Ambivalent Desires

The „New Woman“ Between Social Modernization and Modern Writing


1. Edition, 2004
331 Pages

ISBN: 978-3-8253-1576-4
Product: Book
Edition: Hardcover
Subject: Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Series: American Studies – A Monograph Series, Volume No.: 113
Available: 09.02.2004

Keywords: Literatur, gender studies, amerikanische Kultur, Geschichte 1880-1930, Frau (Motiv), Geschlechterrolle (Motiv), Sozialer Wandel (Motiv), U.S.A., Populärliteratur, New Woman


The study explores the phenomenon of the New Woman as a most controversial construct of turn-of-the19th-century US-American culture. Images of the New Woman shaped the discourses of mainstream press as well as those of leading feminists of the time. Against the background of the processes of social modernization, the multifaceted versions of this female image are investigated as productions und reproductions of women's "ambivalent desires" to articulate their female awareness of modernity by rereading texts written by male and female so-called popular and canonical authors and by discussing selected contemporary discourses of journalism. The analysis sets out to explore the centrality of gender to the development of forms of modern US-American writing conceptualized as a network of diverse yet mutually interacting gendered discourses.

Bisherige Forschungsschwerpunkte der Autorin:
Turn-of-the 19th-century US-American Literature, multiethnic literatures of the US

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Thomas Austenfeld in: American Literary Scholarship, 2005-1, 479

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Maureen Reed in: Amerikastudien / American Studies, 51, 2 (2006), 242ff