Personal Property: Wives, White Slaves, and the Market in Women

by Margit Stange

Overview

In Personal Property, Margit Stange analyzes white slavery literature in relation to other key American writings of the time by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton, Jane Addams, and Kate Chopin. The anthropological theory of the exchange of women developed by nineteenth-century anthropologists—in whose view, as Thorstein Veblen put it, woman is the original private property—informs white slavery depictions of racialized, enslaved female bodies. Similarly, Stange argues, this theory is reflected in literature, in journalism, and in the feminist and Progressivist reform rhetoric of the early twentieth century, when social relations were transformed by capitalist expansion. She explores Progressive Era nativist and anti-business reactions, anxieties about the seductive pull of consumerism, the "social housekeeping" movement, and women's struggle for identity and professional stature in the U.S. marketplace economy of the early twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801872549
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2003
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Margit Stange is an independent scholar.

What People are Saying About This

Priscilla Wald

Stange has successfully brought literary and sociological works of the early twentieth century into dialogue with the White Slave scare—the unsubstantiated fear that white women were being abducted into enslaved prostitution—and used both to understand the relationship between white women and the market and, through that relationship, the ways in which citizenship and political equity are intrinsically gendered.

— Priscilla Wald, University of Washington

Emory Elliott

Personal Property is a bold and provocative study of how the relation between women and property, once subtle and masked in the early nineteenth century, became by 1900 blatant and explicitly exploitative. At once a learned Americanist and an innovative critic, Stange explicates the link between commodity marketing, consumerism, and femininity, in writings ranging from those of Chopin and Gilman to remarkable white slavery melodramas that starkly illustrate the aesthetic and material values placed on white female bodies.

— Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside

From the Publisher

Stange has successfully brought literary and sociological works of the early twentieth century into dialogue with the White Slave scare—the unsubstantiated fear that white women were being abducted into enslaved prostitution—and used both to understand the relationship between white women and the market and, through that relationship, the ways in which citizenship and political equity are intrinsically gendered.
—Priscilla Wald, University of Washington

Personal Property is a bold and provocative study of how the relation between women and property, once subtle and masked in the early nineteenth century, became by 1900 blatant and explicitly exploitative. At once a learned Americanist and an innovative critic, Stange explicates the link between commodity marketing, consumerism, and femininity, in writings ranging from those of Chopin and Gilman to remarkable white slavery melodramas that starkly illustrate the aesthetic and material values placed on white female bodies.
—Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside

Editorial Reviews

Personal Property represents a valuable and insightful contribution to the study of gender, commodity marketing, and aesthetics, and of their complex interplay during the first two decades in the twentieth-century United States.
—Eric Henderson, American Literature

From the Publisher

Personal Property represents a valuable and insightful contribution to the study of gender, commodity marketing, and aesthetics, and of their complex interplay during the first two decades in the twentieth-century United States.

American Literature - Eric Henderson

Readers in the early 20th century witnessed an explosion of lurid stories and tracts proclaiming that thousands of young women were being abducted and sold into forced prostitution. This study analyzes white slavery literature in relation to other key American writings of the time by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton, Jane Addams, and Kate Chopin. Explores the nativist and antibusiness fears of the Progressive Era, the fear that consumerism was corrupting maternal and wifely roles, and women's struggle for identity and professional stature. Includes b&w illustrations. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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