Research Catalog

Title

Mothers and daughters in nineteenth-century America : the biosocial construction of femininity / Nancy M. Theriot.

Author

Theriot, Nancy M.

Publication

Lexington, Ky : University Press of Kentucky, c1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

226 p.; 23 cm.

Summary

"The feminine script of the early nineteenth century centered on women's role as patient, long-suffering mothers. By mid-century, however, their daughters faced a world very different in social and economic options and in the physical experiences surrounding their bodies. In this groundbreaking study, Nancy Theriot turns to social and medical history, developmental psychology and feminist theory to explain the fundamental shift in women's concepts of femininity and gender identity during the course of the century - from an ideal of suffering womanhood to emphasis on female control of the physical self."--BOOK JACKET. "Theriot argues that social psychological theories, recent work in literary criticism, and new philosophical work on subjectivities provide helpful lenses for viewing mothers and children and for connecting socioeconomic change and ideological change. Within this methodological perspective, she reads medical texts and woman-authored advice literature and autobiographies, relating the early nineteenth-century notion of "true womanhood" to the socioeconomic and somatic realities of middle-class women's lives, particularly to their experience of the new male obstetrics."--BOOK JACKET.

Uniform Title

Project Muse UPCC books

Alternative Title

Mothers & daughters in nineteenth-century America

Subject

• 1800-1899
• Middle class women > United States > History > 19th century
• Women > Health and hygiene > Sociological aspects. > United States
• Mothers and daughters > United States > History > 19th century
• Sex role > United States > History > 19th century
• Femininity > History > 19th century
• Women > sociology
• Gender Identity > history
• Mother-Child Relations > history

Genre/Form

• History
• History.

Note

• Rev. ed. of: The biosocial construction of femininity, 1988.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction: Investigating Identities and Experience from a Generational Perspective -- 1. "Imperial Motherhood" and Its Material Roots -- 2. The Physical Roots of Ideology -- 3. Acculturation into "True Womanhood" -- 4. Daughters' Brave New World -- 5. The "Green Sickness" and Daughters' Ambivalence -- 6. A New Feminine Synthesis.

ISBN

0813108586 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^^95014672^

OCLC

• 32347089
• SCSB-11927323

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library