Conflicting Stories: American Women Writers at the Turn into the 20th Century
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Author Description
The early 1890s through the late 1920s saw an explosion in the serious long fiction by women in the United States. Considering a wide range of authors—African American, Asian American, white American, and Native American—this book looks at the work of seventeen writers from that period: Frances Ellen Harper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Kate Chopin, Pauline Hopkins, Gertrude Stein, Mary Austin, Sui Sin Far, Willa Cather, Humishuma, Jessie Fauset, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Anzia Yezierska, Edith Summers Kelley, and Nella Larsen. The discussion focuses on the differences in their work and the similarities that unite them, particularly their determination to experiment with narrative form as they explored and voiced issues of power for women. Analyzing the historical context that both enabled and limited American women writers at the turn of the century, Ammons provides detailed readings of many texts and offers extensive commentary on the interaction between race and gender. This book joins the deepening discussion of modern women writers' creation of themselves as artists and raises fundamental questions about the shape of American literary history as it has been constructed in the academy.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This book investigates how seventeen diverse American women writers at the turn of the 20th century navigated and challenged the social, racial, and gendered constraints of their era through experimental narrative forms. Elizabeth Ammons, a scholar of American literature, utilizes a comparative framework to analyze the intersection of race, gender, and power in the works of authors ranging from the 1890s to the 1920s. By examining both canonical and marginalized voices, she argues that these writers collectively reshaped the landscape of American literary history. Her analysis situates these creative outputs within the specific historical and academic contexts that both facilitated and restricted their artistic production.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- A comparative analysis of seventeen writers including African American, Asian American, white American, and Native American authors.
- Detailed literary readings of texts produced between the 1890s and the late 1920s.
- An examination of the intersectional relationship between race, gender, and narrative experimentation.
- A critique of how American literary history has been traditionally constructed within academic institutions.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Scholars and students of American literature frequently cite this work as a foundational text for understanding the diversity of the early 20th-century female literary canon. Readers often note the academic rigor of the prose and the effectiveness of the author's inclusive approach to literary history.
Page Count:
0
Publication Date:
1992-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0198022646
ISBN-13:
9780198022640
History
Literary Criticism
American
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