Overview

In a sweeping reassessment of early American literature, The Gender of Freedom explores the workings of the literary public sphere-from its colonial emergence through the antebellum flourishing of sentimentalism. Placing representations of and by women at the center rather than the margin of the public sphere, this book links modern forms of political identity to the seemingly private images of gender displayed prominently in the developing public sphere. The ""fictions of liberalism"" explored in this book are those of marriage and motherhood, sentimental domesticity, and heterosexual desire-narratives that structure the private realm upon which liberalism depends for its meaning and value. In a series of bold theoretical arguments and nuanced readings of literary texts, the author explores the political force of these private narratives with chapters on the Antinomian crisis in Puritan Massachusetts, early national models of gender and marriage in the works of Charles Brockden Brown and Hannah Webster Foster, infanticide narratives and nineteenth-century accounts of motherhood in the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Lydia Maria Child, and ""re-arranging"" marriage in the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Full Product Details

Author:   Elizabeth Maddock Dillon
Publisher:   Stanford University Press
Imprint:   Stanford University Press
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.70cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.431kg
ISBN:  

9780804758475

ISBN 10:   0804758476
Pages:   277
Publication Date:   13 April 2004
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Contents Introduction: The Gender of Freedom and Women in Public 1 Chapter One. Gender, Liberal Theory, and the Literary Public Sphere 00 Chapter Two. Puritan Bodies and Transatlantic Texts 00 Chapter Three. Contracting Marriage in the New Republic 000 Chapter Four. Sociality and Sentiment 000 Coda. Queering Marriage: Emily Dickinson and the Poetics of Title 000 Notes Works Cited 000 Index Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: American literature Colonial period, ca, 1600-1775 History and criticism, Liberty in literature, Dickinson, Emily, 1830-1886 Criticism and interpretation, American literature 1783-1850 History and criticism, Politics and literature United States History, Women and literature United States History, Sentimentalism in literature, Liberalism in literature, Sex role in literature, Marriage in literature, Women in literature

Reviews

In lucid prose and incisive readings of formidable texts like Brown's Edgar Huntley, Dillon powerfully reconceives the Habermasian public sphere as a social space where 'rational debate' is inseparable from private desire, and the literary deployment of gender publicly articulates a private liberal and gendered subjectivity. - Ivy Schweitzer, Dartmouth College Through an impressive synthesis of critical material from a wide range of disciplines and some astute readings of political theorists from Adam Smith to Jurgen Habermas, Elizabeth Maddock Dillon has produced an intriguing and largely persuasive account of the relationship between liberalism and gender difference. - William and Mary Quarterly

""In this highly intelligent and elegantly written book, Elizabeth Maddock Dillon makes the important observation that U.S. liberalism depends upon the concept of gender for its successful functioning and, more particularly, that women's private status has been integral to liberalism since its inception."" - Legacy ""Through an impressive synthesis of critical material from a wide range of disciplines and some astute readings of political theorists from Adam Smith to Jurgen Habermas, Elizabeth Maddock Dillon has produced an intriguing and largely persuasive account of the relationship between liberalism and gender difference."" - William and Mary Quarterly

Author Information

Elizabeth Maddock Dillon is Associate Professor of English at Northeastern University.

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