A01=Bryant Mangum
Alice Adams (novel)
Alice Adams (writer)
Alice Munro
Alison Lurie
Another Woman
Author_Bryant Mangum
Carol Sklenicka
Carolyn See
Category=DSK
Cynthia Ozick
Daisy Duke
E. M. Forster
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Gentlewoman
In Parenthesis
Independent woman
Jane Austen
Minor Characters
Mrs.
Susannah
The Last Sentence
The Other Hand
Venable
Product details
- ISBN 9781611179330
- Weight: 335g
- Dimensions: 157 x 231mm
- Publication Date: 16 Feb 2019
- Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
An illuminating study of an award-winning writer who captured the complex challenges twentieth-century women faced in their struggle for independence.
In Understanding Alice Adams, Bryant Mangum examines the thematic intricacies and astute social commentary of Adams’s eleven novels and five short story collections. Throughout her career Adams was known for creating and re-creating the “Alice Adams woman,” who is bright, honest, attractive, thoughtful—and sometimes a bit offbeat. As Mangum notes, Adams’s central characters—her heroes—are most often women struggling toward self-sufficiency and independence as they strive to fulfill their responsibilities, including child rearing and other societal commitments.
After an overview of Adams’s life (1926– 1999), Mangum groups the novels and stories by the decades in which they were published, since shifts in the thematic arc of Adams’s fiction break conveniently along those lines. He explains how Adams used the novel as an extended workshop for her short fiction. Her novels cover wide swaths of the American experience, and from these sweeping narratives she distilled her sharp, lyrical, vibrant short stories, which earned her 23 O. Henry Awards—including six first-place recognitions and a lifetime achievement award—an honor shared with only Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, and Alice Munro.
In this study Mangum explores how Adams treats love, family, work, friendship, and nostalgia. He identifies hope as a thread that links all her main characters, despite how accurately she had anticipated the complexities and challenges that accompanied increased freedom for women in the later twentieth century.
In Understanding Alice Adams, Bryant Mangum examines the thematic intricacies and astute social commentary of Adams’s eleven novels and five short story collections. Throughout her career Adams was known for creating and re-creating the “Alice Adams woman,” who is bright, honest, attractive, thoughtful—and sometimes a bit offbeat. As Mangum notes, Adams’s central characters—her heroes—are most often women struggling toward self-sufficiency and independence as they strive to fulfill their responsibilities, including child rearing and other societal commitments.
After an overview of Adams’s life (1926– 1999), Mangum groups the novels and stories by the decades in which they were published, since shifts in the thematic arc of Adams’s fiction break conveniently along those lines. He explains how Adams used the novel as an extended workshop for her short fiction. Her novels cover wide swaths of the American experience, and from these sweeping narratives she distilled her sharp, lyrical, vibrant short stories, which earned her 23 O. Henry Awards—including six first-place recognitions and a lifetime achievement award—an honor shared with only Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, and Alice Munro.
In this study Mangum explores how Adams treats love, family, work, friendship, and nostalgia. He identifies hope as a thread that links all her main characters, despite how accurately she had anticipated the complexities and challenges that accompanied increased freedom for women in the later twentieth century.
Bryant Mangum, professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, is the author of A Fortune Yet: Money in the Art of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Short Stories and the editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald in Context and The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Mangum’s essays have appeared in Resources for American Literary Study, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, the Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many other books and journals.
