University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"""A Better Guardianship"": Mothers, Surrogates, and Female Education in Domestic Literature, 1790--1860"
Abstract
dc:descriptionModern critics of antebellum American literature have read domestic literature as bolstering the development of liberal-capitalist culture, including sentimental ideals of home and motherhood. This critical account does not explain, however, the widespread and recurrent evidence of ambivalence towards these ideals in this literature. Focusing specifically on representations of the mother's role in female education, I identify in nonfictional and fictional texts produced between 1780 and 1870 both moments of critique and attempts to accommodate sentimental maternalism. This ambivalence registers a residual commitment to republican, communitarian values amid the emergence and eventual domination of a liberal-capitalist social order.
Degree
thesis:*- Name thesis:degree_name
- Ph.D.
- Level thesis:degree_level
- Dissertation
- Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
- English
- Grantor
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Year dc:date
- 2015
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Chantell, Claire Ann
- Contributors dc:contributor
-
- Baym, Nina
Subjects
dc:subject × 1Rights
- Language dc:language
- eng
Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- Identifier
- (MiAaPQ)AAI9971043
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/81510