Title After the fall : the Demeter-Persephone myth in Wharton, Cather, and Glasgow / Josephine Donovan

Published University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press, ©1989

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Description 1 online resource (198 pages) Contents Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Demeter's Garden Destroyed -- 2. Nan Prince and the Golden Apples -- 3. Edith Wharton and the Pomegranate Seed -- 4. Willa Cather: The Daughter in Exile -- 5. Ellen Glasgow: Beyond Barren Ground -- Conclusion -- Appendix I: The Demeter-Persephone Myth in Virginia Woolf and Colette -- Appendix 11: Demeter as Absent Referent -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index Summary A continuation of Josephine Donovan's exploration of American women's literary traditions, begun with New England Local Color Literature: A Women's Tradition, which treats the nineteenth-century realists, this work analyzes the writing of major women writers of the early twentieth century-Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Ellen Glasgow. The author sees the Demeter-Persephone myth as central to these writers' thematics, but interprets the myth in terms of the historical transitions taking place in turn-of-the-century America. Donovan focuses on the changing relationship between mothers and daughters-in particular upon the "new women's" rebellion against the traditional women's culture of their nineteenth-century mothers (both literary and literal). An introductory chapter traces the male-supremacist ideologies that formed the intellectual climate in which these women wrote. Reorienting Wharton, Cather, and Glasgow within women's literary traditions produces major reinterpretations of their works, including such masterpieces as Ethan Frome, Summer, My Antonia, Barren Ground, and others Bibliography Includes bibliographical references Notes English Print version record Subject Glasgow, Ellen, 1873-1945 -- Characters -- Women Cather, Willa, 1873-1947 -- Characters -- Women Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937 -- Characters -- Women Persephone (Greek deity) -- In literature Demeter (Greek deity) -- In literature Glasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson, 1873-1945 -- Characters -- Women Cather, Willa, 1873-1947 -- Characters -- Women Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937 -- Characters -- Women Persephone (Greek deity) -- In literature Demeter (Greek deity) -- In literature Cather, Willa, 1873-1947 Demeter (Greek deity) Glasgow, Ellen, 1873-1945 Persephone (Greek deity) Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937 Myth in literature. Mothers and daughters in literature. Women in literature. American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General. LITERARY CRITICISM -- Women Authors. American fiction Literature Mothers and daughters in literature Myth in literature Women in literature Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book LC no. 88019490 ISBN 9780271072562 0271072563 9780271072548 0271072547

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