Throughout the nineteenth century, American fiction displayed a fascination with women's speech - describing how women's voices sound, what happens when women speak and what reactions their speech produces, especially in their male listeners. Voices of the Nation argues that closer inspection of these recurring descriptions also performed political work that has had a profound - though unspecified to date - impact on American culture. Commentaries on the female voice were propounded by writers such as Henry James, William Dean Howells and Noah Webster, and these texts played a central role in attempts to define and enforce the radical social changes instituted by the emerging bourgeoisie.
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Introduction; The Voice of the Nation: Gender, Speech, and Nineteenth-Century American life; 1. Bawdy talk: The Politics of Women's Speech in Henry James's The Bostonians and Sarah J. Hale's The Lecturess; 2. 'Foul Mouthed Women': Disembodiment and Public Discourse in Herman Melville's Pierre and E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Fatal Marriage; 3. Incarnate Words: Nativism, Nationalism, and the Female Body in Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures ; 4. Partners in Speech: Reforming Labor, Class, and the Working Woman's Body in Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's The Silent Partner; 5. 'Queer Trimmings': Dressing, Cross-Dressing, and Women's Suffrage in Lillie Deereux Blake's Fettered for Life; 6. Southern Oratory and The Slavery Debate in Caroline Lee Hentz's Planter's Northern Bride and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Conclusion; 'Every Wrong that Needs a Voice': Women and Political Activism at the Turn into the Twentieth Century.
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Review of the hardback: '… informative and illuminating.' Nineteenth-Century Literature
Studies the relationship between women's speech and nineteenth-century American literary culture.

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780521102520
Publisert
2009-03-12
Utgiver
Vendor
Cambridge University Press
Vekt
310 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Dybde
12 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
204