The Feminization of American Culture
This modern classic by one of our leading scholars seeks to explain the values prevalent in today's mass culture by tracing them back to their roots in the Victorian era. As religion lost its hold on the public mind, clergymen and educated women, powerless and insignificant in the society of the time, together exerted a profound effect on the only areas open to their influence: the arts and literature. Women wrote books that idealized the very qualities that kept them powerless: timidity,...
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This modern classic by one of our leading scholars seeks to explain the values prevalent in today's mass culture by tracing them back to their roots in the Victorian era. As religion lost its hold on the public mind, clergymen and educated women, powerless and insignificant in the society of the time, together exerted a profound effect on the only areas open to their influence: the arts and literature. Women wrote books that idealized the very qualities that kept them powerless: timidity, piety, and a disdain for competition. Sentimental values that permeated popular literature continue to influence modern culture, preoccupied as it is with glamour, banal melodrama, and mindless consumption.This new paperback edition, with a new Preface, will reach yet more readers with its persuasive and provocative theory. Richard Bernstein of The New York Times said: "Her remarkable scholarship is going to set the standard for a long time to come."New York Times Book Review - Gerda LernerIn 1977, the reviewer praised "the textural richness and methodological sophistication of this intellectual and literary history.
AcknowledgmentsPreface to the 1998 Noonday EditionIntroduction: The Legacy of American Victorianism: The Meaning of Little Eva3Pt. 1The Sentimentalization of Status1Clerical Disestablishment172Feminine Disestablishment443Ministers and Mothers: Changing and Exchanging Roles80Pt. 2The Sentimentalization of Creed and Culture4The Loss of Theology: From Dogma to Fiction1215The Escape from History: The Static Imagination1656The Domestication of Death: The Posthumous Congregation2007The Periodical Press: Arena for Hostility227Pt. 3Protest: Case Studies in American Romanticism8Margaret Fuller and the Disavowal of Fiction2599Herman Melville and the Revolt Against the Reader Epilogue289Epilogue327App. AAlphabetical Listing of Women and Ministers330App. BChronological Listing of Women and Ministers332Notes346Index389
\ From the Publisher"Indispensable reading for . . . anybody of serious intelligence."—The New York Times\ "An exciting, readable book." -The New Republic\ "Admirably documented and ambitious . . . [The] examination of the perils of sentimentalism and the legacy it bequeathed modern culture is excellent."—Newsweek\ \ \ \ \ \ Gerda LernerIn 1977, the reviewer praised "the textural richness and methodological sophistication of this intellectual and literary history. \ —New York Times Book Review\ \ \ Gerda LernerIn 1977, the reviewer praised "the textural richness and methodological sophistication of this intellectual and literary history."\ — The New York Times Book Review\ \
