Sickly Sentimentalism: Pathology and Sympathy in American Women’s Literature, 1866-1900 examines the work of four American women novelists writing between 1866 and 1900 as responses to a dominant medical discourse that pathologized women’s emotions. The popular fiction of Metta Fuller Victor, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Sarah Orne Jewett, and E.D.E.N. Southworth mobilized sentimental style and sympathetic affect to challenge the medical trend of treating female sentiment as a sickness. At the level of narrative, this challenge took the form of deviating from the domestic and marriage plots prevalent in women’s popular fiction of their period. Through forms of sentimental writing my selected authors imagined new possibilities for female subjectivity outside the limitations of pathology and domesticity. This dissertation joins the critical work of scholars of American studies seeking to attend to the writings of overlooked women writers. I argue that a broader consideration of nineteenth-century women’s literature that more thoroughly encompasses popular fiction can expand our understanding of sentimentalism as both a genre and cultural discourse. My study is in large part a recovery project, aiming to shed new light on popular female authors whose work is still overlooked and remains out of print despite critics’ best efforts to expand the nineteenth-century canon.
","abstract_html":"<p><em>Sickly Sentimentalism: Pathology and Sympathy in American Women’s Literature, 1866-1900</em> examines the work of four American women novelists writing between 1866 and 1900 as responses to a dominant medical discourse that pathologized women’s emotions. The popular fiction of Metta Fuller Victor, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Sarah Orne Jewett, and E.D.E.N. Southworth mobilized sentimental style and sympathetic affect to challenge the medical trend of treating female sentiment as a sickness. At the level of narrative, this challenge took the form of deviating from the domestic and marriage plots prevalent in women’s popular fiction of their period. Through forms of sentimental writing my selected authors imagined new possibilities for female subjectivity outside the limitations of pathology and domesticity. This dissertation joins the critical work of scholars of American studies seeking to attend to the writings of overlooked women writers. I argue that a broader consideration of nineteenth-century women’s literature that more thoroughly encompasses popular fiction can expand our understanding of sentimentalism as both a genre and cultural discourse. My study is in large part a recovery project, aiming to shed new light on popular female authors whose work is still overlooked and remains out of print despite critics’ best efforts to expand the nineteenth-century canon.</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Zeftel, Nicole"],"institution":"The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York","degree_name":"Doctor of Philosophy","degree_level":"Doctoral","degree_discipline":"Comparative Literature","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":["Hildegard Hoeller","Eric Lott"],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":["Bettina Lerner"],"year":2018,"date_issued":"2018-05-01T07:00:00Z","date_published":"2018-05-01T07:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T01:59:05Z","subjects":["American Literature","Arts and Humanities","Literature in English, North America","nineteenth-century women's literature","nineteenth-century popular culture","sentimentalism","nineteenth-century medicine","sympathy"],"languages":[],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2613","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor.advisor","label":"Advisor","values":["Hildegard Hoeller","Eric Lott"]},{"key":"dc:contributor.committeemember","label":"Committee Member","values":["Bettina Lerner"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Zeftel, Nicole"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2020-05-30T07:00:00Z"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Comparative Literature"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Doctoral"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Doctor of Philosophy"]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["American Literature","Arts and Humanities","Literature in English, North America","nineteenth-century women's literature","nineteenth-century popular culture","sentimentalism","nineteenth-century medicine","sympathy"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2613"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["Sickly Sentimentalism: Pathology and Sympathy in American Women’s Literature, 1866-1900 examines the work of four American women novelists writing between 1866 and 1900 as responses to a dominant medical discourse that pathologized women’s emotions. The popular fiction of Metta Fuller Victor, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Sarah Orne Jewett, and E.D.E.N. Southworth mobilized sentimental style and sympathetic affect to challenge the medical trend of treating female sentiment as a sickness. At the level of narrative, this challenge took the form of deviating from the domestic and marriage plots prevalent in women’s popular fiction of their period. Through forms of sentimental writing my selected authors imagined new possibilities for female subjectivity outside the limitations of pathology and domesticity. This dissertation joins the critical work of scholars of American studies seeking to attend to the writings of overlooked women writers. I argue that a broader consideration of nineteenth-century women’s literature that more thoroughly encompasses popular fiction can expand our understanding of sentimentalism as both a genre and cultural discourse. My study is in large part a recovery project, aiming to shed new light on popular female authors whose work is still overlooked and remains out of print despite critics’ best efforts to expand the nineteenth-century canon.
"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Sickly Sentimentalism: Sympathy and Pathology in American Women's Literature, 1866-1900"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor.advisor":["Hildegard Hoeller","Eric Lott"],"dc:contributor.committeemember":["Bettina Lerner"],"dc:creator":["Zeftel, Nicole"],"dc:date.available":["2020-05-30T07:00:00Z"],"dc:description.abstract":["Sickly Sentimentalism: Pathology and Sympathy in American Women’s Literature, 1866-1900 examines the work of four American women novelists writing between 1866 and 1900 as responses to a dominant medical discourse that pathologized women’s emotions. The popular fiction of Metta Fuller Victor, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Sarah Orne Jewett, and E.D.E.N. Southworth mobilized sentimental style and sympathetic affect to challenge the medical trend of treating female sentiment as a sickness. At the level of narrative, this challenge took the form of deviating from the domestic and marriage plots prevalent in women’s popular fiction of their period. Through forms of sentimental writing my selected authors imagined new possibilities for female subjectivity outside the limitations of pathology and domesticity. This dissertation joins the critical work of scholars of American studies seeking to attend to the writings of overlooked women writers. I argue that a broader consideration of nineteenth-century women’s literature that more thoroughly encompasses popular fiction can expand our understanding of sentimentalism as both a genre and cultural discourse. My study is in large part a recovery project, aiming to shed new light on popular female authors whose work is still overlooked and remains out of print despite critics’ best efforts to expand the nineteenth-century canon.
"],"dc:identifier":["https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2613"],"dc:subject":["American Literature","Arts and Humanities","Literature in English, North America","nineteenth-century women's literature","nineteenth-century popular culture","sentimentalism","nineteenth-century medicine","sympathy"],"dc:title":["Sickly Sentimentalism: Sympathy and Pathology in American Women's Literature, 1866-1900"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Comparative Literature"],"thesis:degree_level":["Doctoral"],"thesis:degree_name":["Doctor of Philosophy"],"thesis:institution_name":["The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T01:59:05Z"}