Temperance literature, though widely popular in America and Britain between 1830–80, lost its allure in the decades that followed. In spite of its didactic and moralistic nature, the public eagerly ...consumed temperance novels, thus reciprocating contemporaneous writers’ efforts to promote social ideals and mend social ills. The main aim of this paper is to redress the critical neglect that the temperance prose written by women about women has endured by looking at three literary works—two novellas and one confessional novelette—written by mid-nineteenth-century American female writers. These works serve as a prism through which the authors present generally “tabooed” afflictions such as inebriation among high-class women and society’s role in perpetuating such behaviors. The essay examines the conflicting forces underlying such representations and offers an inquiry into the restrictive and hostile social climate in mid-nineteenth-century America and the lack of medical attention given to alcohol addicts as the possible causes that might have prompted women’s dangerous behaviors, including inebriation. This paper also demonstrates the cautious approach that nineteenth-century female writers had to take when dealing with prevalent social ills, such as bigotry, hypocrisy and disdain directed at female drunkards. It shows how these writers, often sneered at or belittled by critics and editors, had to maneuver very carefully between the contending forces of openly critiquing social mores, on the one hand, and not being censored, on the other.
The intent of this paper is to examine the use, by nineteenth-century American authors, of the temperance novel, a popular literary sub-genre in antebellum America, as a literary means for presenting ...the widespread controversy in the nation as regards the achievements of temperance societies. Moreover, my goal is to show that the popularity of temperance novels, in spite of their didactic and moralistic nature, displays the public’s readiness to consume temperance literature, thus reciprocating the attempt of writers to promote social ideals and heal social ills. Finally, since Rebekah Hyneman, a convert to Judaism, is the only Jewish-American writer who wrote a temperance novel, and is one among a small number of female writers who used this genre, it is interesting to examine if and how her double “Otherness” (being a Jew and a female novelist) distinguishes her from her literary Christian male and/or female counterparts. Hyneman’s novel Leaves of the Upas Tree: A Story for Every Household (1854–55) serves as a case in point of a temperance novel that demonstrates how a dysfunctional American family operates as a microcosm and how temperance and other charitable societies fail to cope with individuals’ tribulations. More importantly, the novel aims to attest that a familial defective unit, affected by excessive drinking, breeds a ruthless societal macrocosm, lacking compassion, empathy, and social and communal support. The merciless, xenophobic and anti-Semitic community depicted in the novel serves as a prism through which the author presents much more acute plagues afflicting America.
The concept of eugenics took an exclusionary and abusive turn in the first decades of the twentieth century, when prominent lawyers, scientists and first-wave feminists championed the cause. ...Indiana's 1907 eugenicist ruling was adopted by thirty-two states, and consequently forced sterilizations were performed on whomever lawmakers considered unworthy of bearing children. The most notorious case of sterilization, Buck v. Bell, was performed on Carrie Buck, a victim of rape. K. D. Alden's novel, A Mother's Promise (2021), is a fictional rendering of the story, which depicts the fractures of American legal and social structures. By drawing Ruth-Ann Riley's portrait, Buck's fictional counterpart, it convincingly exposes America's restrictive practices. This paper aims at exploring, through a feminist perspective, Riley's struggle against overbearing eugenicist practices, performed by pseudo-scientists and lawyers who utilized eugenics to promote their professional and economic interests. Additionally, based on Foucault's theory of power-knowledge relations, the paper demonstrates how, within this context, power and knowledge sustain each other. Finally, it relates the ethical issues concerning misogynistic practices and objectifying women's bodies that were at stake one hundred years ago to twenty-first-century feminist discourse with respect to the #MeToo movement and the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision.
