This dissertation examines the relationship between women and economics in American Progressive Era through the discussion of selected works by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, and Edith Wharton. The authors and texts included in the study together demonstrate how women responded to the economic development and the concept of the separate spheres at the-turn-into-the-twentieth-century America. Based on Thorstein Veblen¡¦s socio-psychological theory of the leisure class and the institutional economics and Gilman¡¦s analysis on the sexual-economic relationship in marriage, my discussion aims to investigate the interconnection between human relationships, women¡¦s economic values, and economic exchanges in business, focusing on the methods the three women writers employ to re/present how middle/upper-class women redefine womanhood and construct female subjectivity in an economic system that favors men.
In my introductory chapter, I explain the historical background of the period, general concepts in Veblen¡¦s economic theory, and the motivation, methodology, and organization of the dissertation. Chapter Two, ¡§Veblenian Workmanship and Gilman¡¦s Woman-Made Land,¡¨ purports to cross-examine Gilman¡¦s Women and Economics and her utopian fiction Herland, aiming to show Gilman¡¦s optimistic view on women¡¦s emancipation from the private to the public. In Chapter Three, ¡§Barbarian Status of Women and Chopin¡¦s Feminism,¡¨ I discuss by Chopin¡¦s The Awakening the tension between women¡¦s growing sense of an autonomous self and men¡¦s adherence to the institutionalized habits of thought. My fourth chapter, ¡§Conspicuous Consumption and Society Women in Edith Wharton,¡¨ is a study on the relationship between the display culture in the consumer society and woman¡¦s role as the non-productive consumer in Edith Wharton¡¦s The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country. The concluding chapter, along with general comparisons of the heroines, outlines major arguments in the whole thesis.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0726106-143150 |
| Date | 26 July 2006 |
| Creators | Chang, Li-Wen |
| Contributors | Jade Tsui-yu Lee, Hsin-ya Huang, Shu-fang Lai, Yuan-jung Cheng, I-chun Wang |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0726106-143150 |
| Rights | not_available, Copyright information available at source archive |
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