A wide range of short fiction by Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the focus for this study, examining both genre and theme. Chopin's short stories, Wharton's novellas, Chopin's frankly erotic writing and the homilies in which Gilman warns of the dangers of the sexually transmitted disease are compared. There are also essays on ethnicity in the work of Chopin, Wharton's New England stories, Gilman's innovative use of genre and 'The Yellow Wallpaper' on film. All three writers are still popular in US classrooms in particular. This paperback edition includes a new...

This anthology publishes key documents in the history of American feminism that are, as at 2002, only available in extract form or in archives.

First published in 1899, The Awakening's engagement with taboo issues of female sexuality and infidelity prompted a flurry of damning reviews that sent the book out of print and into obscurity for several decades. However, it is now hailed as a key early feminist text and has become one of the most widely studied works of American literature. This Sourcebook combines accessible commentary with reprinted documents to provide the ideal introduction to the novel. Its first section, 'Contexts' provides biographical information on Chopin and explores 1890s American society to reveal the contextual...

Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth (1905) is a sharp and satirical, but also sensitive and tragic analysis of a young, single woman trying to find her place in a materialistic and unforgiving society. The House of Mirth offers a fascinating insight into the culture of the time and, as suggested by the success of recent film adaptations, it is also an enduring tale of love, ambition and social pressures still relevant today.

Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of The House of Mirth and seeking not...

A wide range of short fiction by Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the focus for this study, examining both genre and theme. Chopin's short stories, Wharton's novellas, Chopin's frankly erotic writing and the homilies in which Gilman warns of the dangers of the sexually transmitted disease are compared. There are also essays on ethnicity in the work of Chopin, Wharton's New England stories, Gilman's innovative use of genre and "The Yellow Wallpaper" on film. This paperback edition includes a new Preface to the material, providing a useful update on recent scholarship...

Although she enjoyed only modest success during her lifetime, Kate Chopin is now recognised as a unique voice in American literature. Her seminal novel, The Awakening, published in 1899, explored new and startling territory, and stunned readers with its frank depiction of the limits of marriage and motherhood. Chopin's aesthetic tastes and cultural influences were drawn from both the European and American traditions, and her manipulation of her 'foreignness' contributed to the composition of a complex voice that was strikingly different to that of her contemporaries. The essays in this...

Wharton's late and critically-neglected novels are reclaimed as experimental in form and radical in content in this book, which also suggests that her portrayal of older female characters in her last six novels anticipates contemporary unease about the cultural marginalization of the older woman in Western society.

A wide range of short fiction by Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the focus for this study, examining both genre and theme. Chopin's short stories, Wharton's novellas, Chopin's frankly erotic writing and the homilies in which Gilman warns of the dangers of the sexually transmitted disease are compared. There are also essays on ethnicity in the work of Chopin, Wharton's New England stories, Gilman's innovative use of genre and 'The Yellow Wallpaper' on film. All three writers are still popular in US classrooms in particular. This paperback edition includes a new...