The Routledge Introduction to American Women Writers

275 Pages·2016·3.442 MB·English

by  Wendy Martin, Sharone Williams

THE ROUTLEDGE
INTRODUCTION TO
AMERICAN WOMEN
WRITERS
The Routledge Introduction to American Women Writers considers the important literary,
historical, cultural, and intellectual contexts of American women authors from the
seventeenth century to the present and provides readers with an analysis of current
literary trends and debates in women’s literature. This accessible and engaging
guide covers a variety of essential topics, such as:
(cid:120)(cid:3) the transatlantic and transnational origins of American women’s literary traditions
(cid:120)(cid:3) the colonial period and the Puritans
(cid:120)(cid:3) the early national period and the rhetoric of independence
(cid:120)(cid:3) the nineteenth century and the Civil War
(cid:120)(cid:3) the twentieth century, including modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, and the
Civil Rights era
(cid:120)(cid:3) trends in twenty-first century American women’s writing
(cid:120)(cid:3) feminism, gender and sexuality, regionalism, domesticity, ethnicity, and
multiculturalism.
The volume examines the ways in which women writers from diverse racial, social,
and cultural backgrounds have shaped American literary traditions, giving particular
attention to the ways writers worked inside, outside, and around the strictures of
their cultural and historical moments to create space for women’s voices and
experiences as a vital part of American life. Addressing key contemporary and
theoretical debates, this comprehensive overview presents a highly readable
narrative of the development of literature by American women and offers a crucial
range of perspectives on American literary history.
Wendy Martin is Professor of American Literature and American Studies at
Claremont Graduate University, USA.
Sharone Williams has a PhD in American Literature and is the Managing Editor
of Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal.
ROUTLEDGE INTRODUCTIONS TO AMERICAN
LITERATURE
Series Editors: D. Quentin Miller and Wendy Martin
Routledge Introductions to American Literature provide a comprehensive overview
of the most important topics in American Literature in its historical, cultural, and
intellectual contexts. They present the most up-to-date trends, debates, and exciting
new directions in the field, opening the way for further study.
The volumes in the series examine the ways in which both canonical and lesser
known writers from diverse cultural backgrounds have shaped American literary
traditions. In addition to providing insight into contemporary and theoretical
debates and giving attention to a range of voices and experiences as a vital part of
American life, these comprehensive volumes offer clear, cohesive narratives of the
development of American Literature.
The American literary tradition has always been flexible and mutable. Every
attempt to define American Literature as a static body has been thwarted by the
nature of its subject, which is—like its nation’s ideals—pluralistic, diverse,
democratic, and inventive. Our goal in this series is to provide fresh perspectives
on many dimensions of the American literary tradition while offering a solid
overview for readers encountering it for the first time.
Available in this series:
The Routledge Introduction to African American Literature
D. Quentin Miller and Wendy Martin
The Routledge Introduction to American Modernism
Linda Wagner-Martin
The Routledge Introduction to American Women Writers
Wendy Martin and Sharone Williams
THE ROUTLEDGE
INTRODUCTION TO
AMERICAN WOMEN
WRITERS
Wendy Martin and Sharone Williams
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Wendy Martin and Sharone Williams
The right of Wendy Martin and Sharone Williams to be identified as
authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Martin, Wendy, 1940– author. | Williams, Sharone, author.
Title: The Routledge introduction to American women writers /
Wendy Martin and Sharone Williams.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York: Routledge, 2016. |
Series: Routledge introductions to American literature | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015035835| ISBN 9781138016231 (hardback: alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781138016248 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315779133 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: American literature—Women authors—History and criticism. |
Women and literature—United States.
Classification: LCC PS147 .M36 2016 | DDC 810.9/9287—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015035835
ISBN: 978-1-138-01623-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-01624-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-77913-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Book Now Ltd, London
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
1 Across the Atlantic: Women in British North America 1
2 Rhetoric and revolution: The women writers of the new
republic 26
3 Sentimental poets and scribbling women: The writers of the
early nineteenth century 49
4 From True Woman to New Woman: Redefining womanhood
at the turn of the century 86
5 Clashes with modernity: Women writers between the
world wars 118
6 Literatures of witness: Women writers after 1945 152
Coda: The literatures of the twenty-first century 194
Works cited 205
Index 234
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As with any project of this magnitude, we have had the help of many people along
the way. We would first like to thank series coeditor Quentin Miller, as well as
Ruth Hilsdon, Polly Dodson, and the rest of the editorial team at Routledge, who
have been wonderfully patient and helpful through this process. We are also grateful
for the research assistance of several PhD students from Claremont Graduate
University over the last two years, including Daniel Lanza Rivers, Alex Lalama,
Laura Bauer, Jeanne-Arli Crocker Hammer, Brian McCabe, and Juliette De Soto;
we particularly want to thank Lauren Morrison, who worked with us through the
entire research period and whose hard work, enthusiasm, and thoughtful engagement
with the material have greatly contributed to this project’s success. In addition, we
have been fortunate to work with the excellent librarians and staff at the libraries
of the Claremont Colleges. We would especially like to thank the Special
Collections staff at the Ella Strong Denison Library at Scripps College and
Michelle Levers and the ILLiad staff at Honnold/Mudd Library for their assistance
with the location of many rare and hard-to-find materials. Many thanks also go to
Lesley Rankin, whose editorial services and wisdom have been invaluable, and to
the community of writers, readers, and colleagues who have offered insights,
advice, and support throughout this project, including Stefani Okonyan, Jan Andres,
Rachel Tie Morrison, Emma Álvarez Gibson, and Matthew White. And finally, we
would like to acknowledge the many women writers, scholars, and activists who
have come before us, and to whom we are deeply grateful. Without their creativity,
dedication, and perseverance, this book would not have been possible.
Credit
Chapter 3 of this book includes quotations from “The Contrast” (p. 118) and “On
leaving my children John and Jane at school” (p. 142) in Jane Johnston Schoolcraft.
viii Acknowledgments
The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston
Schoolcraft. Ed. Robert Dale Parker. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2007. Reprinted with permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press.
INTRODUCTION
Writing has been a countercultural act for women throughout most of the history
of the United States, a mark of resistance to the prevalent idea that the world of
literature and letters belongs properly to men. This attitude was inherited from the
European cultures responsible for colonizing North America and has continued
throughout American history, leading to the general suppression of women’s writing
and the establishment of conceptions of American literature that have largely
excluded women’s contributions. While the sustained efforts of feminist scholars in
the last several decades have significantly reshaped literary canons around the
world, in many places this perspective remarkably (and often unconsciously)
persists—so much so that a Canadian literature professor made headlines in 2013
when he said in an interview that he didn’t teach women’s writing because “I don’t
love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers go down
the hall. What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys” (Keeler n. pag.). Another
easily demonstrable result of this longstanding cultural attitude is the general public’s
apparent near-total ignorance of the subject. When asked to name famous
American writers, most people outside of the halls of college-level English depart-
ments who can reel off the names of Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman
Melville, Jack London, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway have difficulty
coming up with more than one or two women to go along with them; Emily
Dickinson might make the cut, but she’s lucky if she is joined by Harriet Beecher
Stowe or Edith Wharton. And a shockingly low number of the people we’ve
surveyed informally over the course of this project have heard of Nobel laureate
Toni Morrison, who has been publishing bestselling and critically acclaimed novels
for more than four decades. In spite of the strides of the last forty or fifty years, for
many people, American women writers essentially do not exist.
And yet the truth is that American women from across a range of racial, ethnic,
and social groups have been writing and sharing their writing with others in significant