Married or Single?

ISBN-13: 9780803271920 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 528 str.

Catharine Maria Sedgwick; Deborah Gussman

Opis

Married or Single?, published in 1857, was Catharine Maria Sedgwick s final novel and a fitting climax to the career of one of antebellum America s first and most successful woman writers. Insisting on women s right to choose whether to marry, Married or Single? rejects the stigma of spinsterhood and offers readers a wider range of options for women in society, recognizing their need and ability to determine the course of their lives.
Sedgwick s touching, witty, and shrewdly observant novel centers on Grace Herbert, a New York City socialite who must negotiate the marriage market and also learn to develop her own character and take control of her own destiny. The story merges a wide range of popular American literary forms including the seduction novel, the conversion narrative, the novel of education, and social reform fiction and provides a window on many of the cultural and political anxieties of the 1850s beyond marriage, including immigration, slavery, and urban poverty. Sedgwick s lifelong concern with women s duties to the nation as citizens is demonstrated through her depiction of exemplary women of various backgrounds and circumstances who illustrate the idea that becoming a worthy human being is more important than becoming a wife, especially in a democratic society.
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