Sexualizing power in naturalism
Subtitle: Theodore Dreiser and Frederick Philip Grove
By: Irene Gammel
Publisher: University of Calgary Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Calgary
Language: eng
Number of pages: 262
Subjects: Naturalism in literature; Power (Social sciences) in literature; Criticism and interpretation; Sex in literature; Women in literature
Description: How is sexuality put to work in the social network of power? Why is power so obsessively inscribed on the sexualized female body? These questions are at the heart of naturalism's preoccupation with female sexuality. Presenting a revisionary reading of such crucial German, Canadian, and American texts as Fanny Essler, Settlers of the Marsh, and Sister Carrie, Irene Gammel reveals that naturalism is frequently implicated in the very power structures it critiques.

A predominantly male genre, naturalism appropriated a disruptive female sexuality not so much to "liberate" it from the shackles of Victorian repression as to contain it within the male boundaries of naturalism. Reading European and North American naturalism through the lens of feminist and Foucauldian theories of power, Gammel argues that twentieth-century naturalism increasingly exposes the genre's internal ideological contradictions.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-255) and index.