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Race, ethnicity, and the American New Woman

Table of Contents

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Selling the American New Woman as Gibson Girl 2. Margaret Murray Washington, Pauline Hopkins, and the New Negro Woman 3. Incorporating the New Woman in Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country 4. Sui Sin Far and the Wisdom of the New 5. Mary Johnston, Ellen Glasgow, and the Evolutionary Logic of Progressive Reform 6. Willa Cather and the Fluid Mechanics of the New Woman Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author

Martha H. Patterson is an associate professor of English at McKendree University, Lebanon, Illinois.

Reviews

"Beyond the Gibson Girl is an interesting, important, and highly readable study defining the New Woman, a figure of enduring importance to both cultural and literary history. Martha Patterson looks wisely beyond any fixed perspective to show how differently this figure is conceived depending on the perspectives from which she is viewed, and the effects on this image of issues of region, race, ethnicity, and social class."--Elsa Nettels, professor of English, emeritus, College of William and Mary

"Patterson's work is insightful, penetrating, and highly readable. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice

"Patterson is to be lauded for problematizing the figure of the New Woman in literature and popular culture beyond what has been done in any previous studies, especially in the way she examines the competing and conflicting claims, constraints, and possibilities for women."--Journal of American History

"An engaging and thought-provoking analysis of the Gibson Girl. . . . As cultural history and as literary analysis, the book succeeds in deepening our understanding of a potent American icon."--American Historical Review

"Beyond the Gibson Girl reveals the great benefits of an interdisciplinary study of American culture. . . . Patterson draws heavily on literary analysis as well as on a wide variety of social commentaries, on social scientific and evolutionary theories of the period, and on contemporary visual theory. This combination of sources places what may have been perceived to be a rather simplistic ideal into a complex cultural framework that includes many of the significant issues of the period."--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

"In her richly archival study, Martha Patterson . . . productively complicates the American New Woman's literary and cultural history."--Modernism/modernity

"Martha Patterson's Beyond the Gibson Girl has given us perfectly conceived, cogent, and insightful arguments about the role of context and geography in the development of the New Womanhood. It is high time for a book like this to appear."--Dale M. Bauer, professor of English, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign