Table Of ContentPopular Feminist Fiction
as American Allegory
Jane Elliott’s Previous Publications
“The Currency of Feminist Theory.” PMLA 121, no. 5 (October 2006):
1697–1703.
“Time of Death: The End of the 1960s and the Problem of Feminist
Futurity in The Women’s Room and Vida.” Modern Fiction Studies 52,
no. 1 (Spring 2006): 143–68.
Popular Feminist Fiction
as American Allegory
Representing National Time
Jane Elliott
POPULAR FEMINIST FICTION AS AMERICAN ALLEGORY
Copyright © Jane Elliott, 2008.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008978-0-230-60542-8
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2008 by
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
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Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-37292-8 ISBN 978-0-230-61280-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230612808
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Elliott, Jane, 1969–
Popular feminist fiction as American allegory : representing national time / by
Jane Elliott.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Feminist fiction, American—History and criticism. 2. Feminism and literature—
United States. 3. United States—Civilization—1970- 4. American fiction—20th
century—History and criticism. 5. American fiction—Women authors—History and
criticism. I. Title.
PS374.F45E45 2008
813’.54093522—dc22 2007045027
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: June 2008
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover image: Laurie Simmons, “Walking Pocket Watch (color)/The Music of Regret”
(2006). Courtesy the artist and Sperone Westwater, New York.
Chapter 2 first appeared as an article entitled “Time of Death: The Problem of
Feminist Futurity and the End of the 1960s in The Women’s Room and Vida” and was
published in Modern Fiction Studies 52, no. 1 (Spring 2006). The author thanks Johns
Hopkins University Press, publisher and copyright holder, for permission to reprint
this material.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Part I Temporal Politics
Introduction 3
1 The Problem of Static Time: Totalization, the End of History,
and the End of the 1960s 21
Part II Feminism as Static Time
2 Heir Apparent: Legacies of the 1960s in The Women’s Room
and Vida 49
3 Dead-End Job: The Stepford Wives, Domestic Labor,
and the End of History 71
4 Promiscuous Times: Rubyfruit Jungle, Fear of Flying,
and the Desire for the Event 89
Part III Feminism as Futurity
5 Alice Walker’s Hindsight: Meridian, The Color Purple,
and the Production of Prolepsis 113
6 My Mother, My Self: Sentiment and the Transcendence
of Time in The Joy Luck Club and The Divine Secrets of the
Ya-Ya Sisterhood 137
Coda: Hurried Woman Tales 163
Notes 169
Bibliography 199
Index 219
Acknowledgments
This book could not have been written without the help of my mentors,
colleagues, family and friends. The ideas explored here had their
first incarnation in a seminar paper on Marx, working-time, and
The Stepford Wives written for a course taught by Richard Dienst, and I
am particularly grateful for the encouragement he gave me to return to
this material. I was very fortunate to have my dissertation supervised by
Marianne DeKoven, a wonderfully wise and supportive mentor who
helped me find my way back from several blind alleys and kept me from
straying into countless others. I am thankful not only to have received
her guidance but also to have in her example such a splendid ideal to
strive for in my own teaching of graduate students. The other members
of my dissertation committee—Samira Kawash, John McClure, and Joan
Scott—offered diverse and insightful comments that continue to shape my
thinking on this topic. In particular, both Marianne DeKoven and John
McClure generously shared their passion for the politics of the 1960s
and 1970s while allowing me to develop my own take on the period, one
that has been shaped not only by my intense cathexis to the New Left
and the women’s liberation movement, but also by my inevitably belated
relationship to those political bodies. Especially in light of the vitriolic
struggles between feminist “generations,” I was extremely lucky to have
mentors who encouraged me to explore the way my own location in time
enabled a particular reading of an historical moment in which I did not
participate but whose shadow has overlain the experience of radical Left
politics in my lifetime.
Parts of this manuscript were drafted and revised with the suport of
a postdoctoral fellowship in the “Orders of Time” seminar at the Pembroke
Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University. The
Pembroke offered a tremendously encouraging and invigorating venue
for evolving my approach to this material. My thanks to all seminar
participants for their comments on versions of material from Chapters 1, 2,
and 6 and to Elizabeth Weed, Tamar Katz, Flora Keshgegian, Wendy Alison
Lee, Ellen Rooney, Rebecca Schneider, and Samuel Solomon in particular
for making my year at the center such a stimulating and pleasurable one.
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My cofellows, Rama Mantena, Adam Gutteridge, and Janelle Blenkenship,
provided many fascinating conversations on time and politics during
our countless meals and drinks together. I am particularly grateful to the
2004–5 Pembroke seminar leader, Rey Chow, for giving so much of her
time and energy to the postdoctoral fellows. Her extraordinarily generous
engagement with us and with our work fostered a sense of community
among the fellows that was remarkable for both its warmth and its sense of
shared intellectual excitement. In addition to the sage advice she offered in
several conversations regarding my research, I am indebted to Rey Chow for
reading and commenting on portions of an earlier draft of this material.
At the University of York, both colleagues and students have given
me the opportunity to discuss and expand ideas developed in this book.
I’m particularly grateful to my colleagues in the English department for
responses to my research presentation on The Stepford Wives and the
end of history, to colleagues and students in the Centre for Women’s
Studies for their discussion of my lecture on mother/daughter narratives
and the politics of sentiment, and to the graduate students in my
Contemporary Feminist Theory seminar. Both Derek Attridge and
John David Rhodes were instrumental in helping me to find my feet at
York in a way that gave me the time and energy required to complete this
project. As my co-organizers for two different conferences, each played a
key role in making my first years at York the site of such fruitful intellectual
engagement for me.
This book has also benefited enormously from the comments provided
on various portions and drafts by colleagues and friends, including Jo
Applin, Elizabeth Freeman, Theresa Geller, Natasha Hurley, Anthony
Lioi, John David Rhodes, and Jennifer Worley. Heather Tirado Gilligan
and Katherine Sugg both read the manuscript in its entirety, and their
comments were hugely helpful. My thanks also to the Palgrave reviewer
who chose to remain anonymous. For a very thoughtful and thought-
provoking workshop of Chapter 6, I would also like to thank the
members of my writing group in York, including Heather Blurton, Catriona
Kennedy, Alison O’Byrne, Reena Sastri, and Helen Smith.
My fabulous friends and family also provided various means of
support in times of intellectual, psychological, and financial crisis,
especially Nora Davenport, Todd Davenport, Judy Gran, Peter Gran,
Scott Hartwig, Elizabeth Ho, Steve Jackson, Jonathan Kessler, Kathy
Kline, Pat Regnier, Brian Phillips, H. D. Richards, and Jennifer Worley. My
parents, Robert and Frances Elliott, and my sister, Beth Elliott, have
provided encouragement in countless ways, perhaps most importantly
through the excellent example they have each given me of sustained
commitment in the face of trials, tribulations, and absurdly delayed
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
gratification. Special thanks go to Gabriel Sena and Katherine Sugg, my
longtime companions and comrades-in-arms in the ongoing daily bat-
tle that is writing; I could not have completed this project without the
profound sense of solidarity and perpetual inspiration their friendship
provides. My final debt of gratitude is to my partner, Stephen Gran, whose
marvelous combination of intellectual rigor and academic irreverence
helps me both to work and to play. I do not think it is possible to repay
the kindness, understanding, and sheer equanimity he has shown in the
face of this seemingly endless undertaking, but I am looking forward to
making the attempt.
Part I
Temporal Politics
