Raising the dust
Subtitle: the literary housekeeping of Mary Ward, Sarah Grand, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman
By: Beth Sutton-Ramspeck.
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 272
Subjects: Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 1860-1935 -- Criticism and interpretation.; Ward, Humphry, Mrs., 1851-1920 -- Criticism and interpretation.; Grand, Sarah -- Criticism and interpretation.; Domestic fiction, English -- History and criticism.; English fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.; Domestic fiction, American -- History and criticism.; Women and literature -- English-speaking countries.; Housekeeping in literature.; Housewives in literature.; Mothers in literature.; Women in literature.; Home in literature.
Genres: Criticism and interpretation.
Description: "Raising the Dust identifies a heretofore-overlooked literary phenomenon that author Beth Sutton-Ramspeck calls "literary housekeeping." The three writers she examines rejected turn-of-the-century aestheticism and modernism in favor of a literature that is practical, even ostensibly mundane, designed to "set the human household in order."" "To Mary Augusta Ward, Sarah Grand, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, housekeeping represented public responsibilities: making the food supply safe, cleaning up politics, and improving the human family." "Raising the Dust places their writing in the context of the late-Victorian era, examining in particular the eugenics movement, the proliferation of household conveniences, the home economics movement, and decreased reliance on servants. These changes affected relationships between the domestic sphere and the public sphere, and hence shaped the portrayal of domesticity in the era's fiction and nonfiction."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-261) and index.