SUNY series in Feminist Criticism and Theory

Gender Politics in British and American Literature and Television since 1830

Carol Colatrella

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781438493954
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Feminism's Progress builds on more than fifty years of feminist criticism to analyze narrative representations of feminist ideas about women's social roles, gender inequities, and needed reforms. Carol Colatrella argues that popular novels, short stories, and television shows produced in the United States and Britain — from Little Dorrit and Iola Leroy to Call the Midwife and The Closer — foster acceptance of feminism by optimistically illustrating its prospects and promises. Scholars, students, and general readers will appreciate the book's sweeping introduction to a host of concerns in feminist theory while applying a gender lens to a wide range of literature and media from the past two centuries. In exploring how individuals and communities might reduce bias and discrimination and ensure gender equity, these fictions serve as both a measure and a means of feminism's progress.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Introduction: Feminist Literary Criticism, Liberation, and Social Change
• Chapter 1 Feminist Information and the Novel as Information System
• Chapter 2 Liberty and Suffrage in Nineteenth-Century Narratives
• Chapter 3 Feminist Marriage and the Academic Novel
• Chapter 4 Feminism Meets Science in Recent Narratives
• Chapter 5 Reproductive Independence and Collectivity
• Chapter 6 Overcoming Violence against Women
• Chapter 7 Feminist Politics in Fiction
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover