Labor & desire
Subtitle: women's revolutionary fiction in depression America
By: Paula Rabinowitz.
Series: Gender & American culture
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 1991
Place of publication: Chapel Hill
Language: eng
Number of pages: 222
Subjects: American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.; Feminism and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Revolutionary literature, American -- History and criticism.; American fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.; Feminist fiction, American -- History and criticism.; Femininity in literature.; Women intellectuals in literature.; Working class in literature.; Depressions in literature.; Radicalism in literature.; Desire in literature.
Other titles: Labor and desire.
Description: "This critical, historical, and theoretical study looks at a little-known group of novels written during the 1930s by women who were literary radicals. Arguing that class consciousness was figured through metaphors of gender, Paula Rabinowitz challenges the conventional wisdom that feminism as a discourse disappeared during the decade. She focuses on the ways in which sexuality and maternity reconstruct the "classic" proletarian novel to speak about both the working-class woman and the radical female intellectual." "Two well-known novels bracket this study: Agnes Smedley's Daughters of Earth (1929) and Mary McCarthy's The Company She Keeps (1942). In all, Rabinowitz surveys more than forty novels of the period, many largely forgotten. Discussing these novels in the contexts of literary radicalism and of women's literary tradition, she reads them as both cultural history and cultural theory. Through a consideration of the novels as a genre, Rabinowitz is able to theorize about the interrelationship of class and gender in American culture. Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-215) and index.