Sexualizing Power in Naturalism
Theodore Dreiser and Frederick Philip Grove

Irene Gammel

About the Book

"Exciting, provocative, authoritative, this book deserves widespread attention. Important new work by an outstanding scholar and critic." Robert K. Martin, Université de Montréal

This book sheds light on the function of female sexuality in a predominantly male genre: naturalist fiction. Gammel reveals that naturalism is frequently implicated in the very power structures it critiques. Reading European and North American naturalism through the lens of feminist and Foucaultian theories of power, Gammel argues that twentieth-century naturalism increasingly deconstructs itself in its depiction of sexuality, inevitably exposing the genre's internal ideological contradictions. The book makes a special contribution to Canadian studies.

About the Author

Irene Gammel is Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Prince Edward Island. She has published on women's issues in early twentieth-century literature.

Table of Contents

1. Naturalism's History of Sexuality
2. "Liberating" Sexuality
3. Power and the Docile Body
4. Sister Carrie: Sexualizing the Docile Body
5. Female Sexuality and the Naturalist Crisis: "Emanuela"
6. Fanny Essler: A Sexual Picaresque
7. Fanny's Sexual Confession
8. Fanny Essler in (A) Search for America
9. The Male Body of Power: The Titan
10. Naturalism's Specula(risa)tion: The "Genius"
11. Sovereign Power, Bio-Power and the "Inevitable Form" in The Master of the Mill
12. The Father's Seduction and the Daughter's Rebellion
13. Conclusion

Orders

For information on how to order this book, please click here.