Aesthetics and Gender in American Literature: Portraits of the Woman Artist"In Aesthetics and Gender in American Literature: Portraits of the Woman Artist, Barker demonstrates how popular woman writers - Fanny Fern, E. D. E. N. Southworth, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Louisa May Alcott, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, and Jessie Fauset - used the female visual artist as their artistic alter ego to renegotiate the boundaries between high and low culture." "In their challenge to a gendered, racialized evolutionary aesthetics as embodied in the female copyist as an icon of cultural reproduction, these women writers enact in a fictional format what many recent feminists address at the theoretical level: a resistance to essentialist definitions of women's nature and to "universal" standards of high culture."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
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Contents
27 | |
39 | |
The Riddle of the Sphinx Elizabeth Stuart Phelpss The Story of Avis | 64 |
Louisa May Alcotts Women Artists Proving Avis in the Wrong | 94 |
Kate Chopins Awakening of Female Artistry | 120 |
Edith Whartons Portrait of a Lady in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction | 142 |
Authenticating the AfricanAmerican Female Artist Frances Harpers lola Leroy and Jessie Fausets Plum Bun | 162 |
Notes | 199 |
239 | |
255 | |
Other editions - View all
Aesthetics and Gender in American Literature: Portraits of the Woman Artist Deborah Barker No preview available - 2000 |
Common terms and phrases
ability able aesthetic African-American Alcott allows American Angela asserts associated attempt audience Avis Avis's Awakening beauty body century characters color conception copyist create critics critique culture depiction describes desire Diana discussion distinction domestic drawing Edna Edna's explains eyes face Fauset female feminine Fern fiction figure gaze gender hand Harlem Harper Hawthorne Hawthorne's heroine House important indicative influence intellectual lady Lily Lily's limited literary literature living look male mass material middle-class mother narrative nature nineteenth-century novel original painter painting Percy Phelps picture political portrait position present race racial reading refers rejects relationship representation represents reproduction role Romantic scene seems sentimental serves sexual social Southworth Sphinx story sublime suggests theories tion tradition true University Press vision visual Vivia Wharton woman artist women writers York young
Popular passages
Page 36 - She saw no, not saw, but felt through and through a picture; she bestowed upon it all the warmth and richness of a woman's sympathy; not by any intellectual effort, but by this strength of heart, and this guiding light of sympathy, she went straight to the central point, in which the master had conceived his work.