1st Edition

Make it Work 20th Century American Fiction and Fashion

By Jan Ellyn Goggans Copyright 2019
    184 Pages
    by Routledge

    184 Pages
    by Routledge

    Imagine a new critical theory that bases its literary value on fashion. In this theory exists a community that explores and interrogates conventionality, and in American literature of the 20th century, it includes fashion and home decoration, two paths to achieving white femininity, a prized component of many novels written by and for women. Drawing on cultural materialism and its connection to the cultural forms of objects, including apparel, Making it Work: 20th Century American Fiction and Fashion provides readers a new understanding of the aims of American writers, and the desires of their readers.

    Introduction

    Part One: Fashion in Fiction; Fiction as Fashion

    1. Edith Wharton: Fashioning White Privilege as Commodification, Consumption, and Corruption.

    2. Margaret Mitchell: Fashioning A-Historical and Anti-Canonical White Modernism.

    3. Toni Morrison: Re fashioning white privilege

    Part Two: Scripting Style and Signifyng Scripts

    4. "Fashioning Color: Skin-tone Discrimination and Anglo Normative Passing"

    5. "Fashioning Class: Creating Canonical Costume"

    6. "Fashioning the Home: Deploying Domesticity and The Saturated Home"

    7. "Fashioning the Self: Sewing, Designing, and Dressed in Dreams"

    8. "Re-fashioning Age"

    Conclusion

    Biography

    Dr. Jan Ellyn Goggans is an Associate Professor of Literature & Language, Humanities & World Cultures at the University of California, Merced.