FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE - Softcover

Douglas, Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374525587 ISBN 13: 9780374525583

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998

Synopsis

The Feminization of American Culture seeks to explain the values prevalent in today's mass culture by tracing them back to their roots in the Victorian era. As religion lost its hold on the public mind, clergymen and educated women, powerless and insignificant in the society of the time, together profoundly affected the only areas open to their influence, the arts and literature, and women wrote books that idealized the very qualities that kept them powerless - timidity, piety, and a disdain for competition. These sentimental values continue to influence modern culture, preoccupied as it is with glamour, banal melodrama, and mindless consumption.

About this title

Review:

"Indispensable reading for . . . anybody of serious intelligence." --The New York Times

"An exciting, readable book." --The New Republic

"Admirably documented and ambitious . . . [The] examination of the perils of sentimentalism and the legacy it bequeathed modern culture is excellent." --Newsweek

About the Author:

Ann Douglas, author of Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s, has taught American studies at Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, where she is now Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature. She lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0374525587
• ISBN 13: 9780374525583
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 420