The Kitchen and the Factory

Spaces of Women’s Work and the Negotiation of Social Difference in Antebellum American Literature
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-3-8253-6676-6
Verlag: Carl Winter

Buch, Englisch, Band 280, 273 Seiten, GB, Format (B × H): 135 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 423 g

Reihe: American Studies

This book asks for the cultural work that spaces of feminine labor do in antebellum texts from a variety of literary and ‘para-literary’ contexts. Singling out the kitchen and the factory, it argues that sites of women’s work serve as key textual microcosms in which antebellum culture negotiates the discourses of social difference whose relevance skyrockets in this period, especially the discourses of gender, class, ‘race,’ and nationhood. Because of their ostensible marginality on the map of the national imaginary, and because they are associated with social subjects multiply marked as marginal—women of the ‘working class’ and slave women—the kitchen and the factory enable the rehearsal of ideas that are difficult to articulate within the core narratives of nationhood: ideas about the forms and meanings of social inequality, and their relationship to the promises of equality that suffuse the nation’s mythology.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kanzler, Katja

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatursoziologie, Gender Studies
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur