The History of Southern Women's Literature (Southern Literary Studies)

About this book

Many of Americas foremost and most beloved authors are also southern and female: Mary Chesnut Kate Chopin Ellen Glasgow Zora Neale Hurston Eudora Welty Harper Lee Maya Angelou Anne Tyler Alice Walker and Lee Smith to name several. Designating a writer as southern if her work reflects the regions grip on her life Carolyn Perry and Mary Louise Weaks have produced an invaluable guide to the richly diverse and enduring tradition of southern womens literature. Their comprehensive historythe first of its kind in a relatively young fieldextends from the pioneer woman to the career woman embracing black and white poor and privileged urban and Appalachian perspectives and experiences. The History of Southern Womens Literature allows readers both to explore individual authors and to follow the developing arc of various genres across time. Conduct books and slave narratives; Civil War diaries and letters; the antebellum postbellum and modern novel; autobiography and memoirs; poetry; magazine and newspaper writingthese and more receive close attention. Over seventy contributors are represented here and their essays discuss a wealth of womens issues from four centuries: race urbanization and feminism; the myth of southern womanhood; preset images and assigned social rolesfrom the belle to the mammyand real life behind the facade of meeting others expectations; poverty and the labor movement; responses to Uncle Toms Cabin and the influence of Gone with the Wind. The history of southern womens literature tells ultimately the story of the search for freedom within an insidious tradition to quote Ellen Glasgow. This teeming volume validates the deep contributions and pleasures of an impressive body of writing and marks a major achievement in womens and literary studies.