Heroine, Reformer, Citizen
Novelistic Conventions in Antin's The Promised Land
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11272505 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sarah Sillin (University of Maryland, College Park, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 25-43 |
| Publication date | 2013-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | MELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-755X • E-ISSN: 1946-3170 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/melus/mlt029 |
| OpenAlex | W2103984557 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 10 |
This article reads Mary Antin's The Promised Land in relation to sentimentalism and realism, arguing that the author interweaves conventions of earlier fictional genres in her autobiography so as to express her American identity. Antin, a Russian Jewish immigrant, draws on familiar depictions of the sentimental heroine and New Woman to characterize herself. She thereby makes a forceful claim for her own belonging to American culture and contests contemporary stereotypes of Eastern European immigrants as unfit for US citizenship. Her use of sentimentalism conveys her patriotism, her desire for an American home, and her acculturation, while her use of realism helps her to articulate problems of urban poverty that she hopes to address through social reform. Antin's autobiography furthers our understanding of the largely overlooked connections between sentimentalism and realism, particularly their shared concern with reform. Yet these literary conventions threaten to occlude aspects of Antin's experiences. Antin neither leads the domestic life of a conventional sentimental heroine nor comes from the middle-class background of a New Woman. Rather, her immigration and poverty engender her interest in the public sphere. She conveys how her own experiences of social reform movements, particularly those aimed at ameliorating tenement house life, enable her to critique and advance Progressive Era movements. In so doing, she demonstrates how early twentieth-century immigrant authors created space for their own narratives and political views in US literature by re-imagining pervasive nineteenth-century genres.
Aesthetics · Art · Immigration · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Realism · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Australian History and Society · Gender Studies · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society
The feminization of American culture
Revolution and the word
Sensational designs
The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture
The Female Complaint
Recollecting, Repeating, and Walking Through
The Social Construction of American Realism
The Affect Theory Reader
Du Bois the Novelist
The Plight of Feeling
| Citations per year | 0.15 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2013 - 2018 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |