Course Description
Marriage, sex, children, politics, religion, racism, and economic corruption: these topics form some of the enduring concerns of American women writers of the nineteenth century. In this course, we will examine how American women have addressed these themes, beginning our study with a sensational seduction novel and concluding with the sophisticated literary artistry of Edith Wharton. As we examine the literary dimensions of women’s experience in nineteenth-century America, we will also ask how women writers have represented, resisted, and modified the idea of femininity itself.
Edith Wharton
Readings to include:
Anne Bradstreet: Selected Poetry
Hannah Foster: The
Coquette
Catharine Maria Sedgwick: Hope Leslie
Lydia Sigourney: Selected Poetry
Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom's
Cabin
Harriet Wilson: Our Nig
Emily Dickinson: Selected Poetry
Zitkala Sa: American Indian
Stories
Mary Wilkins Freeman: Selected Stories
Edith Wharton: The
Age of Innocence