Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature
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A01=Marianne Noble
Abjection
Adultery
Against Sadomasochism
Author_Marianne Noble
BDSM
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Blushing
Category=DSBF
Coverture
Cowardice
Cruelty
Despotism
Effeminacy
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Eroticism
Euphemism
Extraversion and introversion
Fear of intimacy
Genre fiction
Hedonism
Histrionic personality disorder
Ideology
Indulgence
Irony
Joke
Legal fiction
Libido
Literature
Male dominance (BDSM)
Masturbation
Melodrama
Misogyny
Mortification of the flesh
Opportunism
Oppression
Pain and pleasure
Perversion
Pessimism
Pity
Poetry
Pooh-pooh
Profanity
Psychopathia Sexualis (Heinrich Kaan)
Puritans
Rape fantasy
Religious ecstasy
Ridicule
Romance (love)
Sadomasochism
Satire
Seduction
Self-denial
Selfishness
Sensationalism
Sentimental novel
Sentimentalism (literature)
Sentimentality
Sexism
Sexual abstinence
Sexual desire
Sexual Desire (book)
Sexual fantasy
Sexual harassment
Sexual Personae
Sexual stimulation
Shame
Slavery
Subjectivity
Subversion
Superiority (short story)
Sympathy
The Erotic
Torture
Product details
- ISBN 9780691009377
- Weight: 397g
- Dimensions: 197 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 24 Apr 2000
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Marianne Noble is Associate Professor of Literature at American University, where she teaches nineteenth-century American literature and introductory courses in literary theory and creative writing. She has published widely in numerous journals.
