The Factory Girl and the Seamstress: Imagining Gender and Class in Nineteenth Century American Fiction

by Amal Amireh

Overview

This book studies the representations of working-class women in canonical and popular American fiction between 1820 and 1870. These representations have been invisible in nineteenth century American literary and cultural studies due to the general view that antebellum writers did not engage with their society's economic and social relaities. Against this view and to highlight the cultural importance of working-class women, this study argues that, in responding to industrialization, middle class writers such as Melville, Hawthorne, Fern, Davies, and Phelps used the figures of the factory worker and the seamstress to express their anxieties about unstable gender and class identitites. These fictional representations were influenced by, and contributed to, an important but understudied cultural debate about wage labor, working women, and class.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138868007
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/12/2015
Series:	Studies in American Popular History and Culture
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; Acknowledgments; 1. Inventing the "Mill Girl'; 2. Woman of Industry: The Seamstress in Antebellum America; 3. Nathaniel Hawthorne's use of the Seamstress; 4. Domesticating Women: The Seamstress, the Factory Girl, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Author; Conclusion; Bibliography