| I begin this project with an in-depth study of attempts to fix “independent women” through the construction of the “New Woman” figure. In my Introduction, I advance scholarly discussion of the relationship between the New Woman and white, middle-class identity by looking at tensions generated by the New Woman figure's competing traits. Then, I look at cultural texts that reveal these tensions through their representations of the New Woman. I argue that these representations reveal New Woman characters to be complex signifiers of a widespread cultural anxiety over the (in)ability to gain mastery over the New Woman figure. Indeed, as much as the New Woman's advancements could be used to recover the idea of a progressive white middle class, these advancements also could be used (and were used) to point to the potential for America's white middle class to collapse into other social groupings.; In my chapters, I turn to issues of narrative technique that emerge in three novels, Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Frank Norris' McTeague, and Gertrude Stein's Three Lives, paying special attention to the tensions that emerge when a narrative voice appears to lose access to the character it is mediating. These tensions and their connection to the New Woman become especially relevant for two reasons. First, attempts to condense the New Woman figure into the representation of a New Woman character signify not only gender anxiety, but also anxiety surrounding white, middle-class American identity at the turn into the twentieth century. Second, the recurring inability to narrate satisfactorily a New Woman figure often results in vexed representations that seem to erase the character behind the figure, making it more difficult for readers to feel compassion for this character, even when she experiences physical pain. As such, this project points to the need for understanding gender not only as a cultural construct, but also as a narrative construct—as a lens through which bodies can be (and have been) harnessed into the words that tell a story. |
