"""A Better Guardianship"": Mothers, Surrogates, and Female Education in Domestic Literature, 1790--1860"
Chantell, Claire Ann
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/81510
Description
Title
"""A Better Guardianship"": Mothers, Surrogates, and Female Education in Domestic Literature, 1790--1860"
Author(s)
Chantell, Claire Ann
Issue Date
2000
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
Modern critics of antebellum American literature have read domestic literature as bolstering the development of liberal-capitalist culture, including sentimental ideals of home and motherhood. This critical account does not explain, however, the widespread and recurrent evidence of ambivalence towards these ideals in this literature. Focusing specifically on representations of the mother's role in female education, I identify in nonfictional and fictional texts produced between 1780 and 1870 both moments of critique and attempts to accommodate sentimental maternalism. This ambivalence registers a residual commitment to republican, communitarian values amid the emergence and eventual domination of a liberal-capitalist social order.
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