The literary preoccupation with interfaith marriages between Christians and Jews in nineteenth-century American literature reflects the social and cultural concerns that were at stake with regards to ...America’s place as a ‘Melting pot’, and the sensitive rapports between the dominant (Christian) culture and the Jewish minority. Most nineteenth-century novels dealing with intermarriage were written by Jewish-American writers. Looking at
Leah Mordecai
(1875), a quite distinctive novel, written by a Christian female writer, the Southern Belle Kendrick Abbott, this paper demonstrates in what manner an American gentile writer (who probably had scarce encounters with Jews, if at all) applies mostly antisemitic, but also common philosemitic stereotypical portrayals of contemporaneous Jews. This paper also probes the question of how religious affiliations and notions of religion and race reflect Christians’ and Jews’ attitude to mixed marriage. The results of this study demonstrate that, while the younger generation may in theory successfully overcome societal biases, American society as a whole, due to its conservatism, restrictive social norms and deeply rooted prejudices, is still unprepared to embrace prospective unions between religiously and/or racially differing individuals.
While some Jewish immigrant autobiographies have received broad critical attention, a few important autobiographical endeavours have been underrepresented or almost forgotten. Autobiographies written ...by Jewish female writers who immigrated to America from Russia, Poland, or Galicia often draw a bifurcated picture of their struggles in callous New York sweatshops, or, on the contrary, they exalt the Jews notable success while blending in the American melting pot. Scarce studies, however, have been devoted to the dislocation and uprootedness of female immigrants and to the nostalgic feelings they have experienced during their absorption into American reality. This paper intends to resuscitate the forgotten voice of a Jewish immigrant female writer, Rose Gollup-Cohen. Moreover, using primarily psychoanalytical methodology and a feminist theory, the paper focuses on the nostalgic feelings that immigrants reverted to. Finally, it deals with both the therapeutic and the destructive powers of compulsive writing and shows how the writing process assists an immigrant writer when coping with distress experienced in her new homeland, but, on the other hand, it also demonstrates how compulsive writing may lead to obsessive behaviours, resulting in losing awareness of ones surroundings, neglecting ones family, and even to depression and suicide.
Wilhelmina Wittigschlager’s novel, Minna: Wife of the Young Rabbi, published in 1905, serves as a case in point for characterizing a young audacious Jewish female protagonist who, against all odds, ...by breaking societal conventions and exercising a strong will and remarkable determination, attains individual freedom and struggles for political and social justice. This study has yielded some important insights regarding the key role Minna’s multiple racial, religious, and national identities play in the construction of her fictional self. By examining the cultural, historical, and societal influences upon Wittigschlager, as she was in the process of writing the novel, this paper aims at showing how the fictional portrayal of a Jewish defiant female protagonist is interlaced with the factual lifestyles, culture, and representations of some actual contemporary female rebels such as Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, and Hesya Gelfman. Minna’s Jewishness serves as the central point of her characterization, while the exploration of the pertinent socio-historical, cultural, political, and economic aspects outlines the environment in which her character was conceived.
This paper aims at unpacking the cultural, historical and political significance behind the representations (including pictures, caricatures, journalistic articles, etc.) and self-representations of ...Rachel Félix (1821–1858), the first prominent Jewish performer on the French and British and American stage, as a prism which may afford a broader discussion about the literary formations of the figure the Jewish female artist Félix, renowned for her exquisite beauty and daring sensuality, serves as an excellent paradigm of how Jewish artists used and, at times, manipulated their “biblical"/"oriental"/ “sensual” beauty with the aim of promoting their artistic career. My discussion, adopting a New Historicist outlook, also aims at explaining the correlation between such literary formations and their political implications with regards to the representation of Jewish artists. Since the identity of an actress is so obviously “constructed,” and because of the intricate relationship between the Jewishness, artistic vocation and femininity, the figure of Félix provides a direct engagement with a particular set of cultural and political assumptions about Jewish female artists. Looking at Félix's literary and artistic representations by her contemporaries and at her own self-representation as reflected on the stage and in her letters leads us to a better understanding of the relationship between the cultural, political and artistic constructs of Jewish female artists.
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