The Parvenu’s Plot: Gender, Culture, and Class in the Age of Realism (Becoming Modern: New Nineteenth-Century Studies (Paperback)) - Softcover

Foote, Stephanie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1611686814 ISBN 13: 9781611686814

Publisher: University of New Hampshire Press, 2014

Synopsis

In this very readable volume, Stephanie Foote gathers a range of print sources―from novels by Edith Wharton and Henry James to gossip columns, fashion magazines, popular novels, and etiquette manuals―to ask how the realist period understood the individual experience of class. Examining the female arriviste (the parvenu of the title) in turn-of-the-century New York (where a supposedly stable elite was threatened by the nouveaux riches), Foote shows how class became more than just an economic position: it was a fundamental part of individual identity, exemplified by a shifting set of social behaviors that form the core of many nineteenth-century novels. She persuasively presents the female parvenu as a key figure in turn-of-the-century culture that embodies the volatility of social standing and the continuing project of structuring and justifying it.

About this title

About the Author

STEPHANIE FOOTE is associate professor of English and gender and women's studies at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of New Hampshire Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1611686814
• ISBN 13: 9781611686814
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256