Daughters of the Great Depression
Subtitle: women, work, and fiction in the American 1930s
By: by Laura Hapke.
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 286
Subjects: American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century; American fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism; Women -- Employment -- United States -- Historiography; Women employees in literature; Depressions in literature; Work in literature
Description: Working women, from industrial wage earners to business professionals, were the literary and cultural scapegoats of the 1930s, argues Laura Hapke. In Daughters of the Great Depression she reinterprets more than fifty well-known and rediscovered works of Depression Era fiction to illuminate one of the decade's central conflicts: whether to include women in the hard-pressed workforce or relegate them to a literal or figurative home sphere.

To locate these key texts in the "don't steal a job from a man" furor of the time, she draws on a wealth of 1930s sources not usually considered by literary scholars. These sources include articles on gender and the job controversy; Labor Department Women's Bureau statistics; "true romance" stories and "fallen woman" films; studies of African-American women's wage earning; and Fortune magazine pronouncements on white-collar womanhood.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-273) and index.