Engendering Romance: Women Writers and the Hawthorne Tradition, 1850-1990

Emily Budick

Published by Yale University Press 1994

Engendering Romance

Women Writers and the Hawthorne Tradition, 1850-1990

Emily Budick

https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300156713

Overview
Contents

About this book

This engrossing book describes how four twentieth-century women writers—Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, and Grace Paley—have inherited and adapted the classical tradition of American romance fiction.

Emily Miller Budick argues that this tradition, exemplified by the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Henry James, William Faulkner, and Ralph Ellison, is inherently skepticist, questioning whether and how we know reality. It is also sharply critical of the patriarchal bias of American culture, which is understood by these writers as a way of evading or settling philosophical doubt. Analyzing such works as The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, The Portrait of a Lady, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Invisible Man, Budick explores this antipatriarchal critique and shows how it enables the twentieth-century women romancers to inherit the tradition. In their writings, however—in McCullers's Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away, Morrison's Song of Solomon and Beloved, and Paley's short stories—these writers do more than further the concerns of the male authors. They also explore the idea of maternal knowledge and think through alternatives not only to the patriarchal organization of society but to matriarchal constructions as well. Budick offers provocative insights into what it means to inherit a tradition--in particular across lines of gender, but also across lines of race--as she discusses the ways these four women writers revise the genre of romance to accommodate the exigencies of modern American society.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	viii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	x
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part One The Antipatriarchal Romance
1 The Romance of the Family Nathaniel Hawthorne Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
2 A Portrait of Female Skepticism Henry James Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
3 Worlds Without Women Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
Part Two The Antiphallocentric Romance
4 The Material Reproduction of Culture William Faulkner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
5 Textual Indeterminacy and the Death of the Mother William Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
Part Three Nineteenth-Century Women's Fiction
6 Sentimentalism and Human Rights Harriet Beecher Stowe and Herman Melville Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
7 Literary Realism and a Woman's Strength Edith Wharton and Kate Chopin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	122
Part Four The Female Romance
8 The Mother Tongue Carson McCullers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
9 Art and the Female Spirit Flannery O’Connor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
V The Feminist Romance
10 Absence, Loss, and the Space of History Toni Monison Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
11 The Graceful Art of Conversation Grace Paley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285

Language: English
Publisher: Yale University Press

eBook

Published: May 9, 2022
ISBN: 9780300156713