“A Peculiar Case” of a Woman’s Writing in Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons
0
조회
0
다운로드
0
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons makes a challenging case to those who approach it as a typical ‘women’s literature.’ Stoddard’s portrayal of the main character Cassandra Morgeson deviates from nineteenth-century women writers’ conventional representation of a heroine. Cassandra is an individual who finds its integrity in relation with a family, whereas the typical Victorian heroine is a singular figure fighting against society’s prejudices against her gender. Scholarly failure in grasping the atypicality of Stoddard’s authorial intention leads to continuous marginalization of her work from the literary tradition, either patriarchal or matriarchal. This paper takes that failure seriously and proposes to read The Morgesons as a metafictional story that at once reflects women-centered interpretations of women’s writing and exposes their limitation. It examines how Cassandra understands a notion of self in close interaction with other selves within a familial setting and how she searches for a symbiotic mode of different selfhoods through which individuality and communality do not conflict one another but prosper together. The paper ultimately argues for the necessity of liberating our reading of women’s writing from gender constrictions and conceiving an alternative methodology of appraising individual texts for their ‘peculiar’ qualities.
Abstract
Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons makes a challenging case to those who approach it as a typical ‘women’s literature.’ Stoddard’s portrayal of the main character Cassandra Morgeson deviates from nineteenth-century women writers’ conventional representation of a heroine. Cassandra is an individual who finds its integrity in relation with a family, whereas the typical Victorian heroine is a singular figure fighting against society’s prejudices against her gender. Scholarly failure in grasping the atypicality of Stoddard’s authorial intention leads to continuous marginalization of her work from the literary tradition, either patriarchal or matriarchal. This paper takes that failure seriously and proposes to read The Morgesons as a metafictional story that at once reflects women-centered interpretations of women’s writing and exposes their limitation. It examines how Cassandra understands a notion of self in close interaction with other selves within a familial setting and how she searches for a symbiotic mode of different selfhoods through which individuality and communality do not conflict one another but prosper together. The paper ultimately argues for the necessity of liberating our reading of women’s writing from gender constrictions and conceiving an alternative methodology of appraising individual texts for their ‘peculiar’ qualities.
참고문헌 (23)
- Alaimo, Stacy, "Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons: A Feminist Dialogue of Bildung and Descent", Legacy, 8(1), pp.29~37 (1991)
- Boyd, Anne E., "Writing for Immortality: Women and the Emergence of High Literary Culture in America" (2004), Johns Hopkins UP
- Çelikkol, Ayşe, "The Morgesons, Aesthetic Predicaments, and the Competitive Logic of the Market Economy", American Literature, 78(1), pp.29~57 (2006)
- Croce, Ann Jerome, "A Woman Outside Her Time: Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard (1823-1910) and Nineteenth-Century American Popular Fiction", Women’s Studies, 19, pp.357~369 (1991)
- Davis, Doris, "‘A Woman of Genius is but a Heavenly Lunatic”: Stoddard’s Subversive Use of Music in The Morgesons", CEA Critic, 76(1), pp.19~36 (2014)
- Evans, Brad, "Howellsian Chic: The Local Color of Cosmopolitanism", ELH, 71(3), pp.775~812 (2004)
- Feldman, Jessica R., "‘A Talent for the Disagreeable’: Elizabeth Stoddard Writes The Morgesons", Nineteenth-Century Literature, 58(2), pp.202~229 (2003)
- Grasso, Linda M., "The Artistry of Anger: Black and White Women’s Literature in America, 1820-1860" (2002), U of North Carolina P
- Hager, Christopher, "Hunger for the Literal: Writing and Industrial Change in Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons", American Literature, 77(4), pp.699~728 (2005)
- Harris, Susan K., "Stoddard’s The Morgesons: A Contextual Evaluation", ESQ, 31(1), pp.11~22 (1985)
- Henwood, Dawn, "irst-Person Storytelling in Elizabeth Stoddard’s Morgesons: Realism, Romance, and the Psychology of the Narrating Self", ESQ, 41(1), pp.41~63 (1995)
- Luck, Chad, "A Liberal Inheritance: Biology, Property, and the Limits of the Possessive Individual in Stoddard’s The Morgesons", Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 40(1), pp.37~48 (2007)
- Matlack, James H., "Hawthorne and Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard", New England Quarterly, 50(2), pp.278~302 (1977)
- Pasquesi, Carina D., "The Morgesons: Elizabeth Stoddard’s Ars Erotica", Legacy, 31(2), pp.183~206 (2014)
- Penner, Louise, "Domesticity and Self-Possession in The Morgesons and Jane Eyre", Studies in American Fiction, 27(2), pp.131~147 (1999)
- "Possessed", Oxford English Dictionary Online, ~ (2019)
- Putzi, Jennifer, "‘Tattooed Still’: The Inscription of Female Agency in Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons", Legacy, 17(2), pp.165~173 (2000)
- Smith, Robert McClure, "‘A Peculiar Case’: Masochistic Subjectivity and The Morgesons", Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, 58(3), pp.1~32 (2002)
- Smith, Robert McClure, "American Culture, Canons, and the Case of Elizabeth Stoddard" (2003), U of Alabama P
- Stern, Julia, "‘I Am Cruel Hungry’: Dramas of Twisted Appetite and Rejected Identification in Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons", 108~127
- Stockton, Elizabeth, "‘A Crusade against Duty’: Property, Self-Possession, and the Law in the Novels of Elizabeth Stoddard", New England Quarterly, 79(3), pp.413~438 (2006)
- Stoddard, Elizabeth, "The Morgesons" (1997), Penguin Books
- Williams, Susan S., "Reclaiming Authorship: Literary Women in America, 1850-1900" (2006), U of Pennsylvania P