A Gilded Awakening: Othering the New Woman Narrative in Anzia Yezierska’s Short Fiction

The Progressive Era’s New Woman, epitomized in Edna Pontellier’s awakening, has been hailed as an icon of feminist rebellion. Recent scholarship, however, has interrogated the subversive potential of this icon, exposing its conservatist purchase on classism, eugenics, and white supremacism. Drawing...

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Main Author: María Abizanda-Cardona
Format: Article
Language:Catalan
Published: Universitat de Barcelona 2024-10-01
Series:Lectora: Revista de Dones i Textualitat
Subjects:
Online Access:https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/lectora/article/view/43232
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author María Abizanda-Cardona
author_facet María Abizanda-Cardona
author_sort María Abizanda-Cardona
collection DOAJ
description The Progressive Era’s New Woman, epitomized in Edna Pontellier’s awakening, has been hailed as an icon of feminist rebellion. Recent scholarship, however, has interrogated the subversive potential of this icon, exposing its conservatist purchase on classism, eugenics, and white supremacism. Drawing from this intersectional inquiry into New Woman activism and literary production, this paper examines the short fiction of the Polish-American New Woman writer Anzia Yezierska (1880-1970). Through the appropriation of the awakening narrative, Yezierska sheds light on the failure of the first-wave feminist project to empower women in outsider locations and proposes alternative paths to liberation construed upon the working-class, Jewish values of community and solidarity, thus putting forward an alternative to the exclusionary designs of white feminism and anticipating intersectional demands by second and third wave feminism.
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series Lectora: Revista de Dones i Textualitat
spelling doaj-art-6dfad692aad243c48bcf87e97dbeed342024-11-11T08:14:26ZcatUniversitat de BarcelonaLectora: Revista de Dones i Textualitat1136-57812013-94702024-10-013010.1344/Lectora2024.30.11A Gilded Awakening: Othering the New Woman Narrative in Anzia Yezierska’s Short FictionMaría Abizanda-Cardona The Progressive Era’s New Woman, epitomized in Edna Pontellier’s awakening, has been hailed as an icon of feminist rebellion. Recent scholarship, however, has interrogated the subversive potential of this icon, exposing its conservatist purchase on classism, eugenics, and white supremacism. Drawing from this intersectional inquiry into New Woman activism and literary production, this paper examines the short fiction of the Polish-American New Woman writer Anzia Yezierska (1880-1970). Through the appropriation of the awakening narrative, Yezierska sheds light on the failure of the first-wave feminist project to empower women in outsider locations and proposes alternative paths to liberation construed upon the working-class, Jewish values of community and solidarity, thus putting forward an alternative to the exclusionary designs of white feminism and anticipating intersectional demands by second and third wave feminism. https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/lectora/article/view/43232New WomanawakeningAnzia YezierskaJewish feminismintersectionality
spellingShingle María Abizanda-Cardona
A Gilded Awakening: Othering the New Woman Narrative in Anzia Yezierska’s Short Fiction
Lectora: Revista de Dones i Textualitat
New Woman
awakening
Anzia Yezierska
Jewish feminism
intersectionality
title A Gilded Awakening: Othering the New Woman Narrative in Anzia Yezierska’s Short Fiction
title_full A Gilded Awakening: Othering the New Woman Narrative in Anzia Yezierska’s Short Fiction
title_fullStr A Gilded Awakening: Othering the New Woman Narrative in Anzia Yezierska’s Short Fiction
title_full_unstemmed A Gilded Awakening: Othering the New Woman Narrative in Anzia Yezierska’s Short Fiction
title_short A Gilded Awakening: Othering the New Woman Narrative in Anzia Yezierska’s Short Fiction
title_sort gilded awakening othering the new woman narrative in anzia yezierska s short fiction
topic New Woman
awakening
Anzia Yezierska
Jewish feminism
intersectionality
url https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/lectora/article/view/43232
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