Working Women in American Literature, 1865–1950

Working Women in American Literature, 1865–1950 consists of eight original essays by literary, historical, and multicultural critics on the subject of working women in late-nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century American literature. The volume examines how the American working woman has been presented, misrepresented, and underrepresented in American realistic and naturalistic literature (1865–1930), and by later authors influenced by realism and naturalism. Points explored include: the historical vocational realities of working women (e.g., factory workers, seamstresses, maids, teachers, writers, prostitutes, etc.); the distortions in literary representations of female work; the ways in which these representations still inform the lives of working women today; and new perspectives from queer theory, immigrant studies, and race and class analyses.These essays draw on current feminist thought while remaining mindful of the historicity of the context. The essayists discuss important women writers of the period (for instance, Ellen Glasgow, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Rachel Crothers, Willa Cather, and the understudied Ann Petry), as well as canonical writers like Theodore Dreiser, Henry James, and William Dean Howells. The discussions touch on a variety of literary and artistic genres: novels, short stories, other forms of fiction, biographies, dramas, and films. In the introductory essay and throughout the collection, the term “working women in the United States” is deconstructed; the historical and cultural definitions of “work,” and the words “work in America” are redefined through the lens of genders.

These thoughtful, interesting essays examine texts that explore the figure of the working woman during an era of enormous social transformation in the US. Arranged in four sections ("Naturalism and the Working Woman," "The 'New Woman,'" "Race, Sex, and Class," and "Working Women in Drama and Film"), the eight essays scrutinize work from a range of authors, including William Dean Howells, Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ellen Glasgow, Ann Petry, and Rachel Crothers. The book concludes with an examination of career women in 1940s cinema. A helpful introduction covering women’s rapidly changing roles in society during this era will be particularly helpful for readers unfamiliar with the period. . . Readers interested in feminist and historical approaches to literature will profit most from this book, and it will serve as a helpful supplement to more broad-based studies of literature from the period.Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

Miriam S. Gogol is professor of English at Mercy College.