American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860Just as she helped launch the rediscovery of literary texts by American women writers, Nina Baym now uncovers the work of history performed by over 150 writers in over 350 texts. Here she explores a world of important writing unknown even to most specialists. The novels, poems, plays, textbooks, and travel narratives written by women between 1790 and the Civil War defy current theories of women's writing that stress a female domain of the private, homebound, and emotional. History is inarguably public in its nature and these women wrote it. In doing so, they challenged the imaginative and intellectual boundaries that divided domestic and public worlds. They claimed on behalf of all women the rights to know and to speak about the world outside the home, as well as to circulate their knowledge and opinions among the public. Their work helped shape the enormous public interest in history characteristic of the antebellum nation, and ultimately to forge our national identity in the history of the world. Nina Baym deftly outlines the master narrative of history implied in women's writings of this period, and discusses in a completely revisioned context the emergence of women's history in public discourse.
|
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 91
... writing , since they lacked professional ac- cess to the academy . Fourth , the number of historical works written by women , increasing in tandem with the print explosion of the late nine- teenth century and the resurgent interest in ...
... written by these graduates to her and to each other . Mrs. Williams reminds the students that though they cannot all expect to win literary fame , a " spe- cies of writing , which is open to every capacity , ornamental to every sta ...
... written , and are now written , con- cerning the equality of the sexes ; but that true and perfect compan- ionship , which gives both man and woman complete freedom in their places , without a restless desire to go out of them , is as ...
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Maternal Historians Didactic Mothers | 29 |
History from the Divine Point of View | 46 |
Copyright | |
9 other sections not shown