Domestic modernism: Appropriations of the feminine past in American women's novels.

摘要

"Domestic Modernism" elaborates a pattern of critical appropriations of nineteenth-century femininity in twentieth-century women's novels. I discuss texts by Kathleen Norris, Gertrude Stein, Gene Stratton-Porter, Margaret Mitchell, Willa Cather, and Djuna Barnes. In each case, I argue that the author was in contact with a specific form of nineteenth-century femininity, such as the domestic science movement, corsets, or Victorian clutter, and that she strategically reappropriated that historical mode of femininity in order to redefine modern womanhood.; Because these appropriations form a pattern, they suggest a re-evaluation of the great divide between popular and artistic fiction. Since texts of such diverse genres and canonical statuses share these themes, they lead us to re-examine both the historical means and the formal criteria by which literary evaluations transpire.; Kathleen Norris' bestselling novels call upon received views of women as mothers, but revise them by suggesting that motherhood is already powerfully infused with individualism.; Gertrude Stein's and Gene Stratton-Porter's texts make constant reference to the cooking reform movement called domestic science. Stein finds its system of level measurement satisfying but ridiculous, while Stratton-Porter finds it important but profoundly constraining.; Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind shows readers how received codes of conduct and of bodily manipulation can conceal the dissolution of a core self, while Selznick's film version restores that stabilizing center.; Willa Cather and Djuna Barnes both clutter their texts with objects which are linked to women. Cather finds release from mortality in these "things," while Barnes finds a relentless but unfulfilling reminder of loss.; Ultimately, this dissertation claims that "modernist" artists created the fiction of a rupture between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as part of their larger goal of imagining and enforcing the distinction between high and low art. By restoring a continuum between the centuries, I also revise our understanding of the roles that gender, aesthetics, and popularity played in early twentieth-century culture.