Boundaries of Acceptability: Flaubert, Maupassant, Cézanne, and Cassatt

ISBN-13: 9780820438511 / Angielski / Twarda / 2000 / 252 str.

Paulson, Michael G.

Opis

Boundaries of Acceptability: Flaubert, Maupassant, Cezanne, and Cassatt uses an interdisciplinary approach to analyze competing representations of female bourgeois protagonists in selected novels and paintings of the second half of nineteenth-century France. Sharon P. Johnson argues that the works of Flaubert, Maupassant, Cezanne, and Cassatt contribute to the redefinition of social and sexual norms, either by presenting oppositional values that shock the public or by presenting alternative values and roles for women. By manipulating the depiction of -feminine spaces, - painterly conventions, and traditional narrative form, these works challenge dominant society s commonplace norms of -proper- behaviors and social roles. Such challenges thus attack bourgeois society by problematizing its boundaries of acceptability, boundaries that serve to make definitions clear and to strengthen bourgeois ideology. This study provides a new framework for feminist studies by analyzing how artistic works that have no overt intention of furthering women s causes do so by using female subjects in controversial ways to attack bourgeois social structures. Dr. Johnson offers fresh interpretations of the works she studies by examining them within the framework of nineteenth-century codes and contemporary women studies questions."

Recenzje

«In 'Boundaries of Acceptability: Flaubert, Maupassant, Cézanne, and Cassatt', Sharon P. Johnson explores the problematic depiction of women in nineteenth-century France. Dr. Johnson's interdisciplinary approach, combining historical research, art criticism, and feminist perspectives with careful stylistic analyses, produces original interpretations and insightful discussions of several major texts and paintings. Dr. Johnson demonstrates vividly how verbal and visual representation can undermine dominant understandings of the boundaries - physical, social, and psychological - intended to keep women in their place. Dr. Johnson's study will prove valuable to scholars and general readers interested in the relationship of literature and painting to each other and to significant social and political issues whose relevance persists today.»
(William J. Berg, Halverson-Bascom Professor of French, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

O autorze

The Author: Sharon P. Johnson is Assistant Professor of French Language and Literature at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She is interested in nineteenth-century French literature and art, gender studies, feminist critical theory, and representations of women.