas 1977)
women writers >> best-selling-19th century
Hawthorne = "mob of damned scribbling women"
sentimental novels: some examples 1820s-1850s
Catharine Maria Segdwick
Hope Leslie (1827)
Caroline S. Kirkland
A New Home: Who'll Follow (1839)
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
abolitionist movement
Beecher Stowe saw a slave mother being separated from her baby -> wrote uncle tom's cabin
Strategies
"Playing on the Heartstrings"
Making the readers feel sorry for slaves
female protagonists = (not just) personifications of virtue and morality
sentimental fiction >> means to achieve reforms
power of sentimentality: affective -> political
suffering, innocent victim > protagonist
strategy: reader > feel and sympathize
bipolar structure > melodramatic
obvious juxtapositions/contradictions (good vs. bad for ex.)
formulaic/stock scenes
scenes that come up again and again
Significance of popular/sentimental novels:
women: more agency
women: moral superiority
expose social conditions/evils as male-dominated
perspectives on American history
yet: women writers moving beyond pattern
realistic
awakening
solidarity/bonding
a transnational phase between sentimental fiction and feminism
American feminist fiction at the turn of the twentieth century
Kate Chopin (1851-1904)
At Fault (1890)
Bayou Folk (1894)
Became acquainted with life in New Orleans
Wife of a successful businessman
Setting: 19th-century Louisiana
regionalism /local color
feminist exploration (divorce, female sexuality, adultury, alcohol)
Central Theme:
tradition vs. convention
individual's (womens') right to self-fulfillment
"The Storm" (1898)
unpublished until 1969-edition of Chopin's works
contradiction to constraining gender roles
symbolically explicit representation of sexual encounter
no 'narrative condemnation'
Intersections-African American Women
Harriet Jacobs
Elizabeth Keckley
Frances E.W. Harper
Harriet E. Wilson
Charlotte L. Forten Grimke