American Gold Digger

Brian Donovan offers an engaging and insightful analysis of the stereotype of the gold digger across twentieth-century U.S. history. A gold digger refers to a woman who is believed to pursue romantic relationships for financial gain. This stereotype became, Donovan argues, “a misogynistic trope through which everyday people made sense of marriage, money, and law” (p. 6). Donovan traces a cultural genealogy of gold diggers at key moments throughout the twentieth century. From the emergence of the gold digger stereotype in the 1920s, to “allotment Annies” during World War II, to model and actress Anna Nicole Smith in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and many in between, Donovan explains how gold diggers proved useful scapegoats for those seeking to resist changing gender, family, and economic norms. The importance of the gold digger rested in her perceived power, which was generally depicted in popular culture as much more significant than

Allotment · Art · Economics · Literature · Political science · Power (physics · Romance · Sociology · Stereotype (UML · Trope (literature · American History and Culture · History · Law · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Social Psychology