Whitman's 1855 Leaves of grass : "hard work and blood" -- Class and the performative in Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the iron mills, and Steven Crane's Maggie -- Body tramping, class, and masculine extremes : Jack London's The people of the abyss -- "Aways your heart" : class designs in Jean Toomer's Cane -- Meridel Le Sueur's Salute to spring : "a movement up which all are moving" -- Class, work, and new races : Zora Neale Hurston's Their eyes were watching God and Agnes Smedley's Daughter of earth -- Class "truths" in James Agee's Let us now praise famous men -- Conclusion: Going back to class
Summary
With a fresh and exciting perspective, Narrating Class in American Fiction offers close readings of American fiction from 1850-1940 in the context of literary and political history to illuminate the class discourses of its writers. Dow skillfully argues that the place of class in literary analysis has far to go in catching up to the panoply of canonical textual approaches. This book explores the uneasy attention American authors gave to class in their production of social identities and fills a gap in American literature scholarship
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-261) and index
