Women in the Early to Mid-20th Century (1900-1960): Further Reading

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WOMEN IN THE EARLY TO MID-20TH CENTURY (1900-1960): FURTHER READING

Criticism

Ammons, Elizabeth. "Men of Color, Women, and Uppity Art at the Turn of the Century." American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 23, no. 3 (spring 1991): 14-24.

Analyzes turn-of-century American literature as being distinguished by its concern for topical issues and experimentation, with women and black authors forming the majority of the most important authors at this time.

Byles, Joan Montgomery. "Women's Experience of World War II: Britain and Germany." In War, Women, and Poetry, 1914-1945: British and German Writers and Activists, pp. 23-42. Newark, N.J.: University of Delaware Press, 1995.

Literary and historical overview of the role of women in German and British social history during World War II.

Campbell, D'Ann. Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984, 320 p.

Collection of essays detailing various aspects of women's lives in the first half of the twentieth century, including data on wages and labor statistics.

Carpenter, Lynette. "Deadly Letters, Sexual Politics, and the Dilemma of the Woman Writer: Edith Wharton's 'The House of the Dead Hand.'" American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 24, no. 2 (winter 1992): 55-69.

Examines Wharton's short story as a work that focuses on significant issues regarding the role of women in literature.

Daugherty, Sarah B. "The Ideology of Gender in Howell's Early Novels." American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 25, no. 1 (fall 1992): 2-19.

States that Howell's early fiction shows that the author limited his development of feminist themes in his work more because of his concern with male themes than because of his sexual chauvinism.

Dupree, Ellen. "The New Woman, Progressivism, and the Woman Writer in Edith Wharton's The Fruit of the Tree." American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 31, no. 2 (winter 1999): 44-62.

Disagrees with many critics who have dismissed Wharton's The Fruit of the Tree as unfocused, arguing that the work's unity becomes apparent when the reader understands that in this novel Wharton was "trying to replicate the Progressive problem novel."

Ehrenreich, Barbara and Deirdre English. "Microbes and the Manufacture of Housework." In For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women, pp. 141-82. New York: Doubleday, 1978.

Reviews the emergence of the idea of the active housewife at the turn of the century, which resulted in the newly created sciences of housekeeping, childrearing, and domestic process.

Gordon, Marsha. "Onward Kitchen Soldiers: Mobilizing the Domestic During World War I." Canadian Review of American Studies 29, no. 2 (1999): 61-87.

Studies how the home became the nexus of women's participation in the First World War.

Habegger, Alfred. "Portrait of a Lady." In Gender, Fantasy, and Realism in American Literature, pp. 66-79. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Analysis of Henry James's novel as one of the first books of the late nineteenth-century that highlighted the suffocating nature of some marriages.

Hanson, Philip. "The Feminine Image in Films of the Great Depression." The Cambridge Quarterly 32, no. 2 (2003): 113-41.

Presents an overview of female characters in films made during the early 1900s.

Honey, Maureen, ed. Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999, 424 p.

Collection of photos, essays, fiction, and poetry by and about African American women who contributed to the war effort.

Kerber, Linda K., Alice Kessler-Harris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar, eds. U.S. History as Women's History: New Feminist Essays. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Contains several essays on women's participation in political and social changes at the turn of the century.

Latham, Angela J. "The Right to Bare: Containing and Encoding American Women in the Popular Theater." In Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers of the American 1920s, pp. 99-121. Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 2000.

Examines the role of women performers on the American stage during the 1920s, placing their lives in context of contemporary censorship laws and cultural norms and theorizing that female performers often used the stage asa means of contesting, affirming, and even revolutionizing "female self-presentation and self-stylization."

Martin, David E. "Pioneer Women Photographers." American Art Review xiv, no. 6 (November-December 2002): 100-05.

Brief perspectives on pioneer women photographers such as Myra Albert Wiggins, Imogen Cunningham, and Ella McBride.

Oates, Joyce Carol. "'At Least I Have Made a Woman of Her': Images of Women in Twentieth Century Literature." Georgia Review xxxvii, no. 1 (spring 1983): 7-30.

Surveys literary representations of feminine images in twentieth century literature.

Rosenblum, Naomi. A History of Women Photographers. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1994.

Collection of essays tracing the development of women photographers from the late 1800s to the 1990s, including overview essays on the feminist vision in photography.

Schneider, Dorothy and Carl J. Schneider. "Dawning of an Age of Hope and Glory." In American Women in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920, pp. 1-22. New York: Facts on File, 1993.