For generations critics have noticed in nineteenth century American women s sentimentality a streak of masochism but their discussions of it have over simplified its complex relationship to women s power Marianne Noble argues that tropes of eroticized domination in sentimental literature must be recognized for what they were a double edged sword of both oppression and empowerment She begins by exploring the cultural forces that came together to create this ideology of desire particularly Protestant discourses relating suffering to love and middle class discourses of true womanhood She goes on to demonstrate how sentimental literature takes advantage of the expressive power in the convergence of these two discourses to imagine women s romantic desire Therefore in sentimental literature images of eroticized domination are not antithetical to female pleasure but rather can be constitutive of it The book however does not simply celebrate that fact In readings of Warner s The Wide Wide World Stowe s Uncle Tom s Cabin and Dickinson s sentimental poetry it addresses the complex benefits and costs of nineteenth century women s literary masochism Ultimately it shows how these authors both exploited and were shaped by this discursive practice The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature exemplifies new trends in Third Wave feminist scholarship presenting cultural and historical research informed by clear lucid discussions of psychoanalytic and literary theory It demonstrates that contemporary theories of masochism including those of Deleuze Bataille Kristeva Benjamin Bersani Noyes Mansfield are more relevant and comprehensible when considered in relation to sentimental literature

The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature by Marianne Noble (2000-04-24) PDF

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