Not in Sisterhood: Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Zona Gale, and the Politics of Female Authorship

by D. Williams

Overview

Not In Sisterhood investigates an important transitional moment in the history of U.S. women's writing : the uneasy shift from the 19th-century model of the "lady author" to some new but undefined alternative. The careers of Edith Wharton and Willa Cather, together with that of their friend and peer Zona Gale, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama, reveal several different strategies for negotiating this unknown terrain. While Gale made her feminist politics an integral part of her successful novels and plays, Wharton and Cather publicly denied any interest in gender issues or social reforms. Not in Sisterhood shows how the complex intersections of literary and social politics that shaped the world of Wharton, Cather, and Gale are still at work in today's feminist reconstructions of literary history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312229214
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	06/20/2001
Edition description:	2001
Pages:	225
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

DEBORAH LINDSAY WILLIAMS is Associate Professor of English at Iona College in New York, where she teaches U.S. literature and Women's Studies.

Table of Contents

Women Who Did Things Openly: Zona Gale's Utopian Visions Threatening Correspondences: The Gale-Cather-Wharton Letters Robbing the Alphabet: Feminism on the Margins Women at War: Writing about World War I Making History

Editorial Reviews

...contains fascinating insights...rich in implications...this solid book is recommended. Choice

From the Publisher

...contains fascinating insights...rich in implications...this solid book is recommended.

Choice

Not in Sisterhood is a welcome and impressive contribution to twentieth-century studies of American women's writing. Williams...provides a lively, intelligent and nuanced reading of how literary feminism has been perhaps too narrow and even too slavish to male paradigms of "legitimate" artistry. Both Zona Gale's fictions and Williams's Not in Sisterhood merit a wide reading audience.—Deborah Carlin

Legacy Magazine

Williams's exploration ...has greater potential to redraw the maps of Wharton and Cather studies, and of early-twentieth-century letters more generally.

American Literature

Williams (English, Iona College, NY) juxtaposes the careers of Cather and Wharton<-->who chose to remain publicly aloof from, and even hostile to, their female peers<-->with that of their friend Zona Gale, a feminist with a strong sense of female literary community. The three writers highlight a transitional moment in the history of female authorship as the US literary marketplace began shifting from 19th century models of the "lady author" to a then-undefined 20th century alternative. Ultimately, Williams argues, Cather and Wharton's rejection of public literary sisterhood was instrumental in their achieving canonical status, while Gale, a Pulitzer Prize-winner who celebrated female camaraderie, has been forgotten. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews