The Plight of Feeling: Sympathy and Dissent in the Early American Novel

Stern, Julia A.

The University of Chicago Press Chicago

American novels written in the wake of the Revolution overflow with self-conscious theatricality and impassioned excess. In The Plight of Feeling, Julia A. Stern shows that these sentimental, melodramatic, and gothic works can be read as an emotional history of the early republic, reflecting the hate, anger, fear, and grief that tormented the Federalist era.Stern argues that these novels gave voice to a collective mourning over the violence of the Revolution and the foreclosure of liberty for the nation's noncitizens—women, the poor, Native and African Americans. Properly placed in the context of late eighteenth-century thought, the republican novel emerges as essentially political, offering its audience gothic and feminized counternarratives to read against the dominant male-authored accounts of national legitimation.Drawing upon insights from cultural history and gender studies as well as psychoanalytic, narrative, and genre theory, Stern convincingly exposes the foundation of the republic as an unquiet crypt housing those invisible Americans who contributed to its construction.

Literature & Fiction

United States

University of Chicago Press

American novels written in the wake of the Revolution overflow with self-conscious theatricality and impassioned excess. In The Plight of Feeling, Julia A. Stern shows that these sentimental, melodramatic, and gothic works can be read as an emotional history of the early republic, reflecting the hate, anger, fear, and grief that tormented the Federalist era. Stern argues that these novels gave voice to a collective mourning over the violence of the Revolution and the foreclosure of liberty for the nation's noncitizens—women, the poor, Native and African Americans. Properly placed in the context of late eighteenth-century thought, the republican novel emerges as essentially political, offering its audience gothic and feminized counternarratives to read against the dominant male-authored accounts of national legitimation. Drawing upon insights from cultural history and gender studies as well as psychoanalytic, narrative, and genre theory, Stern convincingly exposes the foundation of the republic as an unquiet crypt housing those invisible Americans who contributed to its construction.

A genteel southern intellectual, saloniste, and wife to a prominent colonel in Jefferson Davis’s inner circle, Mary Chesnut today is remembered best for her penetrating Civil War diary. Composed between 1861 and 1865 and revised thoroughly from the late 1870s until Chesnut’s death in 1886, the diary was published first in 1905, again in 1949, and later, to great acclaim, in 1981. This complicated literary history and the questions that attend it—which edition represents the real Chesnut? To what genre does this text belong?—may explain why the document largely has, until now, been overlooked in literary studies.
Julia A. Stern’s critical analysis returns Chesnut to her rightful place among American writers. In Mary Chesnut’s Civil War Epic, Stern argues that the revised diary offers the most trenchant literary account of race and slavery until the work of Faulkner and that, along with his Yoknapatawpha novels, it constitutes one of the two great Civil War epics of the American canon. By restoring Chesnut’s 1880s revision to its complex, multidecade cultural context, Stern argues both for Chesnut’s reinsertion into the pantheon of nineteenth-century American letters and for her centrality to the literary history of women’s writing as it evolved from sentimental to tragic to realist forms.

Mary Chesnut's Civil War Epic

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Bette Davis Black and White

Bette Davis's career becomes a vehicle for a deep examination of American race relations. Bette Davis was not only one of Hollywood's brightest stars, but also one of its most outspoken advocates on matters of race. In&nbsp;Bette Davis Black and White, Julia A. Stern explores this largely untold facet of Davis's brilliant career. Bette Davis Black and White analyzes four of Davis's best-known pictures--Jezebel&nbsp;(1938), The Little Foxes&nbsp;(1941),&nbsp;In This Our Life&nbsp;(1942), and&nbsp;What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?&nbsp;(1962)--against the history of American race relations. Stern also weaves in memories of her own experiences as a young viewer, coming into racial consciousness watching Davis's films on television in an all-white suburb of Chicago. Davis's egalitarian politics and unique collaborations with her Black costars offer Stern a window into midcentury American racial fantasy and the efforts of Black performers to disrupt it. This book incorporates testimony from Davis's Black contemporaries, including James Baldwin and C. L. R. James, as well as the African American fans who penned letters to Warner Brothers praising Davis's work. A unique combination of history, star study, and memoir, Bette Davis Black and White allows us to contemplate cross-racial spectatorship in new ways.

Arts & Literature

Bette Davis's career becomes a vehicle for a deep examination of American race relations. Bette Davis was not only one of Hollywood's brightest stars, but also one of its most outspoken advocates on matters of race. In&nbsp;Bette Davis Black and White, Julia A. Stern explores this largely untold facet of Davis's brilliant career. Bette Davis Black and White analyzes four of Davis's best-known pictures--Jezebel&nbsp;(1938), The Little Foxes&nbsp;(1941),&nbsp;In This Our Life&nbsp;(1942), and&nbsp;What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?&nbsp;(1962)--against the history of American race relations. Stern also weaves in memories of her own experiences as a young viewer, coming into racial consciousness watching Davis's films on television in an all-white suburb of Chicago. Davis's egalitarian politics and unique collaborations with her Black costars offer Stern a window into mid-century American racial fantasy and the efforts of Black performers to disrupt it. This book incorporates testimony from Davis's Black contemporaries, including James Baldwin and C. L. R. James, as well as the African American fans who penned letters to Warner Brothers praising Davis's work. A unique combination of history, star study, and memoir, Bette Davis Black and White allows us to contemplate cross-racial spectatorship in new ways.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stern, Julia A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Stern, Julia A.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stern, Julia A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Plight of Feeling: Sympathy and Dissent in the Early American Novel

The Plight of Feeling: Sympathy and Dissent in the Early American Novel

The Plight of Feeling: Sympathy and Dissent in the Early American Novel

Mary Chesnut's Civil War Epic

Bette Davis Black and White

Bette Davis Black and White