Ambivalent Desires

The 'New Woman' Between Social Modernization and Modern Writing

by Angelika Kohler

Book cover: Ambivalent Desires

Extent: 331 pages

Publisher: Universitätsverlag Winter

Subjects: American Studies, Literary Studies

Series: American Studies - A Monograph Series

Series volume number: 113

Language: English

(Hardback) (Published)

(January 2004)

ISBN: 9783825315764

5.28 x 8.27 inches

Price: $62.00

Out of stock

The study explores the phenomenon of the New Woman as a most controversial construct of turn-of-the-19th-century US-American culture. Images of the New Woman shaped the discourses of mainstream press as well as those of leading feminists of the time. Against the background of the processes of social modernization, the multifaceted versions of this female image are investigated as productions und reproductions of women’s “ambivalent desires” to articulate their female awareness of modernity by rereading texts written by male and female so-called popular and canonical authors and by discussing selected contemporary discourses of journalism. The analysis sets out to explore the centrality of gender to the development of forms of modern US-American writing conceptualized as a network of diverse yet mutually interacting gendered discourses. Bisherige Forschungsschwerpunkte der Autorin: Turn-of-the 19th-century US-American Literature, multiethnic literatures of the US.

  • By (author) Angelika Kohler