Research Catalog

Title

Intimate communities : representation and social transformation in women's college fiction, 1895-1910 / Sherrie A. Inness.

Author

Inness, Sherrie A.

Publication

Bowling Green, MN : Bowling Green State University Popular Press, [1995], ©1995.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

196 pages; 24 cm

Summary

• This work examines the many popular representations of student life at women's colleges produced in the United States during the Progressive Era. In hundreds of college novels, newspaper accounts, popular periodical essays, and scientific treatises, the "college woman" was described and defined in a period when women's higher education was still socially suspect.
• These representations had a large impact on how the public perceived women's higher education, painting a picture of college life that must have seemed irresistible to young women. The public image of the college woman was transformed from that of a homely, sexless oddity, doomed to spinsterhood, to that of a vibrant, attractive, athletic young woman, who would eventually marry.
• While other scholars have argued that the Progressive Era was the "golden age" for women's single-sex education, pointing to the many positive depictions of the women's college student in the mass media, Dr. Inness suggests that these representations actually helped to perpetuate the status quo and did little to advance women's social rights.
• Adopting a theoretic stand informed by such cultural critics and historians as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Dr. Inness examines the representation of the college woman in this period, showing that representation not only described the college woman but also helped constitute her.

Subject

• College stories, American > History and criticism
• American fiction > 20th century > History and criticism
• American fiction > 19th century > History and criticism
• Universities and colleges in literature
• Women college students in literature
• Sex role in literature
• Literature and society > United States > History
• Women's colleges in literature
• Education, Higher, in literature

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 171-191) and index.

Contents

1. Regulating, Watching, and Penalizing -- 2. Mashes, Smashes, Crushes, and Raves -- 3. It Is Pluck But Is It Sense? -- 4. The All-Around Girl, the Gibson Girl, and the New Woman -- 5. Poor Girls and Rich Girls -- 6. Re-envisioning the Maid.

ISBN

• 0879726830
• 0879726849 (pbk.)

LCCN

95017736

OCLC

• 32429462
• ocm32429462

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries