Girls Who Went Wrong: Prostitutes in American Fiction, 1885-1917 Contributor(s): Hapke, Laura (Author) |
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ISBN: 0879724730 ISBN-13: 9780879724733 Publisher: Popular Press OUR PRICE: $37.95 Product Type: Hardcover Published: September 2003 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Popular Culture - Travel | Middle East - General |
Dewey: 813.009 |
LCCN: 89085815 |
Lexile Measure: 1460 |
Physical Information: 0.56" H x 6" W x 9" (1.01 lbs) 224 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - Middle East |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: The period 1885 to 1917 saw thousands of American crusaders working hard to save the fallen women, but little on the part of American social protest writers. In this first work on the subject, Laura Hapke examines how writers attempted to turn an outcast into a heroine in a literature otherwise known for its puritanical attitude toward the fallen woman. She focuses on how these authors (all male) expressed late-Victorian conflicts about female sexuality. If, as they all maintained, women have an innate preference for chastity, how could they account for the prostitute? Was she a sinner, suggesting the potential waywardness of all women? Or, if she was a victim, what of her depravity ? Hapke reevaluates Crane s famous Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, discusses neglected prostitution fiction by authors Joaquin Miller, Edgar Fawcett, and Harold Frederic, and surveys Progressive white slave novels. She draws on a number of period sources, among them urban guidebooks and medical treatises, to place the fiction in its cultural context." |