The Factory Girl and the Seamstress

Informationen zum Autor Amal Amireh Klappentext This book studies the representations of working-class women in canonical and popular American fiction between 1820 and 1870. These representations have been invisible in nineteenth century American literary and cultural studies due to the general view that antebellum writers did not engage with their society's economic and social relaities. Against this view and to highlight the cultural importance of working-class women, this study argues that, in responding to industrialization, middle class writers such as Melville, Hawthorne, Fern, Davies, and Phelps used the figures of the factory worker and the seamstress to express their anxieties about unstable gender and class identitites. These fictional representations were influenced by, and contributed to, an important but understudied cultural debate about wage labor, working women, and class. (Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1997; revised with new preface, bibliography, and index) Zusammenfassung This book studies the representations of working-class women in canonical and popular American fiction between 1820 and 1870. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction; Acknowledgments; 1. Inventing the "Mill Girl'; 2. Woman of Industry: The Seamstress in Antebellum America; 3. Nathaniel Hawthorne's use of the Seamstress; 4. Domesticating Women: The Seamstress, the Factory Girl, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Author; Conclusion; Bibliography

Autorentext

Amal Amireh

Klappentext

This book studies the representations of working-class women in canonical and popular American fiction between 1820 and 1870. These representations have been invisible in nineteenth century American literary and cultural studies due to the general view that antebellum writers did not engage with their society's economic and social relaities. Against this view and to highlight the cultural importance of working-class women, this study argues that, in responding to industrialization, middle class writers such as Melville, Hawthorne, Fern, Davies, and Phelps used the figures of the factory worker and the seamstress to express their anxieties about unstable gender and class identitites. These fictional representations were influenced by, and contributed to, an important but understudied cultural debate about wage labor, working women, and class.

(Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1997; revised with new preface, bibliography, and index)

Inhalt
Introduction; Acknowledgments; 1. Inventing the "Mill Girl'; 2. Woman of Industry: The Seamstress in Antebellum America; 3. Nathaniel Hawthorne's use of the Seamstress; 4. Domesticating Women: The Seamstress, the Factory Girl, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Author; Conclusion; Bibliography