"Melville's "Tartarus
The Deflowering of New England
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9450785 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marvin Fisher (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1971 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 79-79 |
| Publication date | 1971-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2711588 |
| OpenAlex | W2327982845 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
Maids and callous errand boy named Cupid indicates the kind of meaningful confusion and revealing concealment that fills this blatantly allegorical story of much abused and much experienced maids. autobiographical basis of The of Maids lies in visit by Melville to mill about five miles from Pittsfield in late January of 1851. His only recorded remark on this visit seems to be in letter to Evert A. Duyckinck about two weeks later on sheet which was one of a sleigh-load of this paper from Carson's Old Red Mill. Jay Leyda suggests that Elizabeth Melville's second pregnancy, occurring at the same general time, probably sparked the fantastic conceit linking aggressive technology and submissive femininity.2 Uncertain as this suggestion must remain, it is clear that The of Maids and The Paradise of Bachelors to which it is coupled are characterized by suppressed eroticism which gets out of hand when the narrator of The Tartarus is confronted by the suppression of Eros. The of Maids is in many senses subversive story, and in only limited and ironic sense did Herman Melville, considering the condition of working girls in this New England mill, pay homage to their pale virginity. His purpose, rather, was to emphasize, largely
Archaeology · Art · Art history · Confusion · Dramatization · Eroticism · Femininity · Human sexuality · Literature · Mill · Paradise · Paradise lost · Psychoanalysis · Queen (butterfly · Sociology · Virginity test · American Literature and Culture · Gender Studies · History · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.67 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |