Kinship and Collectivity in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century American Women's Fiction
Tedrowe, Melissa Ann
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/81383
Description
Title
Kinship and Collectivity in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century American Women's Fiction
Author(s)
Tedrowe, Melissa Ann
Issue Date
2002
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 thesis examines eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American women's literary response to the emergent modern family. This social ideal decreed that the 'proper' family consisted of a married couple and their biological children living under a single roof. The father was to function as this unit's primary breadwinner, the mother was to tend house and raise their children, and the children themselves were to enjoy the loving, highly-personalized attention they needed to become solid republican citizens. The authors I study highlight two main aspects of this arrangement: first, that children occupy its most privileged position, and second, that women occupy its most oppressive one. In answer, many of these authors keep their heroines children ; others explore alternatives to the nuclear family. Yet whatever their strategy, none of these women sustain their communal revisions; rather, they call on their successors to continue their imaginative search.
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