"An Independent Little Sausage": Sexual Agency and Desire On Dearborn Street. Issue 1 (2nd January 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lee, Janet
• Is Part Of: Women's writing. Volume 28:Issue 1(2021)
• Page Start: 59
• Page End: 74
• Publication Date: 2021-01-02
• Subjects: English literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; 820.99287
• DOI: 10.1080/09699082.2019.1638595
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0969-9082

Abstract

Abstract: In the teeming public space of modern U.S. cities at the end of the long nineteenth century, New Women carved out a place for themselves and navigated the opportunities and constraints associated with love and vocation on the eve of war. I address these representations, and focus on sexual agency and desire through the lens of Australian feminist Stella Miles Franklin's New Woman novel, On Dearborn Street. I examine Franklin's portrayals of a nuanced and somewhat contradictory sexual self-determination influenced by her personal and political life in Chicago, and emphasise the ways the novel resists romance narratives by refusing the choice between marriage and independence.