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Portraits of the New Woman in Edith Wharton's the House of Mirth Università degli Studi di Padova Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue Moderne per la Comunicazione e la Cooperazione Internazionale Classe LM-38 Tesi di Laurea Portraits of the New Woman in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland Relatrice: Prof.ssa Anna Scacchi Laureanda: Laura Verza n° matr.1156747 / LMLCC Anno Accademico 2018 / 2019 INDEX Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter One: The New Woman ....................................................................................................... 9 1.1 Questioning Female Identity in the Nineteenth Century ............................................................ 9 1.2 The Emergence of the New Woman ........................................................................................ 13 1.3 The New Woman in the Conservative Press: The Rise of the Manly Woman ........................ 20 1.4 The New Woman: a New Image of Womanhood Represented by Multiple Female Identities ........................................................................................................................................................ 31 Chapter Two: The Question of Women’s Role in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth ......... 39 2.1 The Leisure Class: Display of Wealth and Objectification of Women in The House of Mirth 39 2.2 The Theme of Marriage in The House of Mirth: Lily Bart’s Struggle to Fit in the Role of Wife ........................................................................................................................................................ 47 2.2.1 The Definition of Reputation in The House of Mirth: Breaking the Rules of Acceptable Behavior...................................................................................................................................... 51 2.3 Lily Bart’s Transformation in The House of Mirth: From the Rise to the Fall Down the Social Ladder ............................................................................................................................................. 54 Chapter Three: The New Woman in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie: Carrie Meeber as the Femme Fatale in the Consumer Society of the Late Nineteenth Century................................... 57 3.1 Carrie Meeber: The Birth of the Femme Fatale in Dreiser’s Novel Sister Carrie ................................................................................................................................... 57 3.1.1 Carrie as an Actress: Playing a Role both in Theatre and in Real Life ............................. 66 3.2 Consumption and Desire in Sister Carrie: The Impact of the Modern City and the Illusion of Happiness ....................................................................................................................................... 68 Chapter Four: Women in the Feminist Utopian World of Herland: Herlanders as Representatives of a New Type of Woman at the Turn of the Twentieth Century ............................................................................................................................................ .77 4.1 Motherhood: The Collective Principle at the Core of the All-Female Community of Herland ........................................................................................................................................................ 77 4.1.1 The Maternal Economy of Herland ................................................................................... 83 4.2 Sexuality, Femininity and Marriage in Herland: Questioning Cultural Gender Constructs in the Feminist Utopian Novel ........................................................................................................... 84 Conclusion......................................................................................................................................... 93 Sources .............................................................................................................................................. 97 Riassunto ......................................................................................................................................... 101 Introduction This thesis focuses on the analysis of the cultural phenomenon of the New Woman, which developed in the American society from the last decades of the nineteenth century until the years before the Great Depression. In my work, I examined the evolution of the New Woman in three major literary works, each representing a peculiar version of this new female figure: Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland. In newspapers, literature and illustrations, a new female icon started to be described, different from the previous representations of womanhood in terms of behavior, physical appearance and desires, which expressed fears and hopes about the changing role of women in society. In order to better understand the consequences that led to the advent of the New Woman phenomenon, it is important to mention that several changes had affected the economic situation in the United States, resulting in important cultural and social transformations. First of all, following the phenomenon of urbanization, a large part of the American population emigrated, settling in medium and large-sized cities that offered new job opportunities. As a result, the management of domestic spaces changed, as the home was no longer an economic center where people worked and produced for society. Most of the activities, indeed, started to be performed outside the domestic environment by professional figures. In addition, there was the rise of the bourgeois class, which led to a significant change in the functions performed by women. Middle-class women started to be freed from traditional domestic tasks, becoming more and more interested in the public sphere and in the educational and working advantages it offered. As a result of the economic and social developments which gave women the opportunity to detach from the domestic environment and explore new ways of life, a heated debate about the possible redefinition of the female identity began to divide the American society. The questioning of the conventional ideas about womanhood sanctioned in the Victorian Era occurred already in the course of the nineteenth century, a period dominated by the ideology referred to as the Cult of Domesticity or Cult of 1 True Womanhood, a set of beliefs about gender roles which established separate spheres of influence for men and women. Under this cult, while men engaged in activities related to the public sphere, women were instead relegated to the duties of the domestic sphere. The woman was, in fact, responsible for the care and education of her children, she supported her husband and fulfilled traditional domestic roles. Moreover, she was considered the guardian of the home, whose sacredness she protected thanks to her moral superiority. However, the nature of women’s domestic work promoted the idea that they were not suitable for physically and intellectually demanding jobs, and for this reason they were excluded from the public sphere. Despite the restrictions to which women were subjected, they managed in some way to escape their confinement to the private sphere and achieve agency, to a certain extent, through the notion of “moral suasion”, namely the fundamental positive influence they could exert on society. Indeed, the American woman was represented as a virtuous Republican citizen, endowed with an ethical and moral strength that allowed her to take care of the education of her children and teach them the values of the country. But in the course of the nineteenth century, as I already mentioned, the home lost its economic and cultural centrality and the idea of women’s power to uphold the national values merely through moral suasion started to be questioned. It was in this climate of change that the idea of a fixed female identity started to be debated. Women began to criticize some of the values associated with the Cult of Domesticity, claiming the right to some of the freedom and opportunities reserved exclusively to men. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, therefore, less constrained by Victorian laws and domestic life than previous generations, women had greater freedom to take decisions concerning the social and private sphere. They were slowly becoming more active members of society and were gradually affirming their presence in the workplace, gaining also access to adequate educational facilities. At the end of the century, the increase in employment opportunities, together with the improvements made in the educational field, paved the way for a general re- assessment of the female condition, making women more independent and prepared to leave the old sphere. Following these events, new issues started to affect the American 2 scene, particularly in relation to the preservation of the family institution. The importance attributed to marriage began to be questioned, since it was conceived more as an option than as an obligation by more and more women, and by the end of the century a decrease in the number of married women and an increase in the divorce rate was recorded. At the turn of the century, the new awareness acquired by women about the possibility of deciding with
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